Tweeting Conventions

Abstract

This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators-an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalismcovering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the "affordances" of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of U.S. campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whether Twitter is bursting the "bubble" of insider talk among reporters and the campaigns they cover. A sample derived from all tweets by over 400 political journalists reveals a significant amount of opinion expression in reporters' tweets, but little use of Twitter in ways that improve transparency or disrupt journalists' (and campaigns') role as gatekeepers of campaign news. Overall, particularly when looking at what political journalists retweet and what they link to via Twitter, the campaign "bubble" seems at the moment to have remained largely intact.

‘To follow or not to follow?’: How Belgian health journalists use Twitter to monitor potential sources

“…In a similar setup, Rupar (2015) studied 49 New-Zealand journalists' use of Twitter in the 2014 General Election and recorded that 70% of @mentions were directed at other journalists, labelling Twitter as a "press club" where journalists interact with other journalists and media-related twitter accounts. Lawrence et al (2014) made similar conclusions in their study of US journalists' tweets during the 2012 presidential campaign. Russell et al (2015, p.925) also confirm this finding in their analysis of journalists' tweets posted during the two weeks US government shutdown in October 2013: "journalists were more likely to interact through retweets and @mentions with other journalists than with public officials or other citizens".…”

“…These findings indicate that the "following" practices of health journalists on Twitter resemble their offline sourcing practices. The descriptive results also confirm that Twitter is mainly used by our 6 health journalists as a "press club" to engage with other journalists and monitor competitors (Lawrence et al, 2014;Rupar, 2015) thus reflecting a process of intermedia agenda setting (Len-Rios et al, 2009). When it comes to the six health journalists, there is a reciprocal relationship between Finoulst who is followed by De Cleene, Vandekerckhove and Eckert and who follows them all back.…”

“…On the one hand, for example, Carrera Alvarez et al (2012) found that very few journalists use Twitter to contact citizen sources (52%), to get information from institutional agendas (42%) and for investigative reporting (24%). Lawrence et al (2014) analyzed tweets from US journalists over the course of the 2012 US presidential campaign and found that only 1.7% of the tweets contained any kind of request for story ideas or information. In Belgium, only 33% of all Dutch-speaking journalists say that they consult Twitter on a daily basis specifically as an information source (Author, 2015).…”

Twitter journalism in Ireland: sourcing and trust in the age of social media*

“…These studies often raise concerns over the core values of journalism and the importance of trust and verification when it comes to incorporating social media content in news production and storytelling (Bruno, 2011;Hedman & Djerf-Pierre, 2013;Newman et al, 2012). Calling for further studies on how reporters and journalists incorporate social media into their 'reporting routines', however, Lawrence et al (2013) report little to no evidence that Twitter poses any new 'gatekeeping' exercise to political news reporters. They further report that Twitter is hardly at all used for fact-checking purposes.…”

“…When moving from the general population to the more specific cohort of journalists, studies have been conducted into gender differences amongst journalists who have adopted Twitter (Lasorsa, 2012) as well as into the influence of professional profile factors. Significant attention has been paid to journalists on a particular beat, such as the social media behaviour of foreign and political correspondents (Cozma & Chen, 2012;Lawrence, Molyneux, Coddington, & Holton, 2013). A study by Gulyas (2013) looks at the influence of the media sector, length of professional career, and size of an organisation as factors that affect attitudes and adoption of social media from different national cohorts.…”