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Image adapted from The Atlantic

Social Media Sourcing:

The Usage of Tweets in Newspaper Coverage of Dutch Politics

Bert Jan Brands S1765280

November 6, 2014 University of Groningen

Master’s Thesis for the International Journalism Program First supervisor: Dr. T.S. Graham

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Abstract

If you are a frequent reader of the newspaper, you might have come across articles in which tweets are directly cited as sources. This practice by journalists has become common since the emergence of Twitter as one of the most popular social media. This thesis examines how Twitter is used as a source in political news coverage in The Netherlands. A mixed-methods approach was used to study both the content of the quoted tweets and the role of tweets in the news production process. For the research, 195 articles containing 298 tweets were analyzed and six journalists were interviewed. Like previous research has found, political tweets mostly serve as illustrations in articles. The analysis also found that, despite politicians frequently tweeting about private topics, these issues are hardly of interest to political reporters. Furthermore, while the selected journalists didn’t consider tweets from the public as major sources, the content analysis showed the public to be the second most frequently cited group behind the politicians.

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Content  

1. Introduction . . . 1

2. Literature Review . . . 5

2.1. Technology and Journalism . . . 5

2.1.1 The Way Journalists Do Their Job . . . 6

2.1.2 The Nature of News Content . . . 9

2.2 The Emergence of Twitter . . . 12

2.2.1 Shifting Boundaries . . . 16

2.3 Journalists, Sources & Ethics . . . 17

2.3.1 Ethics . . . 20

2.3.2 Online Media Ethics . . . 21

2.3.3 Breaking News, Twitter & Accuracy . . . 24

2.4 Journalism and Politics . . . 28

2.4.1 Journalism & Politics . . . 28

2.4.2 Politics & Social Media . . . 29

2.5 Summary . . . 32

3. Methodology . . . 35

3.1 Introduction . . . . 35

3.2 Academic Relationship Disclosure . . . 35

3.3 Study Design . . . 35 3.4 Content Analysis . . . 37 3.4.1 Cases. . . 38 3.4.2 Data Management . . . 39 3.4.3 Codebook . . . 40 3.5 Semi-structured Interviews . . . 43 3.5.1 Interview modes . . . 44

3.5.2 Sampling & Data Management . . . 45

3.5.3 Interview Guide . . . 47

3.6 Reliability, Validity, Limitations . . . 48

3.6.1 Reliability . . . 48

3.6.2 Reliability Tests . . . 49

3.6.3 Validity . . . 50

3.6.4 Limitations . . . 52

3.7 Ethical Considerations . . . 55

4. Findings & Discussion . . . . . . 57

4.1 Tweets in Political News Coverage . . . 57

4.2 The Use of Twitter as Source by Political Journalists. . . 75

5. Conclusion . . . 97

Appendix I: References . . . . 104

Appendix II: Coding Scheme . . . . 113

Appendix III: Interview Guide . . . . 130

Appendix IV: Data . . . . 132

Appendix V: Reliability . . . . 137

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List  of  Figures  

Figure 3.1 – Coding Scheme . . . . 41

Figure 3.2 – Inter-coder Reliability . . . . 49

Figure 3.3 – Intra-coder Reliability . . . . 50

Figure 4.1 – Articles Citing Tweets as Source per Newspaper . . . . 57

Figure 4.2 – Type of Articles . . . . 58

Figure 4.3 – Topic of Article . . . . 60

Figure 4.4 – Occupation of the tweeter . . . . 61

Figure 4.5 – Top 5 cited politicians . . . . 62

Figure 4.6 – Cross comparison between function of tweet and newspaper . . . . 64

Figure 4.7 – Cross comparison between function of tweet and type of article . . . 65

Figure 4.8 – Type of quote . . . . 66

Figure 4.9 – Type of tweet . . . . 67

Figure 4.10 – Topic of tweet . . . . 70

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1

Introduction

 

“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful”

- Jonathan Zittrain (New York Times, 20 June 2009)

On October 15, 2013, Twitter made a significant change to its ‘Direct Message’ function, allowing users to receive direct messages from users who they are not following. Previously, only users who you follow could DM you. Even though users have to “opt-in”, so nobody is affected by the change unless you consciously change the setting, thousands tweeted to complain about the change, worried about becoming easy targets for so-called spambots. However, Warren (2013) noted that the change “[is] likely designed to allow brands and businesses to receive private messages from their followers.”

While businesses can benefit from this change to Twitter’s direct messaging policy, so can journalists and media organizations. Indeed, one journalist immediately recognized the possibilities of the new function for contact with potential sources. Brian Stelter, who covered television and media for The New York Times and is now the senior media correspondent at CNN, tweeted at 13:08 CET: “Turned on Twitter's new DMs-from-everybody feature. If you're seeing this tweet, feel free to send media story ideas, tips, etc.” He continued: “I'm going to treat Direct Messages like they're anonymous tips -- so if you send me something sensitive or secretive, I won't I.D. you” (Stelter, 2013). In the grand scheme of how journalism has been affected by technology, it might hardly make a difference. After all, the telephone, which has now been around for over a century, is still the leading tool journalists use in their daily practices (Reich, 2013). However, that doesn’t change the fact that Twitter, as one of the most recognizable social media of the past few years, has offered significant new opportunities for both journalists and media organizations.

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it is her iPad.1 People today, both young and old, get bombarded with messages through all the various devices and apps they possess. Those messages “pound away at the senses” (Fuller, 2010: 60), leading to a state that can be considered “continuous partial attention,” (Linda Stone, quoted in Fuller, 2010: 60) though others have described it as a “state of distracted absorption” (Birkerts, quoted in Fuller, 2010: 60). For Twitter users, the idea of only being partially invested in the content of Twitter, or similarly, absorbing the information flowing across on the timeline while being distracted, should be recognizable. If one follows enough accounts, the stream of messages you have access too is never-ending. Sometimes you scroll through them without paying attention, filtering the blur of words for keywords or avatars of users you consider essential reads. Despite the overwhelming amount of information that could be considered irrelevant for society, journalists and media organizations have embraced Twitter for several reasons. Not only does it allow them to promote their content to a wider audience, but it also helps to build a community of followers and offers a tool to find new sources for news stories (Cozma & Chen, 2012; Armstrong & Gao, 2010).

