Has social media increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

Social media has neither increased nor decreased the quality of news and information. There’s just more of it to be had, with even more access to it. News sources have more methods to gain more information, but have to do an equal amount of work to make sure that it is correct information. When anyone can be a publisher, the integrity of the information must be thoroughly questioned before it can be presented as fact.

With microblogging tools, such as Twitter, it’s easy to spread small amounts of information to a large audience. However, with such a limited method of communicating information, it commonly ends up being misinterpreted, and then further spread throughout the online community. For example, actor Mark Hamill (famously known as Luke Skywalker and the dominant voice actor of The Joker) had tweeted that his portrayal of The Joker in Batman: Arkham City would be his last, leading his thousands of followers to believe that he was retiring the voice of The Joker for good. This later turned out to not be true, as he clarified in a later tweet. 

Social media has allowed information to be exchanged rapidly, and reaching larger audiences. This creates a lot of room for error in interpretation, and in communicating in the first place. It hasn't really changed the quality of news and information; it has changed the quantity.