| dc.description.abstract | case study is on the impact of social media on traditional media function in Kenya with a focus on Royal Media Services, Nairobi. The main purpose of this report is to amalgamate information on how Royal Media Services are responding to social media participatory wave that is linked with a historic shift in control towards individual consumers. It seeks to answer the general question: What is the impact of social media on news mass media organizations?
This study sought to find out whether social media have changed the way traditional media functions like surveillance, correlation, socialisation and entertainment are carried out in the news media firms by using Royal Media Services as a typical case. This case has provided observations that are generalised to general systems theories and McLuhan theories. To achieve this, the researcher asked the media people who develop news at Royal Media Services whether they use any form of social media; the extent to which they use them and the challenges they face.
Questionnaires, face to face and telephone interviews, observation and documentary sources were used as the research instruments. Varied answers were gathered, analysed and presented inform of words, table's charts and graphs. This study revealed that Royal Media Services uses some forms of social media tools like FaceBook, Twitter, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to a small extent. It thus concludes that social media impacts traditional media functions to a small extent. Various challenges like information' overload and audience segmentation were identified and the researcher has given some recommendations and suggestions for future research. Finally, references for further reading are listed and support documents for the study are appended in the appendices. | en |