While such tools as Twitter theoretically give journalists more options to get in touch with people they need to talk to for their stories, this doesn’t mean that they automatically embrace it. Previous research has suggested that Twitter can be considered a beat (Broersma & Graham, 2012), used by journalists to “gather news and information” (Broersma & Graham, 2012: 405). When reading contemporary newspapers, one will notice quotes from tweets as a replacement for quotes obtained through interview. A content analysis by Broersma and Graham revealed that these tweets have one of four functions: tweets serve “as illustration, trigger, standalone and Q&A” (5). While the results of such a content analysis are insightful in how tweets are used, they do not reveal any information about the process of how the story was created by the journalists, and the editorial decision to use Twitter as one of the sources.

Rather than focusing on journalism in general, this thesis will specifically examine the use of Twitter for political news coverage. The relationship between politicians, journalists and the public is an interesting one. Traditionally, the journalists stood right in between the public and the politicians they elected. They                                                                                                                

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served as the watchdog over those in power on behalf of the public, and at the same time, they were the only way for politicians to reach a mass audience with their messages. Through such platforms as Twitter, this relationship between the three groups has changed. Envision a triangle, with journalists no longer in the middle, but rather as one of the three groups in a corner. While they can still interact with both the politicians and the public, so can politicians communicate directly with the public, significantly affecting the traditional role of the journalist as a gatekeeper.

What does this mean for political journalism? The relationship between journalism and Twitter has drawn significant attention from scholars as the medium grew to prominence. So has the effect of Twitter on the relationship between the public and elected officials. However, journalists’ sourcing practices and tweets remain relatively understudied. As will be discussed in the next chapter, those studies that do are mostly focused on disaster coverage. Parmelee (2013a) did focus specifically on newspaper journalists and political coverage in the United States, but taking into account Hallin & Mancini’s models of media systems in the Western world (2004) and the differences between them, it is worth it to examine a country from one of the different systems. This thesis does just that by focusing on political newspaper coverage in The Netherlands.

This thesis will look to answer the following research question:

RQ1: How do political journalists in The Netherlands use Twitter as a source in news stories?

RQ1.1: What types of tweets make it into the newspaper? RQ1.2: How are the tweets cited in newspapers?

RQ1.3: Is there a lot of interest in personal tweets by politicians?

RQ2: How do political journalists justify using a tweet over a quote obtained through an interview?

RQ2.1: How do the journalist use Twitter in their daily job?

RQ2.2 What types of tweets do the journalists consider newsworthy? RQ2.3: Can tweets replace the traditional ‘vox pop’?

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Overview

The first chapter will give an extensive overview of the academic literature that is closely related to the previously mentioned research question. When one considers using tweets as a source in general news content, there are four key areas of academic research that have to be discussed, and this chapter is divided based on those four areas: the impact of technology on journalism; the rise of Twitter as news medium; the relationship between journalists, sources and ethics; journalism in the context of the political sphere.

Following the literature is a chapter with an elaborate description of the methodology used to conduct the research. The central focus will be on building a more specific codebook to fit the scope of this thesis based on the codebook used by Broersma & Graham’s (2012) codebook was adapted to fit the scope of this thesis, as well as a discussion of the interview design and operationalization.

The results of the research will be presented in the third chapter. The findings of the content analysis will be presented along with examples from the data set to help the reader better understand some of the different findings. Secondly, the interviews will be discussed along some themes that were identified using a grounded theory approach. Quotes from the interviews are extensively used to support the themes and concepts.

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2

Literature Review

“Readers no longer care so much who you are, they just want to know what you know.” -David Carr (New York Times, 10 Oct 2005)

Building up towards the methodology and results of the interviews, this literature review will examine what research has been done in the various aspects of journalism studies that relate to this research. The chapter will contain four subchapters that focus on angles strongly related to the research question: technological innovations; the emergence of Twitter; journalism, sources and ethics; and journalism and politics.

2.1

– Technology and Journalism

It is easy to point to technology as one of the driving forces behind journalistic progress. After all, the changes that occurred to journalistic practices and output following such inventions as the printing press by Gutenberg in 1439, the introduction of the electric telegraph in 1843, the telephone in 1876 and later the Internet, all significantly changed the way how journalism has been practiced and how news has been consumed (Pavlik 2000; Barnhurst & Nenrone, 2009). Focusing on technology in journalism history is to suggest that “agency comes from technology […] in addition to, or rather than, residing in individual conscious actors” (Barnhurst & Nenrone, 2009: 24). Other scholars have opted to take a different approach, focusing on a “social history” (Barnhurst & Nenrone, 2009: 24).

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of “reformists” (Reich, 2009: 116-117), even though his later research found that the telephone still dominates over newer technologies. (Reich, 2013: 427; Machill and Beiler, 2009: 200).

One of the reformists is John Pavlik, who argues (2000) that technology has impacted journalism in four specific ways: It changes the way journalists do their jobs, it changes the content of news, how the newsroom is structured and the relationship between journalists and the audience. The latter two are less relevant in the discussion of political reporting, so only the first two will be discussed further in this section.

2.1.1 The Way Journalists Do Their Job

The job of the contemporary journalist is much different than thirty years ago. Indeed, “journalists’ functions have shifted from information transmission to information processing (Kaul, 2013: 128). Their job is now to sort and make sense of the abundance of information streams in the world, selecting the news that is most suitable for their audience. The significant difference is that the news they choose to ignore, or leave out of their medium’s output, is still available for everyone through the internet.

The theory of journalists as gatekeepers originated in the late 1940s when David M. White studied how news organizations made a selection from the never-ending stream of news messages from the wire services. White noted “how highly subjective, how reliant upon value judgment based on the ‘gatekeeper’s’ own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of ‘news’ really is” (quoted in Shoemaker et al, 2009: 76). However, this was refuted by Gieber in 1964, when he conducted a similar study with a larger group of editors and found that there was no variation in the selection process and thus there was no subjectivity at play (cited in Manning, 2000: 177).

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decide what the public know” (Richard Sambrook, 2006, qtd. in Allen, 2006: 169). But with so much content available online, the audience is burdened with the task to sort it out for themselves. Some enjoy this role, but for many, journalists still play a role in guiding them towards the content they want to consume. Bruns defines gatewatching as “highlighting, sharing, and evaluating relevant material released by other sources, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding.” This is a process recognizable for many Twitter users and indeed, as Bruns and Burgess note, the opinion of Twitter users has become a “staple” of contemporary media coverage (Bruns & Burgess, 2012: 802). In 1996 already, Bardoel argued that journalist would be vital to prevent the news audience from being overwhelmed by the amount of information available. In essence then, the new journalist, or the gatewatcher, no longer makes a selection of news that reaches the audience, but helps guide the audience through the ‘maze’ of information they can consume. Bardoel labeled this form of journalism as “orientating journalism” (Bardoel, 1996: 296).

