In the context of defining news, David Nord calls attention to the matter and methods of reporting in his book Communities of Journalism (32). He says it is related to
- occurrence (all news are occurrences, not all occurrences are news)
- current (current in the sense of something being recurrent)
- public (product of the exercise of political, economic and social power)
- reporting (plainly, empirically, self-evident)
Let’s make an argument that shared content (status, video, photo, checkin) is a kind of reporting. It’s a dissemination of some kind of news to an audience. It is often reporting about the self or in context of the self since the author is central to the context of the post in the Facebook medium. I’ll make the argument that people who share on facebook practice some elements of journalistic reporting methods that validate it as social news.
- Occurrence – Facebook posts are often responding to a question about what’s on their mind, which is related to whatever is happening to the author. The act of posting and sharing validates whatever the occurrence may be.
- Current – Social media outlets are structured by time and timelines. While news sites consider the element of time, social sites float the newest information to the top, always, saving for Facebook’s top news feed.
- Public – Social media is generally, inherently public. Privacy settings are loose and the information is generally not intended for a private audience, in the traditional sense. The information is published with the intent to be consumed by a network or community.
- Reporting – I’ll relate this theme to occurrence and self evidence. Much of social media posts are self-reported content. It may not be pubic affairs news, but all of it is a report on the communicaton and identity of the author.
Our friends work as our editors and our audience while they publish and we do the same. The conversation no longer one way, it’s not even two ways. Conversations move in every direction now online. Social online models reflect our social behaviors much better than writing a letter to the editor ever did.