Breaking tweets
The use of Twitter by Dutch daily newspapers
Naam: Joëlle Swart
Studentnummer: S1642561 Eerste begeleider: A.R.J. Pleijter Tweede begeleider: T.S. Graham
Opleiding: Master Journalistiek Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, studiepad dagbladjournalistiek
Index
Chapter 1: Introduction 4
Chapter 2: Literature review 7
2.1 Journalism and technology 7
2.2 Three waves of research on journalism and technology 8
2.3 Journalism and the adoption of the internet 15
2.4 Journalism and the adoption of user generated content 29
2.5 Journalism and the adoption of blogs 31
2.6 Journalism and the adoption of Twitter 35
Chapter 3: Research methods 41
3.1 Research question 41
3.2 Research objects 42
3.3 Interviews 44
3.4 Analysis of the research results 47
Chapter 4: Results 49
4.1 The use of Twitter by Dutch daily newspapers 49
4.2 Interviews 54
Chapter 5: Conclusions and discussion 81
Preface
This research gives an overview of the usage of one of the newest additions to the world of online journalism: the microblogging tool Twitter. In this thesis, seven national Dutch daily newspapers explain how and why they and their journalists adopted the technology of Twitter and how they are using it to further improve their reporting and news content. Their answers give us insight in what this new tool might mean for the journalism of the future and what implications Twitter has and could have on journalism practice.
This thesis could not have been written without the contributions of all the journalists mentioned in this thesis, who patiently answered my questions and took the time in their busy work schedules to help me with my research. I have really appreciated all their enthusiasm and effort and therefore I would like to thank them all.
I also would like to thank my supervisors. Firstly, Alexander Pleijter, for helping me to make this thesis a success, his suggestions during the set up of my research and all his helpful notes and remarks during the process of writing this thesis. Secondly, I thank my second supervisor: Todd Graham. If it hadn’t been for his research seminar on user generated content in my first year as a M.A. Journalism student, my interest in web journalism and social media would never have developed the way it has done now. In this regard I also specially would like to thank Wouter Bax, chief internet at Trouw and one of my supervisors during my internship at the newspaper. He made me even more enthusiastic for online journalism than I already was and has convinced me that this is the field in journalism that suits me best.
Chapter 1: Introduction
On March 11th 2011, Japan shook. An 8.9-magnitude earth quake, the fifth most powerful in recorded history, hit the north-east of the country, lasting more than five minutes. Only minutes after, a 10 metres high tsunami left one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world in total chaos. While press agencies were still on their way to the hazard area, the natural disaster already covered the main pages of news institution’s websites. Within minutes, global news media had spoken to victims of the quake and put up live reports, including photos and videos.
Their source? Twitter, of course: the free social networking and micro-blogging service. Directly after the quake, Japanese eye witnesses started twittering and sending out messages. Only in Tokyo, 1.200 tweets per minute were posted (Mashable: 2011). Toppled furniture in bedrooms, crushed cars and explosions and fires arrived at computer and television screens all over the world through journalism’s newest news outlet. The social medium even proved it’s capabilities as a life saver: users warned each other where the tsunami waves would hit the coasts and sent information about shelter addresses, hotlines and evacuation possibilities.
It’s only one of the many recent examples of news reporting in which Twitter played a large role. The short 140 character posts have enabled ordinary citizens from anywhere in the world to put out their message. And proof that those voices are being heard, can be found in any recent news coverage. “People said on Twitter…”, “On Twitter, a topic of discussion is…” are phrases regularly heard in news reports now. The stream of texts, photos and videos put up online even takes the form of Twitter
The website that allows users to send and read messages known as “tweets”, founded in only 2006, has become a regular component of journalists’ daily work in just a few years time. Not just as a valuable news source, journalists have also become present on Twitter as users themselves. The medium is an effective way for news media to promote their own products and sell their news stories to the public. Got a scoop? Twitter a teaser first about tomorrow’s headlines! Twitter supports the traditional role of journalists as investigators and providers of timely information on news events (Ahmad: 2010).