When it comes to crafting news stories itself, the range of tools available to journalists has increased significantly in the last thirty years. Reich (2009, 115) identifies an increase from one to six different technologies that have impacted the work of the journalist since the early 1980s. As pointed out in the introduction, the phone has been the go-to tool for journalist for over a century, but journalists can now also use a mobile phone, email, instant messaging, the web, and fax machines in their daily work routines.

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decreased. A significant 68 percent indicated their use of social media in their daily work had increased significantly, while 24 per cent noted a slight increase. Similarly, 42 percent agreed and 44 percent agreed strongly with the statement that “social media are an increasingly important part of journalism” (Middleberg & McClure, 2011). While the Middleberg study only had 200 respondents, the results show a rise in the appreciation of social media within the journalistic profession. The survey also reflected on other online tools such as company websites and search engines.

Forjournalists, there are some obvious benefits to using the internet. The web simplifies and expedites research, checking facts has become easier, and information is not limited by space as was the case in old newspaper archives (Machill & Beiler, 2009: 179). However, with these benefits also come potential problems. Scholars have been critical of the potential for “Google-ization” (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 262; Machill & Beiler, 2009: 179). Indeed, as Berkman and Shumway (2003) explain, doing research on Google does not equal doing thorough research, because it only shows you a very small sample of potential sources (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 263), and because everyone can publish online, the risk of running into manipulated content is very high (Machill & Beiler, 2009: 179; Hermans et al., 2009a: 66). Additionally, a lot of the content online is hard to or cannot be traced back to the original source. This creates pitfalls for journalists who fail to critically evaluate the information they encounter during their online search (Pavlik, 2001: 63).

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through Twitter (Bennett, 2011: 69). Nevertheless, Lariscy et al. (2009) found that while journalists are open to the idea of using social media, more traditional online sources such as static web pages and databases remained the primary online tools used by journalists in their daily practices (Lariscy et al., 2009: 316). Of course, the fact that this study was published four years ago has to be considered when evaluating such statements, as one can make the assumption that social media have gained significance since.

While new technological developments allow journalists to do their job more efficiently, there is plenty of hesitation when it comes to adopting new tools in old routines. “Journalists, like many people in most occupations, can find the arrival of new technology in the workplace a threatening and dismaying experience” (Manning, 2001: 75). Manning distinguishes between “techno-pessimists and -optimists” when it comes to journalist’s attitude towards technological innovation. One concern from the pessimists is that quality of the content suffers when reporting has to be done faster (Manning, 2001: 78). CNN is a good example of this problem, where, because of the “rolling live format”, the editor has been eliminated from the news reporting process: “The CNN ideal is to do simultaneous, almost-live editing, or better yet, no editing at all. CNN journalism almost wants to be wrong.” (Katz, qtd. in Bardoel, 1996: 284). The emergence of Twitter has only increased these worries, as will be discussed later.

2.1.2 The Nature of News Content

Technology has also had an impact on the style of news content. Pavlik refers to a study conducted by former journalist Adam Clayton Powell III, who found a significant difference in the content of news stories before and after the introduction of video in the 1970s. Before the introduction, when news was shot on film, shots were often long and edits were few, most likely because of the time it took to create them. The arrival of video meant “edits became faster-paced, shots were shortened and the narrative became much faster-paced” (Pavlik, 2000: 231). The effect of such changes on the content of news broadcasts, through such devices as storytelling, is self-evident.

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convergence: “the coming together of things that were previously separate” (Meikle & Young, 2012: 2). Whereas in the past news consumers had to turn to their television for visual news, their radio to listen to news and their newspaper to read about the news, now all of this can be done through a single device, the computer, often on a single page on the World Wide Web. The same content can now often be accessed through multiple channels; a phenomenon Henry Jenkins calls “transmedia storytelling” (Jenkins, 2003). Pavlik argues that this form of journalism is potentially better, because it might be able to rebuild the relationship with an alienated audience that has increasingly started to look with suspicion to the institution of journalism (Pavlik, 2001: XI).

This is not to suggest that convergence merely takes place in the realm of news content. For example, “web technology has provided opportunities for sources and audiences to participate in news production” (Kaul, 128), two worlds that were previously separate coming together. Even when one looks at media organizations as institutions one can find convergence. Meikle and Young present News Corporation, the media empire owned by Rupert Murdoch, as an example. He started out in the newspaper industry, owning several papers in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, but then moved television, film, book publishing and, for a while, social networking1 (Meikle & Young, 2012: 45). Many branches of his corporation started as separate entities, but now belong together: convergence.

The rise of online media has gone hand in hand with the abandoning of narrative structures such as the classical “inverted pyramid”, a metaphor for a style taught in journalism schools and recognizable by its characteristic to present the most important details of the story in the first paragraph. It has historically been linked to the introduction of the electric telegraph (Scanlan, 2003), though Pöttker presents and compares several studies that argue that the rise of the inverted pyramid was related to other factors, such as cost-effectiveness and the emergence of professional standards (Pöttker, 2003). However, his most convincing argument is that the inverted pyramid was not widely spread until the 1880s, even though the telegraph was first introduced in 1843 (Pöttker, 2003: 508).

Whether or not the telegraph was instrumental does not have major consequences for the argument. The inverted pyramid proved cost-effective because it                                                                                                                

1  In  2005,  News  Corporation  acquired  the  social  networking  website  MySpace  for  $580  million,  

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allowed editors to cut paragraphs from the story without having to ask the author to spend time re-writing the entire piece (Pöttker, 2003: 510). These paragraphs would be cut because of lack of space in papers, but when considering this argument in relation to the Internet, an issue emerges: there is no lack of space on the internet. Scanlan suggests that the reason for the continuing use of the inverted pyramid in the digital age is that “readers are impatient and want stories to get to the point immediately” (Scanlan, 2003). This is why the average news story continues to incorporate the style, despite the fact that in the early days of digital media, the inverted pyramid was expected to disappear in the online environment (Herbert, 2000: 2). However, more and more media organizations are willing to experiment with different styles for digital feature items. Pavlik refers to them as “immersive and interactive multimedia news reports” which are more than ever able to captivate the audience (Pavlik, 2000: 232).

