The Impact of Social Media on the Collection and Distribution of News in Ireland.

Abstract

The advent of the internet and the smartphone have resulted in a paradigm shift in the way people communicate with each other and how they access and share news and information. The available data for Ireland shows that fewer people are getting their news from newspapers and TV since 2015. This downward trend shows no sign of changing. This dissertation analyses how an event was treated on the different media platforms of a number of Irish news publishers over a one month period in 2019. The purpose of the study is to develop a greater understanding of the impact of social media on the collection and distribution of news in an Irish context. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis was conducted in addition to an interview with a media professional from Kinzen to accomplish this. The research findings show that News publishers have a clear understanding of the altered social media landscape and have adapted by making use of new mobile technologies to deliver their news across many social platforms, all of which are available on smartphones. This is reflected by the significant increase in coverage on social media platforms. Only 15% of the articles reviewed could be seen to be content directly derived from social media sources.