The situation in The Netherlands is no different. All large daily newspapers have been present on Twitter since 2008 and send out messages about breaking news on the micro-blogging service every day. They’ve created profile pages and acquired sometimes thousands of followers – subscribers to their pages. However, research on how and why this tool is being employed by newspapers and the effect of all this newspaper twittering, hardly exists. Given the increased popularity of the medium among Dutch citizens – research in July 2010 measured 1.5 to 2 million Dutch accounts, of which 200.000 were active (Van Ringelestijn: 2010) and in March 2011, one in four Dutch internet users visited Twitter.com (Comscore: 2011) – further investigation seems natural.
That regional differences matter, the figures in the Brunswick Research show: journalists in North America are more likely to use and believe in the importance of social media than journalists elsewhere. In mainland Europe, the number of stories originating from social media is slightly lower than elsewhere, and in the US, the number of
journalists active on Twitter is more than twice as high as in mainland Europe (Brunswick: 2011). Although this research concerns business journalists specifically and mine does not, it can be expected that such big differences will inevitable influence the research results. Therefore, research specific for the Dutch situation is necessary.
So, how did the Dutch newspapers embrace the new technology of Twitter? Does the management of the newspapers encourage them to tweet? Have they set up policies and guidelines, or not, and why? How are they employing the tool? For what purposes do they Twitter and why? How does it change their journalistic practices? In what way are they using Twitter when doing their daily jobs?
changed their journalism practices. Because of the limited time available for my research, I intend to focus on the Dutch daily, national newspapers. Regional papers, although also present on Twitter, were left out in this study.
Chapter 2: Literature review
In this chapter, I will give an overview of the existing literature on the topic of the adoption of new technologies by journalism. First, I will address the general question how technological change influences journalism. Secondly, I will discuss the three phases within research on internet journalism. Thirdly, I will focus on the adoption of the internet by journalism in practice and the adoption of hypertextuality and interactivity. Fourthly, I will give an overview of the research on specific new technologies within journalism practice: the rise of user generated content; the technology of blogging; and lastly the adoption of microblog services, such as Twitter.
2.1 Journalism and technology
The adoption of new technologies by journalism is a theme regularly returning within Journalism Studies. It has been researched in regard to several inventions: from the printing press of Gutenberg that laid the foundation for mass literacy (f.e. Eisenstein: 1980), to Bell’s telephone enabling journalists to bring the news more quickly (f.e. LaRose: 1992), to online services such as blogs (f.e. Lowrey and Mackay: 2003), social media (f.e. Brunswick: 2011) and of course the internet itself (f.e. Pavlik: 2000).
As Pavlik states, ever since Julius Caesar ordered the Acta Diurna in AD 59, “distributing information about the most important events of the day has been enabled and driven by technological advances” (Pavlik: 2000, 229). In other words, new technologies such as Twitter changing journalism practices is nothing new. One could even argue that writing and language themselves are, in fact, technologies, ones that journalists have been dependent on since the birth of their profession (Pavlik: 2000, 231).
happened, whereas before they had to work with delays of days or even weeks.
Secondly, it changes the nature of the news content, in the sense that it changes topics and the forms of news outlets (Pavlik: 2000, 231). Radio and television are of course examples of new news outlets, but new inventions also lead to slighter changes. For example Powell (1993) describes how in the 70s the introduction of video led to shorter shots and faster-paced narratives and edits.
Thirdly, the structure and organization of the newsroom and news industry is altered (Pavlik: 2000, 233). More and more, through increased communication possibilities the scale on which news media operate increases. Where in the first years after the
introduction of television people could only watch national channels, now people have access to television news from neighboring countries and international news channels such as CNN, Al Jazeera or BBC World have come up.
Fourthly, there is change in the nature of the relationships between and among news organizations, journalists and the public: audiences, competitors, news sources and regulators of the press (Pavlik 2000: 234). For example, the invention of the telegraph made it possible that sources on a much larger distance could be used in news reports and especially in developing countries, the introduction of the television has expanded the audience of people following the news, because it made it possible also for the illiterate to consume the news.
