71.3% of UAE readers today rely on social media as a source of news

An unscientific poll conducted by "Emirates Today" on the Twitter platform revealed that 71.3% of readers rely on social media as a primary source for information and news, compared to 14.9% who resort to traditional media "radio - TV - newspapers". The poll showed that 13.8 percent of the respondents were dependent on websites.

Thus, the survey indicated the superiority of social media over other means in reaching and influencing audience segments. The decline in loyalty in the Middle East to newspapers, according to statistics, is attributed to the high percentage of mobile phone users who already outnumber computer users, which ensures greater presentation of information in an easier and faster way through Social media or websites, according to experts during a session included in the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) Conference in the Middle East 2021.

Social media drive change

With the use of newspapers significantly reduced, and the rates of followers of news bulletins decreased, the swing to new sources of information has accelerated significantly. According to a report issued by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and published by Forbes in 2020, on the state of digital news around the world, many facts emerged. The study came out, most notably the extensive use of the “Instagram” platform for news, where news consumers in “Instagram” constitute 11% of the pioneers of social networking sites, and the pioneers of “Twitter” scored 12% amid expectations that “Instagram” will soon outperform.

The study found that the shift away from traditional news media sources is led by the younger generation under the age of 25, with two-thirds of that age group saying they use Instagram to gather news information, and the same age group reported being twice as likely to view news on social media applications. social.

The “Facebook” platform tops the news sources among the pioneers of social networking sites, according to a Reuters study (conducted by YouGov Research Agency), where 36% of users of social media platforms “Facebook” resort, and “YouTube” recorded 21% of media users. Social media users who search for news on the popular video site, and 16% in favor of WhatsApp.


Check the news

The reader may fall into the trap of fake and fabricated news that is published in a random manner on social networking sites without checking in many cases its source and the extent of its sincerity, which confirms the importance of verifying the credibility of the published news according to specific scientific rules far from fabrication and misinformation.

Here are some tools that can be used to check the news published on social media or even websites:

1-

Verify images

: To verify the authenticity of a particular image, a person can save the image and then upload it to an automatic search tool for images on Google and see all the news related to the image.

Among the most important sites that help to verify images, are: Tineye, izitru, and google images.

2-

Twitter

: The AIDR platform relies on human and automated monitoring to dispel rumors on Twitter.

3-

Facebook

: Facebook Graph Search provides a simple and easy way to verify someone's information.

4-

Video

: You can use the Youtube Data viewer, created by Amnesty International, to verify videos.

5-

Social media content

: Geofeedia allows the user to search and monitor social media content according to geographical location, by simply choosing a place, any event or information that occurs in that particular place at the same time is collected from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram and Picasa.

6-

Google

: The Google search engine provides many advantages for journalists to get to know basic information about people, places or events, by typing define in the search engine, after which the journalist writes the word he wants to search for, and he will get the best results.

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