Transgressing Media Boundaries: News Creation and Dissemination in a Globalized World

This paper examines how the emergence of social media has transgressed traditional media boundaries and altered models of news creation and dissemination. It investigates the changing patterns of news construction and consumption due to advances on the internet, information technologies, and smart technological devices. Additionally, by examining the role played by social media during the so-called “Arab Spring,” the paper studies the effects of social media on the way audiences and journalists receive, gather, and disseminate news, leading to the emergence of “citizen journalism,” recently referred to as the “Fifth Estate.” At the center of this change is the emergence of social media that brought about a radical metamorphosis in news creation and dissemination. This study examines how the emergence of social media has transgressed traditional media boundaries altering the patterns of news creation and dissemination. The findings indicate that the rising use of social networks allowed individuals to breach geographical barriers and established norms to create hyper-communities where everyone has the opportunity to express themselves freely and to be the center of news. Moreover, this study reveals that rather than competing with one another, social media and traditional mainstream media play complementary roles to provide audiences with instant live news. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n5p27