Disadvantages of media convergence

i) Disseminate of fake or false information

       One of the disadvantages of the media convergence is people can create up their own story or news regarding some issue and post or share it in their social media platforms. This have lead to disseminate of fake or false information and news. For example, during the Malaysia 14th general election the news of the opposition party that lead by Tun Dr. Mahathir have won the election had been viral through the social media before the real result declared by the chairman of SPR. These have created riot or chaos among Malaysians and the supporters of the opposition party have flooded at Putrajaya to celebrate the good news. The netizen should not share or disseminate the information that is not been confirm by the respectively people or the journalism. Then during 3 a.m. the chairman of SPR declared that the opposition party of Malaysia have won majority seat in the parliament and after the official announcement made by him the people can share about the news. Therefore, before the official announcement people should not disseminate or share any news that have not been confirmed and if we see from the other side of this issue what if the information that have been viral is false and the official news is the other party win the election, “Can you imagine what kind of consequences that the person will be facing by disseminate fake information?”. This reflect that it is important for us to know the news sources can be trusted or not before we disseminate the information to other people.

ii) Facing high security risk on personal detail

               Besides, the disadvantages of media convergence are that it is facing high security risk in the field of their personal detail. This is because everyone can access to any information they need through websites such as google without any boundary or rules. For instances, the content of a page can be stolen, copied and also redistributed without the proper consent or authorization which mean anyone can just copy and paste from the website and claim that the content belongs to them without giving a credit to the writer of the content. People might be exposed to identity theft and compromise of personal information such as credit card details. For example, if the people pay via online banking they are required to fill in their personal detail and also their account number to proceed to the paying system. However, those cybercrimes criminal take this as an opportunity for them to gain some money by hacking in to the banking system and the people would not realize about that. This is because the website they log in is exactly the same as those bank official websites. To be specific this kind of act is known as phishing which is an attempt to trick someone into giving information over the internet or by email that would allow someone else to take money from them.

iii) Some people might be left behind this era

           In the era of media convergence some people such as the old people or the people that live in the rural area they will be left behind of this development. This is because they are lacks of knowledge or do not have idea how to reach to those media through technology. For example, the old people still depend on those conventional ways by reading newspaper to get the latest news instead of through media. In addition, some place especially in rural area does not have a good coverage of connection to Internet or television. Thus, these problems have leads to some disadvantages to this group of people and they will be eventually left behind about what is going on around them.