Over time, photography has established itself as a main factor in covering news stories. It shows the real time events through social media and gives photographic proof of an event. The two authors, Monica Anderson and Andrea Caumont, wrote an article for the organization PewResearchCenter titled “How Social Media is Reshaping News”. They argue that social media has been made the new outlet for breaking news stories due to the fact that they are quickly updated on events and it’s very accesible to find the information. Another way that the stories are made viral so quickly is that people usually post photos or videos to follow up their coverage on the event. They’re both reliable due to the fact that one author is a research analyst and the other is a social media editor. Their argument truly shines light on how photos are the new news, photos truly do contain one thousand words.
Looking at every form of social media everyone uses nowadays, photos are dominating the feed. People on the social media sites are now using photos to share their opinions, send a message, or even show what is going on in their lives. Putting it into statistics, “half of social network site users have shared news stories, images or videos , and nearly as many (46%) have discussed a news issue or event. In addition to sharing news on social media, a small number are also covering the news themselves, by posting photos or videos of news events”. That means that almost or more than HALF of people using any social media platform are using photos to share their message. Looking at more statistics,“in 2014, 14% of social media users posted their own photos of news events to a social networking site, while 12% had posted videos. This practice has played a role in a number of recent breaking news events”. That was 2014, and now that it is 2016, and more people are using social media now than ever, imagine how many more people are posting photos. Looking at everything in retrospect, compare Instagram to Twitter. Instagram is a platform that only uses photos to share what is happening in people’s lives. Twitter, on the other hand, is a primarily word based site. Recently though, Twitter feeds have been packed with photos, either to support their claim that they wrote or to share an event with multiple photos. Knowing that, a conclusion can be made to see that photos are truly becoming more prominent in every form of social media. In conclusion, photos are becoming the new words when it comes to social media. Photos that people are taking speak all the words they could say about their experience or opinion, making it the new way to share news and events, with the added photographic proof.
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