The last decades, the most influential technology impacting journalism has been the internet. In paragraph 2.3, I will look at this in more detail and explore how the rise of the internet has changed journalism in practice in the four ways Pavlik describes. But first, I will look at the waves of research and existing theories in the field of journalism and online technology.
2.2 Three waves of research on journalism and online technology
1. Normative and prospective studies
Starting after the invention of the internet as we know it by Berners-Lee, from the early 90’s on, researchers explored what the technology of the internet enhanced. They wanted to know what this new phenomenon meant for journalism and whether this would lead to a new kind of journalism. Most of these articles overstated the revolutionary character of online technologies, stressed the “fundamental transition” going on in journalism and were extremely optimistic and positive about the possibilities of the web (Domingo: 2008a, 16).
Researchers constructed ideal models for the use of new media by journalism. Domingo (2008) calls them utopian, in the sense that although they were useful to explore paths for innovation for the industry, most models were very unrealistic by predicting such ideal situations as the outcome of online journalism (Domingo: 2008a, 16).
The most important topic within this wave of research is the development of a new set of media logic (Dahlgren: 1996). Media logic refers to specific forms and processes that shape the work that is being done within a certain medium. Also, it “indicates the frames of perception of audiences and users, which in turn reinforce how production within the medium takes place” (Dahlgren: 1996, 63).
Traditional media logic might be developed with mass media in mind, but according to Dahlgren is not adequate to describe the particular circumstances of
cyberspace. Media logic is medium and genre specific. Moreover, cyberspace has certain characteristics that make it different from all other media. These specific circumstances that shape online journalism can be summarized by five keywords: multimediality,
hypertextuality, interactivity, archivality, and figurationality.
Multimediality means that text, images, audio and video are all translated into one
common digital form (Dahlgren: 1996, 64). Because all these different content forms are digitalized, they all exist of zeros and ones. Print, radio and television all come together on the internet. Although text is still dominant on the internet, the last years audio-visual forms of news have come up.
paragraphs in between, move to other texts and choose their own way to read their
newspaper, only reading what interests them. Because most longer text do not fit computer screens, hypertextuality is used to shorten up texts and to decrease the amount of scrolling (Dahlgren: 1996, 65).
One of the central features of the internet is that the medium is interactive.
Interactivity is an important keyword within cyber-journalism, because sending and
receiving are technically equal functions (Dahlgren: 1996, 65). Of course technical
possibilities are always to some extent modified by a sociological context – I will elaborate on this in the paragraph on the social construction of technology -, but the fact that users can just as easily send as receive information has shaped the internet to a great extent. Without this characteristic, innovations such as user generated content, blogs, discussion boards, polls, have your say’s, chatrooms, customizable homepages and hundreds of other online inventions would not exist.
A fourth important characteristic of the web is the access it provides to archives. Users are no longer bound to the present, but can easily search for previous stories and backgrounds when reading a news item (Dahlgren: 1996, 66). This means that for media is becomes possible to do stories on topics readers are not that familiar with, because they can look up more information about it with just one click.
Fifthly, with figurationality Dahlgren (1996) means using words or phrases in a way different than their usual meaning; or creating a virtual reality. Words, images and sound in traditional media all represent reality, a reality that might be different from the truth. The distance between real life and virtual reality is perceived even larger. Cyberspace, Dahlgren writes, shortens distance and time and makes participants feel co-present and socially interactive (Dahlgren: 1996, 67), giving them another sense of reality. The field of digital photography, in which changes to reality are a relatively accepted practice, is a good example of this virtual reality.
I will elaborate on the topics of interactivity and hypertextuality some more in the paragraph on the adoption of the internet by journalism (1.2).
2. Empirical studies
wave of empirical research came up in the late 90’s and early 00’s, to test the proposed hypotheses. After the development of all theoretical models that predicted increased interactivity, hypertexuality and multimediality, such simplifications often appeared to be missing in reality. Most of the websites appeared not to offer any online extra’s in comparison with the traditional version of the medium (Deuze: 2001, 2).
