Bahareh Rahmanzadeh Heravi
ABSTRACT
Social media, in particular Twitter, have been widely adopted in newsrooms for various purposes, including sourcing news leads and content, disseminating stories, soliciting user comments and driving traffic to corporate websites. This paper investigates the ways in which journalists use social media for sourcing and verification, and their attitudes towards social media in terms of trust. The analysis is built on a survey of journalists in Ireland conducted in 2013, which revealed that journalists in Ireland are heavy adopters of Twitter in their workflows, and in particular use social media for sourcing news leads and content. However, they are highly skeptical about the level of trust in social media. While this paper focuses on journalists in Ireland, the analysis of the relationship between trust, sourcing and verification reveals broader patterns about journalistic values, and how these values and practices operate in the new media landscape.
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Index Terms
- Sourcing and trust: Twitter journalism in Ireland
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