Social Media Is The New Gutenberg

Just as the Gutenberg Revolution, which began in 1450s, upset many aspects of government and certainly the Church, so Social Media is now changing our concepts of real and fake news.

The impact of the Gutenberg printing press was incredible. It created an extraordinary government, social and cultural revolution. The sudden widespread dissemination of printed works, books, tracts, posters and papers, gave a direct rise to the European Renaissance.

As it became easier to produce books and pamphlets, information started to spread. Previously, only religious leaders and royalty had access to books, and few people were literate.

But as reading materials became more prevalent, people began to learn to read. And as they read, they started to question the literature provided to them. They wanted to learn and discover for themselves, instead of just believing what they were told books contained.

So the printing Renaissance opened the realm of learning and reading to the local populations as schools were built and books about education were written and print published. The printing press had dramatic effects on European civilization and its more immediate effect was to spread information quickly and accurately and this gradually helped to create a much wider literate reading public.

Today many people are also now being effected and they are beginning to look for secure accurate and believable news portals but, the traditional trusted publishing out-lets have less public belief as many people believe governments are manipulating them.

Newspapers are going Digital or Declining

A decade ago the US press declined after the financial crisis and a number of them began the digital transformation believing that this would financially cover print’s regression and collapse. However only a few national businesses covered their losses and have built a commercial digital network.  

The local press, are in sharp circulation decline, and the online advertising businesses has moved to Google and Facebook and others. The result has caused newspaper closures and large-scale downsizings and redundancies. Almost 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004 and 2018, leaving 200 US counties with no newspaper and roughly half the counties in the country with only one, according to a University of North Carolina study.

Meanwhile, about 400 online-only local news sites have sprung up to fill the void, disproportionately clustered in big cities and affluent areas, a recent study by the University of North Carolina (UNC)  study found.

This sever process is leaving Americans with far less information about what's going on locally, a fact Facebook recently acknowledged as it struggled to expand its local-news product but couldn’t find enough stories. Local TV news is still a major, if declining, source of news for Americans, but local newspapers are vanishing.

The Washington Post, which launched a paywall in 2013, has transformed under the ownership of Jeff Bezos into a national digital enterprise, and has apparently built 1.5 million digital subscribers.

Currently some of the more trusted in the UK and globally are the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent and yet with the younger generations the platforms most used and believed are Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

In Brazil, there is the largest public concern for non-fake news which many people in Brazil, around 86%, say is hard to find. Currently with Brexit arguments in the UK around 58% have concerns over fake news over the leave and non-leave propaganda being published in the old and new areas of media.

And today people in India are also complaining that much of the traditional news vehicles are not believable and are now using social media to find real news. Also in France anger groups are using Facebook to get their messages heard.

And of course The Arab Spring was also considerably affected and bolstered by the use of social media as again much of the local populations did not believe a lot of what the governments were saying in the traditional press.

Going forward, as the financial consequences of the Cyber Revolution’s has a sever effect on commerciality the press and the traditional publishing model is downsized by Google, Apple and social media in general, the question of how will publishers pay for high quality journalism come directly into play. And as a lack of trained journalism reduces the quality of news everywhere is affected.  
 
Recently in the EU three media sites in The Netherlands filed lawsuits against the EU, which has a project to reduce/remove fake information/news. These arguments are not going away. In each of the cases highlighted in the lawsuit, EU vs Disinfo didn’t label disinformation at all, the plaintiffs argue. It went after news and commentary it didn’t like.

And in Germany in 2015 the refugee crisis completely disrupted traditional belief in German’s media. According to a study by “infratest dimap” commissioned by the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, at last 60 percent of Germans at the time stated that they had little or no confidence in the country’s political reporting.

Nearly forty percent of Germans said in a survey by the opinion research institute “Allensbach” that they thought that the traditional news reporting was deliberately distorting the truth.

Now with the increasing availability of social media, new sources of information have emerged and now algorithms are being used to have a lasting influence on our consumption of information.

Many people now prefer to believe people from their own social environment, instead of turning to “the media”. The collateral damage caused by the digitisation is increasing amounts of disinformation and currently this is not going to stop.

However, the history of this freedom goes back to the birth of mass media. As soon as the printing press was invented, officials created ways to censor it. In the American colonies, the defense of John Peter Zenger against libel charges in 1735 is often seen as the cornerstone of American press freedom.

As soon as the printing press was invented, officials created ways to censor it. In 1501, Pope Alexander VI issued a notice requiring printers to submit copy to church authorities before publication, in order to prevent heresy. Penalties for bypassing the censors included fines and excommunication.

US Freedom of the Press prohibits the government from interfering with the printing and distribution of information or opinions. In a 1938 decision, the Supreme Court defined the press as, "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion."

Currently, this includes everything from newspapers to blogs. Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is subject to some restrictions, such as defamation law and copyright law.

Not all countries have a bill of rights or freedom of the press. In 2012, Reporters without Borders listed the countries with the most, free-press as Finland, Norway, Estonia, the Netherlands, and Austria.The countries with the least degree of press freedom were ranked with Eritrea having the worst, followed by North Korea, Turkmenistan, Syria, Iran, and China. The United States ranked 48thon the list.

UNC School of Journalism:        Westminster Forum:      Die Zeit:

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