Additionally, more and more news organizations rely on content created or captured by people who used to be considered ‘the audience’. Journalists are usually not present at the moment of unexpected events, yet citizens with a camera phone and mobile internet nowadays are. Allen refers to the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia as one of the first prime examples (Allen, 2006: 5) of an event where the media had to rely on video and photos from “citizen journalists” because of the lack of television crews in the area. In this context, the citizen journalist is what Jay Rosen defines as “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another” (Rosen, 2008). Of course, since that event, there have been many occurrences where non-journalists were able to provide the first information and footage from events, such as the plane crash on the Hudson River (Lariscy et al., 2009; Palser, 2009; Crawford, 2011) and the Arab spring (Bartlett, 2011). As Rosen states, people now have the tools to do what journalists do. “For 500 years since Gutenberg they couldn’t, but now they can” (Rosen, 2008) Forms of media that used to only be published by journalists, such as words, graphics and videos, are now published by everybody (Rusbridger, 2011: 4). Ohmynews.com, a Korean news website with the motto “Every Citizen is a Reporter” employs 55 editors to edit and fact check contributions from 65,000 volunteers, with 70 per cent of the articles making it to the website (Barron, 2011: 33; Bowman & Willis, 2003: 7).

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television (Meikle & Young, 2012: 51). In the current media environment, news is available on demand, in any order. Meikle and Young consider it a “database through which users can navigate and search” (Meikle & Young, 2012: 51). This has a significant impact on the experience of reading or watching news. In the online environment, the user is stimulated to browse through different stories by using hyperlinks, connecting separate news articles that are in some way related to each other, such as stories that run for more than a day (Kaul, 2013: 134; Pavlik, 2001: 15 & 129). Additionally, this development has changed the dynamic of news consumption. No longer do we choose an outlet to see what today’s news is, but instead we find topics that interest us and see which news outlet “suits us best, customizing our news experience” (Meikle & Young, 52; Allen, 2006: 170).

In the end, online journalism has three important advantages over traditional forms of media such as the press and television news broadcasts. According to Jason Seiken, a former washingtonpost.com editor (qtd. in Allen, 2006: 25), online journalism has the benefit of immediacy, being able to post news updates as they come in. Secondly, he noted the obvious benefit of being able to go more depth online, with space limits no longer an issue. Finally, interactivity allowed news organizations to provide the audience with new forms of content, such as chat sessions between the audience and an expert on a specific topic (Seiken qtd. in Allen, 2006: 25). Such features had previously been much harder to facilitate, and provided new ways to engage audiences with the product of the news organization.

2.2

– The Emergence of Twitter

Twitter is a social networking website established in July 2006. According to data released by Twitter on October 4th, 2013, ahead of its IPO2 in November 2013,

Twitter currently has 218 million active users who post 500 million tweets per day (AFP). These tweets, 140-character updates, can be posted from any device with cellular or internet access. While the medium has users across the world and has been embraced by the media industry, not everybody saw the benefits of using it after it started gaining popularity.

                                                                                                               

2  IPO:  Initial  Public  Offering,  “the  first  time  a  company’s  stock  is  offered  for  sale  to  the  

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Some of the early pushback against the popularity of Twitter came from people who criticized the medium for containing too much useless information about nothing, such as what people were having for lunch. Interestingly enough, Twitter itself has been actively involved in rebranding the seriousness of the medium. Van Dijck (2011) describes a significant change in the interface: When the medium was created, users were asked: “What are you doing?”. In November 2009, this changed to “What’s happening?”. Additionally, Twitter adjusted the motto which is displayed on its front page to: “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”, a subtle but meaningful difference signifying a preference for news and information over idle small talk (Van Dijck, 2011: 340). However, complaints of small talk or a lack of substance can be attributed to the user’s decision how to use social media. “The experience of the social network is entirely determined by the selection of people that users elects to ‘follow’, or whose updates they will receive” (Crawford, 2011: 116).

Nevertheless, many in the media industry have embraced the medium as one of the new tools available to use in their daily practices. Hermida describes Twitter as a system for ambient awareness. “An individual tweet does not require the cognitive attention of, for example, an e-mail. The value does not lie in each individual fragment of news and information, but rather in the mental portrait created by a number of messages over a period of time” (Hermida, 2010: 301). Because of the brevity of messages and the accessibility of the medium, breaking news now often appears faster on Twitter than the traditional ‘wire services’ (Eltringham, qtd. in Bruno, 2011). This has led to a long list of events where Twitter was used as one of the main tools for the dissemination of information. One can think of the California Wildfires in 2008 (Palser, 2009), U.S. Presidential elections in 2008, Iranian election protests of 2009 (Armstrong & Gao, 2009; Knight, 2012), the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Bruno, 2011; Cooper, 2011) the 2011 Arab Spring (Hermida et al., 2012) and the 2011 London Riots (Vis, 2013). While more recent events such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing have yet to be examined by scholars, both television news viewers and Twitter users will remember the impact of social media such as Twitter on traditional news coverage.

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‘followers’ have increased exponentially” (Ahmad, 2010: 147). He was the one of the first to ask the question whether Twitter is indeed a useful tool for journalists, finding through interviews that the medium was embraced by The Guardian for both marketing and research purposes. Ahmad also noted that journalists who use Twitter to engage with the audience considered the platform to be much more effective than journalists working on other Guardian platforms such as the ‘Comment is Free’ section (Ahmad, 2010).

Since then, many scholars have argued why and how news organizations have to adapt their routines to include Twitter. Broersma and Graham (2012) identify four specific ways in which media organizations use Twitter as a tool in their daily practices: “to disseminate news, to market stories, to establish relationships with news consumers, and as a tool for reporting” (Broersma & Graham, 2012: 403). When it comes to using Twitter as a tool for reporting, Broersma and Graham argue that, based on the definition by Fishman, Twitter has become a beat for many journalists: “a virtual network of social relations of which the journalist is a part with the purpose of gathering news and information on specific topics” (Broersma & Graham, 2012: 405). Similarly, Paulussen and Harder found that references to social media have become “commonplace” in two Flemish quality newspapers. They argue that “monitoring social media platforms has become a part of [journalists] daily newsgathering routines” (Paulussen & Harder, 2014: 549).

