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News sourcing practices are critical as they shape from whom journalists get their information and what information they obtain, mostly from elite sources. This study evaluates whether social media platforms expand the range of actors involved in the newsThis paper presents a case study on the use of sources by National Public Radio's Andy Carvin on Twitter during key periods of the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Carvin, a social media strategist at NPR in the US, emerged as a key broker of information on Twitter during the Arab Spring. 1 Through Twitter, Carvin would often link to images from demonstrators, curate a range of discussion and opinion about events, and frequently ask his followers (then about 50,000 strong) to help him make sense of the bits of information he encountered. This study examines the different actor types on the social media platform to reveal patterns of sourcing of information used by Carvin in order to further an understanding of how sourcing is evolving in an era of networked digital media-a space that, by its nature, allows for new research possibilities in tracking the influence of sources.

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