Infographic: Social News Reporting

As traditional news media drift away from the digital generation, more and more users are learning about what is happening in the world through social media channels such as Twitter or Facebook. This is also true in China. More than 50% of people get breaking news through social media rather than through official news channels, and online news revenue will exceed print media revenue in 2012. Since 2009, traffic to news websites from social media has increased by 57%.

In recent years, many global events have been first reported by ordinary people on Weibo. Professional journalists, who always use Twitter, often leak information on Twitter before publishing formal long-form news.

Business is also shifting to digital channels, and online news now generates more revenue than newspapers. But social media is also a double-edged sword in news reporting. 50% of news consumers have received breaking news on social media that was later confirmed to be fake news.

There is a fierce clash of opinions between supporters and opponents of social media. Supporters believe that social media is timely, everyone is a journalist, information spreads quickly, and mobile phones can be used in any occasion as a reporting tool; while opponents believe that 140-character stories on Twitter are easily taken out of context; inaccurate, information is lost; journalists' professionalism is weakened; amateur groups reporting news may cause harm