Just as people in eighteenth century England had a source of news and variety of other subjects in The Spectator, modern day people have a ready source of information in the vastness of the internet. In this medium, the common person can find whatever information they may like, whether it is sports, gossip, entertainment, politics, games, religion and more. However, The Spectator reads like a very specific internet source. If a person were to identify the contemporary version of this periodical, they would undoubtedly name social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, based on their variety of subjects, diversity of writes, and quick access to important news.
As social media sites, Facebook and Twitter offer various lengths of information discussing uncountable topics. For example, a quick glance at one person’s news feed will reveal posts conveying interactions between people, descriptions of people’s days, photos, links to other sites for news and many more offerings. By clicking on the posts or statuses, the viewer can then explore more information on a particular. Of course, this arrangement wholly depends on the viewer of the page, which directly contrasts the format of The Spectator. In that writing, only the editors controlled what was on the page, but the reader could decide whether they wanted to read a particular section. In addition, social media sites feature such a diversity of authors, which would not be possible in the era of the printing press. Thus, those viewing social media sites gain the most complete picture of a particular story if they chose to look for it. Such an innovation simultaneously raises and lowers the quality of modern news sources above the level of those in the eighteenth century.
