As we know that social networking is growing in South Africa. People are now using social networks for different reasons whether to make friends, dating, business etc. With the hype around twitter right now some people say Facebook is dead.
Many celebrities now are using Twitter more than Facebook. Even newspapers, magazines, editors and their journalists are on Twitter. There are also us "ordinaries" who follow these people some of them follow us back which gives us a smile when we notice.
(I know some of you will pretend you don't).
So the social networking happens people tweet and others retweeting. Some celebrities are not afraid to tweet things that some people think he/she shouldn't have tweeted that. We know celebrities are “ordinary” people like us but seriously we can't run away from the fact that they're expected to behave a certain way especially in public.
I guess this stuck with people since the days of "role models" and celebrities were mostly considered as people who should be good "role models." This puts pressure on them as a result now many celebs don’t want to be “role models”.
So as some celebs tweet whatever on twitter it gets people tweeting and talking and always on the look out for what's next. As we know journalists especially entertainment journalists are always on twitter.
Obviously they follow celebs and they see when celebs tweet stuff that's causing a stare on twitter and decide it's good enough for them to write an article about it and be published in a newspaper or magazine. We have seen this with
DRUM, Move!, Sowetan and Sundayworld.
Not only publications write about what goes down on twitter even television shows talk about what goes down on twitter and have twitter discussions.
We know it's not new for social networks drama to make it to publications and TV shows. Facebook's big story was Slikour and Bonang's dumping story then after that followed many social networks drama articles and twitter has had many.
Some people disagree strongly with this twitter journalism saying our journalists are becoming lazy if they can just sit behind their phones and look which celebrity is tweeting trash then save those tweets and write about that. Recently we have seen that it is becoming an increasing thing in publications to see articles that are triggered by what celebs tweet on twitter.
Many South Africans don't know anything about twitter it's just a small number of people who are on twitter but that does not stop journalists from doing their twitter journalism.
They've even gone to lengths of having twitter 101 articles teaching their readers about twitter, which shows that they want their readers to be on twitter as they're going to write more about what's going on twitter.
I think they're disadvantaging themselves by doing this because if their readers are on twitter why would they continue writing about what goes down on twitter if their readers are there to witness it themselves?
I mean it's so boring for some of us who are on twitter to read about what we witnessed happening there. So I don't understand their logic when it comes to this. Anyway...
pic: Drum
Many magazines and newspapers wrote about Nonhle Thema losing her mind on twitter and
Nonhle Thema and Dineo Ranaka exchanging harsh words on twitter.
Drum wrote about Nonhle and Dineo twitter drama,
She was recently involved in a cat fight with self proclaimed millionaire and former Vuzu presenter Nonhle Thema on twitter.
We chat to Dineo about the public quarrel and why she felt the need to take a stand against Nonhle. She talks to us about laying charges and what she now thinks of what went down.
Now this week DRUM magazine has an article about
Minnie Dlamini and Hush night club drama with all the tweets splashed around the article. They also have the twitter drama that happened between
DJ Fresh, Euphonik and some girl two weeks back, which involved screenmunched direct messages (DMs) of DJ Fresh to this girl, something that made Euphonik to give the girl "desperate bitch of the year" award on twitter.
That caused a lot of noise on twitter and DRUM decided to publish an article about it. They even interviewed the girl and had DJ Fresh comment on the allegations.
So does this mean they're going to write about every twitter drama? But then again if these celebrities tweet stuff that journalists see as newsworthy why not write about it? I think celebrities are also making journalists jobs easy if they can just attack each other on a social network like Nonhle Thema and Dineo Ranaka did or vent about whatever.
I mean it is them tweeting behind those twitter accounts so it's them saying those words so why not write about it if journalists see it as newsworthy? In some articles we do see comments from them celebs about what went down on twitter not just their tweets.
So are you saying journalists should not use social networks to their advantage? If celebrities can use it to set scores and attack each other, journalists should just sit down and watch for dayyzzz?
If they have to I just wish they can choose carefully what twitter drama to write about coz le bo Arthur are on twitter now.
So what's your take on twitter journalism or social networks journalism in general?
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