However, not all newspapers are as successful as the Guardian in implementing Twitter as anything more than a promotional tool. Deuze found that a lot of news outlets only publish links to the content on their websites (Deuze, ctd. in Crawford, 2011: 118). Armstrong and Gao has similar results, finding that “67% of tweets from news organizations were the same as headlines in the linked news stories, and that newspapers were significantly more likely to have similar tweets and headlines.” This led them to the conclusion that news organizations struggled with the adaptation of Twitter and other new media services, trying to implement them in old models of media practice (Armstrong & Gao, 2010: 230).

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content can now be measured in minutes, if not seconds” (Rusbridger, 2011: 5). What used to be a race to be the first to print a story in the paper or show it on a news broadcast has become a race for the smart phone of the journalist, because only when you’re the one to tweet first can you claim a scoop.

Another important feature of Twitter and other social networks is that it opens up new markets for a struggling industry. “It is a fantastic form of marketing,” Rusbridger argues (Rusbridger, 2011: 6). Whereas newspapers and news broadcasters used to serve local markets, their stories are now available to readers and viewers around the world. Even as an aspiring journalists or someone who blogs in their free time can find an audience if the story is good enough. “If they like what they read they’ll tell others about it. If they really like it, it will, as they say, ‘go viral’” (Rusbridger, 2011: 6). Of course, the question remains how to truly monetize the visits of such occasional visitors, but that problem does not diminish the impact of the technology. Through sharing and retweets, traditional media are able to attract audiences that otherwise might not have found their way to the content. Sheffer and Schultz similarly argue that in a saturated media environment, the speed of Twitter as a tool can help news organizations stay competitive (qtd. in Cozma & Chen, 2012: 35).

This inherently brings up the ‘social’ aspect of social media. In the days of traditional media dominance, you discussed news with the people in your household, or at work. Thanks to social media, news can now be discussed with a potentially unlimited amount of people, making news consumption, more than ever, a social experience (Armstrong & Gao, 2010: 222). Bruns and Burgess argue these discussions can happen within two different networks: the long-term “follower-followee network”, or the more flexible, “ad-hoc” discussions surrounding the use of hash tags (Bruns & Burgess, 2012: 804).

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organizations to experiment and adopt new delivery methods for its news content. One such organization is Dutch television’s RTL Nieuws, who’s website is no longer build around finished articles, but rather on providing the audience with news nuggets as they come in, a “livestream with continuing updates”, according to Mireille Derks, internet editor-in-chief at RTL (Pleijter, 2013).

2.2.1 Shifting Boundaries

Like in the traditional news publications, the audience expects original content from the journalists they follow online. For many journalists, the number of followers appeared to be directly related to the frequency of promotion (negative) and the use of hashtags (positive) (Cozma & Chen, 2012: 42). However, when it comes to originality and interaction with followers, Twitter provides journalists with a lot more freedom than present in traditional news publication methods.

Lasora et al. (2011) found that journalists feel quite free to express their opinion on Twitter, suggesting that they “opine because microblogging generally encourages it” (Lasora et al., 2011: 30). This idea fits in with the larger trend that journalists are careful to include media such as Twitter within their traditional practices and routines, but at the same time slowly adjusting those practices to better fit the possibilities offered by new media. Two practices that deviate most from traditional journalistic standards include expressing opinion instead of being objective, and allowing users to participate in news selection, which significantly reduces the journalist’s traditional role of being a gatekeeper (Lasora, 2012: 412). Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that media promoted by journalists through tweets with links are often not media created by the journalists themselves, but rather articles from other journalists and media organizations. The willingness to promote content by other people shows an effort of journalists to maintain the role of gatekeeper. Journalists pass on news that they consider important for their followers, even if they themselves were not involved in the creation of the article or video (Noguera Vivo, 2013: 111).

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on the Arab Spring. Hermida et al. (2012) describe Carvin as “a central node in the information network on the Arab Spring,” and his innovative way to use his community of followers to gather and verify information from places traditional journalists struggled to get access to led the Columbia Journalism Review to call his Twitter feed a “living, breathing real-time verification system” (Silverman, 2011).

A content analysis examining Carvin’s tweets during the Arab spring showed he paid a significant amount of attention to what Hermida et al. deemed “non-elite” sources (Hermida et al., 2012: 8), a somewhat unlikely outcome considering that previous research has indicated journalists favor elite sources. The reason might be either a new form of reporting aided by technological developments, a lack of available sources that can be considered elite, or a combination of both. Either way, as Silverman (2011) points out with a list of examples, Carvin’s use of his community of followers to help verify information is a good example of new and productive ways to incorporate the functionality of social media with traditional journalistic standards and practices.

In the end, when news organizations try to include the audience in their news making process, it is important that it is very clear for the audience whether or not information has been verified or is unconfirmed. Matthew Weaver, a journalists for The Guardian, argues that the audience is able to recognize this distinction between the content of a live blog, which includes a lot of information that still has to be verified, and an ‘official’ article authored by a correspondent (Bruno, 2011: 44). Nevertheless, it is clear that such social media as Twitter further accelerated a shift in the balance of power between the audience and the journalists. After the emergence of blogs and UGC and now social media, citizens are now more involved in the news making process than ever.

2.3

– Journalists, Sources and Ethics

Sources are key to the profession of the journalism. In his classic Deciding What’s

News (1979), Gans wrote that the relationship between journalists and sources

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“By emphasizing sources, the role of the journalist comes to seem comparatively minor” (McNair, quoted in Carlson & Franklin, 2011: 1). Berkowitz (2009) considers the paradigm of journalism to be a “science-like model” in the sense that journalists gather data from authorities and other authoritative sources and presenting it “without taking a side in the discourse” (Berkowitz, 2009: 103).

While this is true, one of the common critiques on journalism, both from academics and the public, is a very “limited diversity of news sources and a reliance on those with institutional power” (Hermida et al, 2012: 1). The most plausible explanation for this phenomenon is the fact that technological advances have not only caused an increase in the demand for content, but also a range of financial struggles that have forced media organizations to reduce their workforce. Journalists are under pressure to create as much content in as little time as possible, forcing them to turn to familiar sources instead of spending time on finding new ones (Carlson & Franklin, 2011: 8; Berkowitz, 2009: 104; Manning, 2001: 55). Indeed, Gans already wrote that reporters do not have the time to “develop rapport” with sources they do not know, and considering he wrote this in 1979, one can only imagine the situation in the contemporary work environment of the digital journalist (Gans, 1979: 139).

