Reliable Source

About two decades ago, people received news from newspaper and TV, both of which were either dominated by big news corporations or governments. Nowadays, internet provides multi-channels for news delivery. News portals are still controlled by big corps, but audiences have more choices: rather than subscribing to one to two newspapers, they can browse news in almost any website they want to. More importantly, the development of social media changes the traditional unidirectional way of spreading news. Everyone on internet can be news publisher and commentator, and this change already starts to break media monopoly and offers different perspectives on a same issue.

In China, where government has firm control over media, the new and expanding Weibo (Chinese twitter) has largely changed the way people receive and share news. In comparison to the mainstream media overwhelmed by political jargon and empty talks, Weibo users always publish short and easy-to-follow news and comments: with a 140-word limit, the publishers have to make each news concise What's more, because of the relatively loose censorship on Weibo, some news that are banned in paper media survive in Weibo. Though most of them are deleted in the end, people who glimpse the news before their disappearance are informed, and further disseminate them in their own way, like taking screen-shots and publish pictures to avoid keyword-filtering systems. Therefore Weibo has become one of the main news resources for many Chinese, young generation in particular, as people believe that they may have access to some uncensored facts there. I don't read People's Daily or Global Times frequently, but I do follow the main media and celebrities' accounts on Weibo, and skip over their posts every day.

Social media like Weibo shouldn't become the main sources of information - just like people won't rely on twitter for news. Since every Weibo user acquires the authority of publishing news, the information spreading out there is perhaps far from "reliable" as rumors can be found everywhere. But when people are so tired of political leaders' speech and esoteric reviews which always occupy front pages of newspapers that they don't even mind spending time on filtering Weibo news, it's time for media corps and their government regulators to redesign their development strategies. It looks like people no longer buy the propaganda, but are more fond of news that reveal the "truth". By truth, I don't mean unbiased news - such news never exists, but at least it shouldn't twist facts or shun to reporting scandals and other "negative information."

I'm always surprised at how the newspapers and TV programs report the news in the US and by supplying different, sometimes even conflicting news become reliable sources for American audiences. News corps controlled by different political parties and interest groups provide different perspectives to social hotpots, which jointly give audiences different pieces of a full picture. Some people choose to read what they believe is true (I mean reading the newspapers which share similar ideas as them), but some choose to be exposed closer to facts by expanding their information sources. Social media opens the door to multi-channels of information delivery, but how to balance the choices and efficiency of news reporting may be key to producing reliable sources in the future.