Introduction
With the advent of the Web 3.0 era, mobile Internet has not only profoundly changed the behaviour, channels and psychology of hundreds of millions of audiences in accessing information but has also profoundly changed the social structure, leading to transformative effects on society as a whole in many fields such as politics, economy and culture. Internet technology has become a fundamental element that exists to facilitate social change. Despite the wealth of scholarship on online media, the vast majority of it remains in the study of the Internet as a medium and cultural influence. Most scholars continue to study the Internet as a tool to convey meaning or to “mediate” the Internet, ignoring the long-term structural transformation that the medium plays in culture and society (Potts, 2013).
The technological innovations of online media have profoundly transformed the traditional news media industry and the regional media landscape to form the online and global media landscape. This paper compares the many limitations of conventional media, highlighting the key features and impacts of online media. The Internet can be seen as a catalyst for journalism, accelerating the formation of a globally interconnected media landscape (Khamis, 2011). Instant communication, interaction and extensive participation are the media communication characteristics that make online journalism more advantageous than traditional media. It is a disruptive change to conventional journalism, creating a new form of media communication for news, breaking the way of media production, and greatly influencing many social concepts (Waters et al., 2010). This paper will analyze the global media interconnection brought about by Internet technology and its impact on journalism from the characteristics and role of online journalism itself and examine how the creation of online media has changed the original social concepts and social behaviour.
Online media are more interactive than traditional media and can adapt to the consumer and information society
Traditional media does not have an excellent interactive experience for users, so it is difficult for traditional media to adapt to the current consumer society. In the classic media era, consumers often have to pay many opportunity costs to get complete news information, understand the context of news events, and relate news analysis and comments. The new media era cuts the traditional service and market concept. It introduces the value of flow as a king and content-based worldview, which gradually and profoundly reflects the importance of the whole ecology of the network, channel, platform and terminal. The “secondary consumption” of network news is to actively play the advantages of network features and make the content and form excellent and delicate at the same time (Ripollés, 2012). From the news information of “secondary consumption”, the audience can easily understand the centre and periphery of the news event, saving a lot of time and energy. Facts. The “big wave” in the fragmented news coverage has not been reduced but has only achieved the transfer from the “audience” to the network editors (Rashtchy et al., 2007). Network editors play an important role as gatekeepers in the process of “secondary consumption” of network news: adhering to the principle of objectivity and impartiality, they eliminate poor quality and untrue news reports, screen out news information with many attributes such as truthfulness, objectivity, interest, readability and freshness, and absorb the “essence” of the screened news. The “essence” of the filtered news information is absorbed, summarized, processed, and re-released in hypertext format on the online platform for the audience’s convenience.
Compared to the traditional media, which has limited interaction and leads to the closure of news information, The Internet is creating a new model of interactive online communication worldwide, and online news provides a foothold for global interconnectedness in communication. The vast amount of information transmitted over long distances in the cheapest way possible can spread rapidly in the shortest possible time, and this is the kernel of what online communities and virtual worlds can form. Undoubtedly, the concept of communication in today’s society has been turned upside down, and we are rapidly moving towards an era of one billion connected computers. In an early report by pew research center, people using the Internet rose from 0.7% to 22% of the global population between 1996 and 2008 (Auxier and Anderson, 2021). However, it is unimaginable that the worldwide population in 2018 totalled about 7.6 billion, while people using the Internet have reached 4 billion. In just less than 40 years, more than half of the total population has used the Internet, reflecting that human society already has the prerequisites for forming an information-based organization. The exponential growth of Internet users is accompanied by the increase in the length of time people stay on the Internet, and most of these hours are spent on information interaction and news media interconnection.
The Internet news has also played a significant role in disrupting the process of human society into an information-based community. In media developed countries and worldwide, online news is a hub of ideological and cultural information and an amplifier of social opinion. On the one hand, it is the field where most Internet users exchange opinions, express their wishes, make statements, reflect their hearts, suggest ideas, care about national issues, and communicate their emotions and vent their feelings. In the new media environment, the space of public opinion has been expanded, and the channels of online news dissemination have been diversified. At the same time, a diversified pattern of public opinion space on the Internet has been initially formed. With the development trend of “segmentation” or “iconization” of the Internet, Internet users have also become divided (Carrasco, 2012). As a result, different groups are scattered on the Internet, other media forms are provided to these groups, and various groups have formed their unique values. Through this window, the online media can stimulate the potential will that previously could not be expressed by traditional media so that the general public can express their opinions freely, which is undoubtedly conducive to social stability and harmonious development.
Online media is more timely than traditional media, allowing for the mutual transformation of creators and communicators
Traditional news production is backward in terms of news content, which leads to the news may be published from the publication to the publication of a long time has passed, and thus the information has lost its value. In addition, due to the speed of dissemination, traditional news can not be disseminated on time, and the dissemination has evident timeliness, which invariably has a very negative impact on the development of traditional media news dissemination. For example, the theme and positioning of television news content can easily be restricted, and the type and form have stringent norms, language, composition, etc., are subject to layers of audit, no distinctive characteristics (Cotter, 2010). Finally, the old news media is monotonous in concept. The news content of the old media suffers from the role of the mainstream idea and because of the official needs, but not a little commentary or evident tendency of the report. If they cannot absorb the voice of the masses, they cannot produce an interactive system and will leave the groups without confidence for a long time.