But how does one become a news source? According to Reich (2011), “journalists consider credibility to be the most influential factor in source selection, followed by source accessibility and time pressure” (Reich, 2011: 51). In his study of the credibility of news sources, Reich found that only ten percent of the sources used in the data sample were contacted by the journalist for the first time. “This means that in more than 90 percent of the contacts, reporters had at least some experience with the source” (Reich, 2011: 58). He criticizes media for relying on the same select group of sources, recognizing that “the news business becomes highly closed to new voices, who have to fight fiercely over a very narrow space” (Reich, 2011: 59). This is something to consider when discussing the potential of social media to break these processes and practices that journalism seems to be stuck in. Recent studies have found that, though social media has indeed opened the door for a more different set of voices, the influence of elite sources on news coverage has hardly been impacted so far (Broersma & Graham, 2013; Paulussen & Harder, 2014).

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items involve no direct input of information and no more than quarter of them are totally free of any kind of PR involvement, as far as reporters can tell” (Reich, 2010: 810). By not attributing information directly to PR sources and by offering additional news sources for a particular story, journalists try to maintain their credibility, arguing that while they are depending on PR, they offer both sides of the story by including the other side of the story. However, this ignores the fact that it was PR that set the agenda of the media. Reich’s findings suggest that “PR and journalism are highly interdependent occupations” (Reich, 2010: 811). The fact that he argues his results validate the metaphor which considers the PR practitioner as a “ventriloquist who produces texts covertly, while the journalistic dummy moves its lips to distract the audience’s attention from the text’s true originator” (McLuhan, paraphrased in Reich, 2010: 811) should be cause for concern for any journalist and journalism scholar. Other scholars have similarly found how dependent journalists are on PR for copy (McChesney, 2011: 57; Lewis et al., 2008: 31).

Through digital technologies, ordinary citizens are increasingly becoming sources for journalists, “reflecting the tremendous increase in their capabilities for disseminating information to the outside world” (De Keyser et all, 2011: 139). Research found that citizens have become more present in news content, though “some journalistic professional subgroups” are more likely to remain focused on traditional, elite sources. In particular economic and political journalists seem to fit this profile (De Keyser et all, 2011: 148). These groups of journalists can be considered watchdogs on behalf of the public, but the intimate relationship with their sources can lead to a failure to ask them tough questions, such as during and after the economic collapse in 2008 (Manning, 2012). However, Manning also points out the subtleties when trying to blame journalists for their reporting failures: “Once they, themselves, had grasped the extent of the crisis, they faced the question of whether or not to place this information in the public domain, given that in mediated markets news coverage could potentially bring about the very collapse that was feared” (Manning, 2012: 185).

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(Gans, 1979: 133). After all, unlike general reporters who cover many different stories that require many different sources, beat reporters rely on a very small group of sources for a continuing stream of information. Upsetting a source can lead to the source withholding information in the future (Gans, 1979: 134), allowing one to draw the conclusion that the source has the upper hand when it comes to the division of power in the relationship. For Twitter, of course, this relationship is not so subtle. All information available through the medium is publically available. There is no insider, or secret, information that journalists are privy to but the general public is not. However, this has the potential to change when one considers journalists such as Brian Stelter (see Introduction) using the medium to communicate with potentially anonymous sources through the direct messaging feature.

Manning (2001) concludes that, while the politically and economically powerful have an advantage when it comes to promoting their interests and shaping the meaning of news, they do not have full control over the media. He reminds the reader that “audiences can only begin their critical decoding with the available tools, or information, to hand” (Manning, 2001: 227). There is no doubt that, in the age of social media, the range of tools and information has grown significantly. It has become much easier to circumvent traditional news sources in efforts to influence the public debate. Because of these developments in the past decade, the relationship between news sources, news audience and the public sphere deserves renewed scholarly attention.

2.3.1 Ethics

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In the age of social media, concerns about accuracy of online information has only grown. After the 2013 floods in Colorado, a picture surfaced showing the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater under water, an almost impossible feat considering it is located on the side of a hill in a wide valley. Nevertheless, the picture was retweeted by several local news reporters and media personalities (Baca, 2013).

With a camera on every cellphone and access to the internet via mobile networks, everyone is now both an eye-witness and a reporter about events happening around them. While media make use of this in breaking news situations, often when their own journalists are not yet at the scene, it does lead to the question: Who can be called a journalist in the digital age? There is no doubt that such principles as being truthful, accurate, non-biased, fair, balanced and neutral are still very much applicable, whether the journalist belongs to traditional media or new media (Berkman & Shumway, 2003; Kittross, 2011; Pavlik, 2001; Ward, 2010). In 1972, Tuchman argued that objectivity is used by journalists as a “strategic ritual”. However, since then, concerns about such notions as objectivity as a leading journalistic principle have grown. Williams Burrows argued in On Reporting the

News (1977) (qtd. in Applegate, 2007: 6) against the idea of objectivity:

Total objectivity is impossible in news reporting because...we bring our emotions and prejudices to what we perceive […] [The reporter] must not only decide which information to put in the story, but which to leave out. The part that is left out might make the story more objective but there may be no space for it.

And he is not alone. Glasser even goes so far as to suggest that being objective goes against the journalistic ideal to be a watchdog of the government, as well as that it deters from independent and critical thinking (qtd. in Applegate, 2007: 6). Additionally, “the problem with journalism and ethics is that the ethical consideration can often be used as a self-censoring device” (Herbert, 2000: 76).

2.3.2 Online Media Ethics

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professional” (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: XII)? Berkman & Shumway quote Gary Hill, the Director of Investigations & Special Segments at KSTP News in Minneapolis, who disagrees with that idea: “the SPJ3 code is designed to be medium

independent.”(Berkman & Shumway, 2003:16). Despite his opinion, they identify three distinct areas in which online journalism has different concerns to focus on than traditional forms of journalism:

Privacy, a human right as declared by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, is one of the areas affected by the rise of digital technology and online communication. An obvious example is the issue of universal availability of phones with cameras, which means you can be recorded by others anywhere and at any time. As early as the invention of the telegraph and camera, Warren and Brandeis, two attorneys of whom the latter became a Supreme Court justice, argued that “the right to be let alone […] was threatened by numerous mechanical devices which could be used to expose intimate moments.” (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 98).

