Convergence is ON! 5 Facts

As communicators it is especially important to remember that we find ourselves in a rapidly changing time of new media.  I am going to give you 5 facts about social media convergence.  This change is happening at an exponential rate!  All of these facts are taken from the attached YouTube video titled, Did You Know?  I pulled out the ones that really got my attention but really the entire video is great!  

1-By 2020 the mobile device is going to be our primary connection to the Internet.

2-American's have access to 1,000,000,000,000 web pages.

3-Digital advertising is up, we all know that, but newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years.

4-Myspace, YouTube and Facebook have a combined number of 250 million visitors each month.

5-The average American teenager sends approximately 2,272 texts per month!

Due to the speed and spread of information everyone needs to think before they share everything with a mobile audience.  This is especially true for journalists who are pressured to be the first to report a story, at times they may be "reporting a story" as it is happening.  Legal and ethical issues can arise because the dissemination of information is instantaneous.  "The best practitioners of convergence journalism need to understand the basic legal and ethical rules of the road and where to go to follow the changes and updates needed to move ahead legally and ethically." (Kolodzy, 2013, p. 63) 

References

Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing Convergence Journalism. An introduction to cross-media storytelling. Routledge. New York, NY.

Pixabay picture retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/social-media-you-tube-facebook-1177293/

SNHU COCE Assistive Technology. (2017, August 11th). Did you know? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/upKuCQPw8wQ