When tech became the media and the message

When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman revealed the details of the COVID-19 Rs 20 lakh crore economic package, many were surprised to see logos of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram behind her. On closer inspection they were not ads of any kind but the social media handles of the government. The main thrust being that if you have any clarifications or want further details, then it’s better to go to the official handles rather than traditional media.

The way news is disseminated has totally changed thanks to Silicon Valley. When the world went from newspapers and magazines to TV news channels, the traditional media houses still called the shots and made money. But after the advent of Social Media, it is the tech giants who are walking away with all the views and moolah rather than traditional media houses.

Last year Google announced that it had made a whopping $US 4.7 billion the previous year through digital advertising just via its tie-ups with just the US news industry! What must be the figure for all social media for all countries? The number must be staggering. This even as newspapers, magazines and TV news channels are shutting down.

There was a time when only journalists had access to the news agency ticker. They used to see news items on their screen all day and that would be printed out on a dot matrix printer. The Wall Street Journal’s business ticker was also popular among top business honcho.

But now every citizen in the world has his or her own news feed. Call it: The WhatsApp News Ticker. The Twitter News Ticker. The Facebook News Ticker. The Tik Tok Video Channel. Marshall McLuhan had said that "The medium is the message". Silicon Valley is now the prime medium for disseminating the news and it itself has become the message.