Essay 2 - The quality of social media

Social media has been used in many areas and for different purposes. It can be mentioned as major source of information contributed by individuals, over an interactive platform, or a tool that extends the limitation and widens the boundary of traditional media. The social media alters the way internet users acquire information. The media enables user generated content function which allows passive readers to be interactive users. When it comes to the quality of the social media compared with traditional/ mass media, it is claimed to have less credibility and accuracy in term of content. Since the content can be published freely and is hardly controlled on many sites, and the fact that a lot of contents are written based on the authors’ attitude and idea. However, a number of content producers and marketers have invested in and spent much time on this type media. It can be found in some markets that the seeking behavior through the social media is dominating over the traditional media. Giving the music industry as an example, many music companies have employed a forum for discussion about music, artists, etc. If the task of defining high-quality content on websites based on user contributions, an investigated result can then be interpreted in two ways. First, the topic brought up to a discussion can produce high quality content since it shows a presentation of variety of ideas and attitudes toward such topic. On the other hand, the discussion might contain a load of crap and bias and end up in no final solution and agreement.
In my opinion, the quality of social media versus traditional/ mass media is hard to be clearly defined. What is the standard for saying that such content is of high or low quality? The content can be seen as high quality if it is relevant to the information a user is seeking for, in contrast, the same content can be crap for other users. In term of accreditation, the mass media seem to be more classified in content and credibility of authors.