Technology and social media advancements are constantly changing, dynamically changing industries and changing individuals. Wake up, check social media. We have a break in our day, check social media. A major event is happening, check social media. It is undeniable social media is changing the ways we go about our lives. Social media is changing the way we receive and interpret news. Social media is changing journalism.

The book The New Rules of Marketing & PR gives great insight on social media and how it differs from the way we use mainstream media. The author David Meerman Scott says, “Social media provides the way people share ideas, content, thoughts, and relationships online. Social media differs from so-called mainstream media in that anyone can create, comment on, and add to social media content. Social media can take the form of text, audio, video, images, and communities.”

Social media even provides a way for us to navigate the streets.

A major part of the evening news is traffic updates. Social media is creating ways for us to get those too. After all, when a plane landed in the Hudson river in 2009 the news was first reported to… social media. First reporter of the scene was a commuter on a ferry, who captured an image of the plane submerged in the Hudson, and sent it straight to Twitter.

Fast forward ten years later and we are indeed sending all of our breaking news to Twitter. It has even changed where we go to seek breaking news. And yes, it is effective. About two-thirds of Americans get news on social media, even though they have concerns about the accuracy of it.

This became eye opening for me this fall while vacationing in Charleston, South Carolina. If you have ever visited Charleston, you’ve probably seen first handedly how terrible traffic is. With few highways and access in and out of the city, traffic can easily get congested. It wasn’t a surprise when we were trying to attend a hockey game and were stuck in standstill traffic. We were pressed for time with the game starting in a few minutes and still at least 30 minutes away, with no idea how long we would be stuck there.

We turned to our navigation systems that initially failed us by showing clear routes. Then, we turned to local news stations to see if any updates were posted to websites, nothing.

After seeing car after car pull illegal u-turns, we decided to do the same and go another route. One that would take longer but didn’t seem to be any traffic, according to Maps and Waze. We get to merge on the other route and… more traffic! Charleston is flat so in this instance, we could see brake lights for what seemed to be miles. Again, check navigation. It doesn’t seem to be loading at all. Probably because all four of us in the car were checking in and everyone in the miles of brake lights most likely were too, slowing down networks. Nothing on news outlet sites. At this point, we were discussing ditching the game and what bar we would attend instead. Until, someone had an idea!

“Check Twitter and search keywords for the road and surrounding area,” someone said.

Boom! What do you know, there were dozens of tweets of people complaining about the standstill traffic. Tweets before first responders had even gotten to the scene. Right off the bat, we could tell that if we stuck to this route we would potentially be sitting there all night. It was a really bad accident from the start, it was apparent there was most likely a casualty before the coroner could make it to the scene and news stations could report on it. The news confirmed the accident the following day.

Just as Anthony Adornato, author of the book Mobile and Social Media Journalism, stated “The audience is at the center of social media. They’re in the driver’s seat.”

That day, it wasn’t the navigation system or news outlets, traffic updates, getting us to our destination on time. It was people sharing their thoughts of the accident, their suggestions and ideas, it was Twitter. It was social media navigating us. It was people in the driver’s seat. Well, hopefully in the passenger seat.