Timeliness is breaking the time and space barriers of traditional news production and consumption and can be considered one of the most necessary advantages of online news. The Internet has a vast data resource for content reference, which means that news production and news interviewing can be accelerated for journalists. For example, the World Wide Web, an accessible global electronic publishing medium, contains more than 5,000 news sites published by newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and magazines, and several native news sites in the online world (Quandt, 2008). First, access to sources of information is critical for newspaper journalists, especially for breaking news. For example, in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, readers prefer to know the situation immediately and do not want to wait for information from the evening news or the next day’s morning news, both of which traditional media would lose their appeal for them. They can actively get the latest information and learn about further developments in the Russian-Ukrainian situation via the Internet. As a vivid example of the value of timeliness for information, CEO Tony Hall pointed out at the launch of BBC News Online that “for the first time, BBC News Online will put the full wealth of BBC news coverage at your fingertips and you will have the news you want and the news you need, 24 hours a day (Nopper, A., & Lapierre, 2005). ” This certainly reflects one of the important quality standards regarding modern journalism: the speed of information delivery. For journalists, especially contemporary ones, who must have the ability to write faster and better, how can we test whether the news content is of high quality? We can relate the concept of interactivity mentioned above and extend it to the content production process. All news coverage in traditional media is “top-down”, which leads to the complexity of getting relevant audience feedback. The boom in online news that makes it easy to share relevant information is in stark contrast, breaking the one-way delivery pattern of the medium that has always been our publishing and we reading. Because it allows everyone to express their opinions equally and freely, such as Wikipedia as an online platform has the dual identity of an online encyclopedia and a news medium enabling anyone to contribute to Wikipedia (Ebersbach et al., 2008). Wikipedia allows any user to edit any page to update information. And this is where this is a natural extension of the web’s function in terms of journalism. While online reader discussion can hardly go beyond mere opinion sharing, it provides alternative views or details that can become news information sources and trigger subsequent news development. This interactivity allows journalists and their audiences to communicate more multi-directionally by forming online communities and chat rooms and creating online public platforms to efficiently and accurately output quality content. From the perspective of content production, the timeliness of online news deepens the rapid transmission and interactive dissemination of social information, which is one of the most significant aspects of an information-based society that can capture content and traffic to achieve broader radiation.
Online news is more accessible than traditional media can make communication more adaptable to the consumer and citizen journalism society.
Old media is a great way to attract large audiences and gain brand awareness. Traditional media has been around for many years and is therefore highly recognized. Traditional media is perfect for building brands and increasing awareness over time. Credibility can be built through earnable media appearances in old media, i.e. media that you did not create yourself and did not spend money on, such as having a journalist cover your brand in a story. While many news outlets have closed their doors, traditional media has not yet died out. However, traditional media does not have access to data that would allow brands to market to niche markets or specific target audiences. It makes digital media relationships and content dealing a good source for lead generation and sales. And social media, search engines, KOLs, blogs, and other content are digital media. Online journalism enables access to a wealth of accurate data about who is visiting your website or reading your content through new or digital media. It allows the creator to know the user profile and thus better match the followers to provide the corresponding news information and production. It can fit into the marketing of the consumer society, and it is vital to have an integrated approach for a successful media relations campaign. Karan says, “Using social media to amplify the messages conveyed in primetime TV shows will do wonders in terms of reach and interactivity.”
More voices are being heard in new ways outside of the public sphere and traditional news sources due to the new opportunities potentially offered by the accessibility of online news. Rapidly changing situations are being updated by many audiences, actively creating and turning to their self-published news, sharing their photos and video clips taken at the scene, and publicly uploading eyewitness testimonies. Many specialized citizen journalism sites based on online media have rapidly evolved and further shaped citizen journalism in all its forms. For example, as a platform for ordinary Americans to write and produce news, “backfence.com” is more effective in providing information of interest to its audience (Hall, 2006). The growing popularity of smartphones and the convergence of mobile Internet networks have also further accelerated the speed and base of news production. Professional news media information channels are limited in major natural disasters or accident rescue, and other emergencies can not get first-hand information from the front line in the first place. And citizens and self-published journalists can be close to making a considerable contribution to the coverage of emergencies. With instant messenger networks constantly sending real-time changes in the background and the masses at the scene sending real-time changes in their location, the Internet becomes a microphone in the hands of netizens, and citizens pick and choose to create their news reports. However, there is also widespread controversy about whether the content of these relevant information releases can reach the height of news. For example, Twitter has the advantages of easy information distribution and simple dissemination, and it is a real-time interactive platform that combines the functions and benefits of instant messengers, blogs and social networking sites. However, people express their opinions relatively the whole way, so it is not influenced by traditional journalistic standards such as objectivity, fairness and accuracy. When information is written and published by professional media or journalists, it can be considered to meet the requirements of journalism. It is undeniable that Twitter is becoming more and more media-specific, and based on the content offered by Twitter, Facebook and other forms of online communication platforms, such as alternative perspectives, first-person experiences and interactivity, it can be concluded that readers want a more balanced or subjective view of the news they read (Barker, K., & Jurasz, O., 2019).” By comparing it to mainstream media coverage of the same event, citizen journalism as a form of dialogue offers greater transparency, more information and more diversity.”
Conclusion
Traditional journalism faces more competition in an increasingly diverse and pluralistic media environment, and online journalism has become an important driving force in changing the global media landscape and journalism development. First, online media has changed the global media landscape, opening up the potential for global interconnection while indirectly affecting traditional journalism’s a production and dissemination mechanisms. The change from news being a report of recent facts to information reporting ongoing facts is the most apparent change. The original time and space constraints between journalists and viewers are broken by the immediacy of the Internet, which has changed the traditional media standards for news dissemination time. The Internet provides an excellent opportunity for all participants to share information, and the public’s participation in new ways of interaction continues to expand the volume of news and integrate a variety of information, one of the critical “value-added” functions of the online media, which also facilitates the expression of a plurality of views by ordinary citizens.
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