Two specific types of privacy are of concern for those who work in the media: ‘information privacy’ and ‘communication privacy’. Information privacy concerns itself with the types of information that is or can be collected through online channels, whereas communication privacy is more concerned about the rights to make use of a certain medium, such as the phone or email, without being monitored by governments or corporations (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 94). For media, this specifically means a dilemma whether or not journalists should be allowed to use comments from forums or social media as a source in their reporting? This question is related to the idea that the much-discussed distinction between the private and the public is starting to disappear, or maybe it already has. Ford argues that electronic media “have facilitated the development of a ‘middle region’ between [what Goffman labeled] the frontstage and backstage” of people’s lives (Ford, 2011: 555), and the best example of this area is social media. Indeed, “internet users seem to be airing much of their ‘private’ lives in the ‘public’ realm of the Internet” (Ford, 2011: 557) through blogs and micro blogs. While there are no standardized ethical guidelines how media should deal with such content, it is commonly understood that the internet is a public sphere, and unless you take adequate measures to keep your content private, it can be seen and used by others, including journalists (cf. Gordon et al., 2011).

                                                                                                               

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A second area of concern for online media is the right to ‘free speech’. The content found in the traditional ‘Letters to the Editor’ section in many newspapers was relatively easy to control and/or censor, but in the digital age, readers no longer write the newspapers but instead voice their opinion and criticism through online message boards and comment sections. Yet while the possibilities of critical discussions between the public are better than ever, so is the opportunity to publically post “hatred or discrimination of people based on their race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation” (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 149). Whether or not media organizations should allow such content on their domain is one of the ethical issues up for debate, but while they are free to ban such content through moderation4, many media websites have chosen to discourage users from such practices by forcing them to use their real name, through such measures as linking Facebook accounts to which uses people’s real name, to the comment system. Of course, not all users appreciate such measures. “Online users resist demands from web site and blogs to register and identify themselves,” Ward (2010) argues. “Anonymity is praised as allowing freedom of speech and sometimes helping to expose wrong doing.”

Finally, intellectual property and copyright are an important topic for journalists. Of particular interest is the ‘fair use policy’, as journalists “must be able to use parts of copyrighted works in order to do their jobs effectively” (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 182). However, the rules for such use are vague, and thus open for interpretation. How much is too much? (Weil, 2003).

Additionally, there are other copyright issues in the digital environment, such as piracy of copyrighted content, in particular movies and music. For journalists, the most relevant issue here is copying news and images. Many news stories are being copied from news website to, for example, discussion boards. In particular news organizations that keep their content behind a paywall have reasons to be upset. Some argue that news is “an important public good”. It is also often gathered within the public sphere, so it could be considered common ownership (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 198; Halpern, 2003). But even in news stories themselves, journalists often fail to be transparent about their sources of information. While it is easy to create hyperlinks to the original source in a text online, instead, “the net seems to have

                                                                                                               

4  The  first  Amendement  to  the  U.S.  Constitution  only  prevents  the  government  from  making  laws  

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added booster rockets for the practice of lifting without attribution” (Phillips, 2011: 49).

In the age of social media, the most interesting aspect of this debate is whether or not media organizations are allowed to use information and images circulating on platforms such as Twitter. Twitter itself states that: “we welcome and encourage the use of Twitter in broadcast. Our requirements ensure that Twitter users receive attribution for their content.” These guidelines apply to “any and all means of media delivery” (“Guidelines”), yet there are court cases proving that media must be very careful about how they handle information and images from social networks. In Agence France-Presse (AFP) v. Morel, the court ruled that “media organizations cannot assume that photos shared via Twitter are rights-free, to be used as though they were in the public domain”. Morel had posted pictures from the Haiti earthquake on Twitter, which AFP had taken from the website and distributed commercially with its partners. Not only had Morel not given permission for this, but also the pictures were attributed to the wrong person. The case shows the subtleties that media organizations need to consider before using content found on social media platforms. “Just because staff can find a photo using PicFog, ThudIt, Twicsy or Twitcaps doesn’t mean the organization has the right to use it. Use it without permission, and the penalty could be substantial” (Gil, 2013). Indeed, in the case of AFP, they could be forced to pay Morel monetary damages worth between $250,000 and $1,4 million.

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2.3.3 Breaking News, Twitter and Accuracy

For many news consumers, Twitter has become a go-to source in the event of a breaking news situation. Rather than waiting for the nightly news broadcast, the audience wants to find out immediately about the events. Through eyewitness accounts and images from the disaster sights, news consumers are able to quickly assess the impact of the situation. “We respond to disasters through media images and discourses that invest them with emotional charge and wider importance” (Pantti et al., 2012, 2). While the consumer has directed access to a never-ending list of sources, there is still an important role for traditional media in the wake of such events. Indeed, “media today perform a leading role in the public constitution of disasters, conditioning how they become known, defined, responded to and politically aligned” (Pantti et al., 2012, 5). It is up to the journalists to make sense of the overflow of information in such situations.

During the attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008, various journalists started to realize the potential of using Twitter as a news source in the coverage of the events, a development which challenged “journalists to apply existing editorial practices in a new environment” (Bennett, 2011: 67). This process was made more difficult by the fact that many journalists had never intensely used the platform, meaning they had to “familiarize themselves with Twitter while attempting to report a complex breaking news story” (Bennett, 2011: 67). Of course, when trying to make sense of large amounts of information passing by at high speeds, the journalists in question have to remember who the majority of potential sources are: ordinary people who have no ethical rules and procedures to guide them.

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press releases and events that traditional journalists rely on to do their job (Berkman & Shumway, 2003: 87). However, with many of the academic texts dealing with this issue dating back to the early 2000s, it could be that this trend is changing. An example to support this idea comes from the world of sports journalism, where many organizations have embraced the popularity of blogs, which are maintained by non-journalists. The teams recognize them as another way to ‘sell’ their product to the audience. It would be worthwhile to revisit the question based on more recent data (cf. Reed, 2012).

So far the focus has been on online journalism in general, but considering the focus of this research, it is important to discuss social media, and Twitter in particular. Ethical questions about the use of Twitter by journalists arise when one considers such phenomena as live tweeting court trials. Ben Kendall, a crime reporter, wondered whether 140 characters would be enough to present a balanced and accurate account of a case. He argued that experienced journalists should be able to do it (Townend, 2011: 75-76). But that does not mean there are no pitfalls to the medium that only allows posts of 140 characters or less.

