The digital and social media environment

[Extract] The many natural and human-induced disasters and dramas of recent years now automatically feature an avalanche of social media. Imagining major public events without Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is actually becoming difficult, although these things are still so new. Think of the Lindt cafe siege in Sydney in December 2014, or Cyclone Marcia that hit central Queensland in February 2015. While mainstream media (MSM) were there in droves, much of what we saw, heard and read came from the immediate first-hand accounts of people on the scene, using their smartphones and tablets to flood the social media spaces with material eagerly consumed by a hungry and switched-on audience. 'Trending' (that is, to become the subject of many posts online within a comparatively short period of time) has become something not only desirable and but also keenly followed by individuals and institutions around the globe.\ud \ud Some would argue that digital and social media have democratised and invigorated the media; others that they have sent them into a downward spiral. Whatever you think, change is inevitable, particularly as technology burgeons. Just as the invention of the transistor in the late 1940s was the start of the (then unimaginable) computer revolution, so we are now inventing technologies that will take us to who knows where. As information is one of the most important commodities in the world, the rise of information-based technology has transformed the way we receive and process information. Boundaries of all kinds are being blurred, and if we thought we could see the future a generation ago, we certainly cannot see it now