Over the past few years, many discussions took place and seminars and conferences were held and books published in the thousands in various countries around the world about the effects of new media, especially the impact of social media like Facebook and Twitter on the flow of news and on guiding public opinion. At the end of 2016 a new impact of the new media emerged. Facebook was charged of influencing the outcome of the US elections, and directing the American public to vote for President Donald Trump against his rival Democrat Hillary Clinton.
A long time ago, Facebook inc. was trying to regulate the dissemination of news, press information and stories. Yesterday, the company announced the launch of the “journalism project” in order to strengthen the relationship between Facebook and news makers through product development and providing new ways for publishers to earn money, but what is more important in this project is that it aims to strengthen commitment to the content provided by news agencies.
There have been questions about the ability of Facebook to control the role of the site as a distributor of news, precisely in regard to addressing the spread of misinformation. The new media is taking the place of newspapers and traditional media; ads are moving into the social media and sites like Google. Meanwhile, newspapers and news agencies have to shut down and withdraw from the market because of increasing economic pressures.
Facebook is no longer strictly the social space for friends and family. It is going beyond that. Although in June Facebook agreed to control the news flow and prioritize family and friends posts, the site provides news on a large scale. Users usually prioritize news reading over family contact on Facebook.
Facebook intends to control the media through arranging priorities of publication, and prioritizing news over entertainment content as an example. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, says that his company is not a traditional media company, and insists he is still targeting communication technologies, but in his speech, he focused on working closely with news makers, which means that Facebook is designed to move within the media sector. The company is moving fast in this sector. A few days ago after the announcement of the “journalism project”, the company appointed a well known broadcaster from CNN to lead the partnerships news team in Facebook. The company had previously adopted innovative forms of news provision although in a social media fashion. Live broadcast came as a huge qualitative shift in the media industry through Facebook.
Facebook is seeking to build partnerships to target what it calls “news illiteracy”, and this is an innovative logo. It is clear that the Facebook Company was successful to notice that public wants the news, whether they are true or not, because they are user-generated not attributed to Facebook, in the sense that it is only a popular posting space and has nothing to do with the policies of the website.
There is no doubt that the election campaign of US President Trump marked the Facebook new influence in the field of media and politics, because the campaign tremendously relied on Facebook against Hillary Clinton’s campaign on which she spent about $ 140 million on TV ads which did not succeed in attracting supporters who guarantee her to win the election.
The help of Facebook and Twitter toPresident Trump seems obvious in the face of the strongest US Media Network, CNN, which has been for decades shaking the thrones of most rulers of the world. The US President refused to respond to its correspondent in a news conference, accusing the company of lying and falsifying the news. It seems Trump has become more confident in relying on the new media, which played a huge role in electoral preference, where the traditional American media was mostly opposing him. Trump had only the support of five or six newspapers at the beginning of November last year, in an unprecedented scene in the US presidentials.
Evidence confirms that the new media will not only influence the US presidential election, but could change the world. The media is having radical changes and we have to interact with these changes in the Arab world in order to adapt with these changes.