The most obvious problematic situations on Twitter arise in the event of breaking news coverage. Most Twitter users will be able to recall instances of information on their timeline, which later turned out to be false. NPR famously reported the death of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords after being shot. Though subsequently tweeting that there were conflicting reports, “users kept finding the original message and retweeting it, despite the broadcaster’s correction” (Townend, 2011: 76-77). The issue here is the speed of the medium, and the desire on part of the media to be the first to publish the news on social platforms.

In a few specific instances, The Guardian and CNN chose speed versus verification for spreading their information. The “tweet first, verify later” approach is a great help for source diversification and leads to richer coverage. But this strategy also seems very dangerous for one of journalism’s golden rules: each news story must be verified first (Bruno, 2011: 67).

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occur when it comes to speed and reporting (Seib, 2001: 148). Friedman argued that in the case of Fukushima, “the speed of the online dissemination had its good and bad points. Although information appeared quickly, if something went viral, it was widely distributed without much thought about its accuracy or the credibility of its sources” (Friedman, 2011: 56). Even if an organization recognizes a mistake and retracts the tweet by deleting it, the retweets it has already picked up continue to live on in the Twitter streams of millions.

To avoid such mistakes, organizations like Reuters maintain a strict set of rules to guide its journalists past the pitfalls of social media hoaxes and inaccuracies. Its Handbook of Journalism, the organization stresses that the same standards of sourcing and validating apply: “Internet reporting is nothing more than applying the principles of sound journalism to the sometimes unusual situations thrown up in the virtual world. The same standards of sourcing, identification and verification apply” (Reuters, 548). Nevertheless, the organization encourages reporters to use social media, both in their professional and private life, but they identify an important tension that is worth pointing out: “Social networks encourage fast, constant, brief communications; journalism calls for communication preceded by fact-finding and thoughtful consideration” (Reuters, 551).

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2.4

– Journalism and Politics

Considering the focus on political news coverage, the final section of this literature review will examine the relationship between journalism and politics, and how that relationship has changed by social media. With the emergence of the internet and social media as major communication channels, a lot has changed for politicians. “Political leaders can now, if they wish, deliver interactive press conferences not merely to a few dozen members of the correspondents’ lobby but to millions of Net users” (Manning, 2001: 77). This allows politicians to circumnavigate any form of editorial control or gatekeeping function that journalists use to possess. Similarly, it also has increased the ability of the public to communicate with politicians. While this could raise concerns relating to the idea of “cutting out the middle man”, there is still a role for journalists to make sense of the never-ending streams of information online (Hall et al., 2012: 177). It just means that journalists have to adapt their work routines to the current journalistic environment.

2.4.1 Journalism and Politics

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However, for this thesis, the agenda-setting theory by McCombs and Shaw (1972) will serve as the theoretical framework guiding the study. Examining mass media from the perspective of their role as agenda-setters has become a prominent approach for scholars, and is now one of the “most verified theories in communication research” (Kim & Lee, 2007: 3). McCombs describes this theory as “compar[ing] the focus of attention by the news media on key public issues – and other aspects of political communication, such as candidates – with the public’s focus of attention,” and finding that the news media play an important role in the formation of public opinion (McCombs, 2005: 544). The media was able to perform this role because of their previously described function as gatekeeper, but the emergence of the internet has complicated that situation. The media no longer hold the monopoly on information, and there are now many agendas available, making it impossible for media to focus the public’s attention on just a small set of issues (McCombs, 2005: 544). Considering the emergence of the internet and the resulting disruption in the traditional agenda-setting model, Kim and Lee suggest the medium has the potential for “reversed agenda-setting,” whereby the users, or public, present or discuss issues in their online environment. In their model, the traditional media pick up these stories after they go viral among internet users. Whereas media operated as the first actor in the traditional agenda-setting model, they are now the last actor. This is an interesting notion when considering the role of social media through the lense of agenda-setting, as social media can function as one of the platforms where stories go viral (Kim & Lee, 2007: 25).

2.4.2 Politics and Social Media

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Skovgaard & van Dalen, 2013 for elections in Denmark, 2011; Jungherr, 2014 for the federal elections in Germany, 2009; Zamora Medina & Zurutuza Muñoz, 2014 for the elections in Spain, 2011). Ausserhofer and Maireder found that in Austria, politicians maintain a “broadcast by day, chat by night” approach. As to how far this practice is replicated around the world could be an interesting approach for future research (Ausserhofer & Maireder, 2013: 309).

Politicians might use tweets to get in touch with the electorate, but they provide journalists and news organizations with new forms of sources. Lariscy, Avery, Sweetser, and Howes (2009) found that social media content might play a role in agenda building, as more and more news content from social network sites, like YouTube and Twitter, are fast becoming resources for journalists to get story ideas and find sources (Armstrong & Gao, 2010: 221). Besides setting the agenda, Skovsgaard and Van Dalen find that politicians can indeed “dodge the reluctant mainstream media” using Twitter and other channels (Skovsgaard and Van Dalen, 2013: 17). However, in response to Broersma and Graham’s claim (2012) that the balance of power between politicians and journalists has shifted in favor of the former, Skovsgaard and Van Dalen find that Danish politicians still prefer to spread their message through traditional media if given the chance, despite not having full control of the message through such channels (Skovsgaard and Van Dalen, 2013: 17).

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differed in terms of attention given to certain topics” (Maireder & Ausserhofer, 2012: 2) in a discussion about Austrian politicians and Twitter.

While the previous study examined agenda-setting from the perspective of the content, it is also possible to approach the subject from the point of the new production. Researching the use of Twitter by political journalists in the United States based on interview data, Parmelee makes a distinction between six primary functions of tweets in the work routine of journalists: “Story idea generators, tip sheets, sources of quotes and data, places to find diverse sources, resources for background information, and fact-checking tools” (Parmelee, 2013a: 446). At the same time, Parmelee notes that journalist find Twitter to take away from their time spent on other tasks and duties. Many of the journalists said their supervisor expected them to “tweet and tweet often”, which helped them embrace the medium (Parmelee, 2013b: 303). Also interesting is the comparison between tweeting and sending out a press release. The main difference is that tweets are seen by the public, whereas press release generally are not. Parmelee speculates that journalists could feel more pressure to cover the tweets “to appear current with their readership or for fear that competing news organizations will scoop them” (Parmelee, 2013a: 446).

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