Journalism in the 21st Century World – Tackling Challenges

Abstract

With the advent of internet and digitized formats of communication, journalism has been going through a lot of
challenges over the last about one-and-a-half decade in an unprecedented situation in which the very concepts of the discipline
are undergoing lot of changes. The challenges are manifold - from citizen journalism to free flow of information and news
through the internet, emergence of social networking sites (SNSs) to a large extent are posing newer aspects in front of the field
of journalism. This paper would endeavour to examine how these developments are facilitating a better flow of information
dissemination to the masses and at the same time creating problems of ascertaining authenticity, journalistic practice without the
benefits of trained human resources. This analysis has been necessitated as the availability of so many virtual digital outlets
have facilitated a better flow of information making it highly difficult to hoodwink the masses by deliberately passing on wrong
information. Yet, this uncontrolled flow of information at the same time is also posing serious questions of finding out whether
the sources are ‘reliable' or not. Also, how much filtering we need to carry out to find out what portion of the information available
from the blogs and SNSs are authentic and free from propaganda or personal opinion about an event. Further, this paper would
also like to analyze how much of the censorship restrictions in place in many ‘developing nations' including India actually holds
good in today's media situation where practically everything is freely available through the virtual communication mode.