Empirical research proves that concepts such as hypertextuality, interactivity and multimediality are still hardly being used (Deuze: 2001, 2). As Pavlik writes, online news today often is “repackaged content developed initially for other media, including newspapers and television” (Pavlik: 1999, 56). There is a gap between the perceptions of the potentials of the web and the actual embracement of those interactive features by journalists (Deuze, Neuberger and Paulussen: 2004, 22).
Oblak (2005) in her research compared websites of eight Slovenian print and online-only media on the degree of hypertextuality and interactivity, by comparing front pages and content items. She found that online-only media are not significantly more interactive than traditional media are. Hypertextuality is lacking in most online media productions, both at online-only and newspaper websites (Oblak: 2005, 103).
Thus, the empirical data showed that in practice, the models for online journalism developed in the first wave of research did not work. Mackay and Gillespie (1992) say this is the case because technologies do not follow predetermined patterns of development (Mackay and Gillespie: 1992, 686). Instead, innovation is an uncertain and often
contradictory process. As Williams and Edge (1996) point out, innovation is not just rational problem-solving, but is also influenced by economic and political factors, such as having the right resources and the existing technical expertise (Williams and Edge: 1996, 873).
3. Constructivist and sociological approaches
of a particular social system” (Domingo: 2008a, 23). It is defined by how we use it. Each society will use a technology in a particular way, because “its symbolic context is different” (Lemmonier: 1993, 9).
This also has implications for the way we see and define technology. According to Raymond Williams, a technology can be defined as a “social institution”, that
consists of “technical inventions” (devices, artifacts), “techniques” (the skills to use the inventions), the “body of knowledge” needed to develop both the inventions and techniques, and the “knowledge to use those devices and skills in a particular social setting” (Williams: 1981, 226-227; cited in Domingo: 2008a).
This is a lot more than just the simple definition of technology as an invention, that researchers in the first and second wave used. Technology is not just a certain technique or invention, but also contains a social context.
Social Construction of Technology (SCOT)
The theory of social construction of technology (SCOT), proposed by Bijker and Pinch as early as 1987, supports this view. It holds that for understanding the reason why people accept or reject a certain new invention, we should look at the social context. Technology does not exist within a social vacuum, but is being shaped by social factors, such as its users and producers. Therefore, technologies can have different meanings within different social groups.
This makes it hard to forecast whether a technology is accepted within a certain group or not, or, in the case of competing inventions, which technology will be chosen. People will not simply accept “the best” technology, for the definition of “the best” is socially constructed. Who defines what is the best, who is measuring the technology’s success and who are included and excluded in making that decision? SCOT seeks to analyze this and answer the question why the same technology can be shaped into different uses and features in different social contexts (Bijker and Pinch: 1987).
product. In other words, the technology has some interpretative flexibility and design
flexibility. This is why technology is always a social product: it’s features are based on the
possible uses designers see for the product, the feature requests of users, and inventors will try to find the most efficient strategy to commercialize the product (Flichy: 1999, 34).
Winston (1998, 1-18) developed a model to systematize this social context of technological innovation, using the concept of accelerators and brakes of technological change. Accelerators push forward the development of a certain invention, brakes slow it down. Examples of accelerators are social groups’ demands, but also innovations in related technologies and industries. Brakes are actions of specific social actors that try to slow down social adoption of technology (Domingo: 2008a, 24). This is often most present in the early uses of technological innovations, when users are still conservative because they feel they have a larger capacity to create a social disequilibrium in the middle of all enthusiasm for the new (Marvin: 1998, 235; cited in Domingo: 2008a).
The interpretative flexibility of the technology collapses after it has been
developed. Multiple interpretations cease to exist, because designers choose one specific design. Bijker and Pinch (1987) call this closure. Usually, the invention will adapt to the wishes of the most powerful groups in society. This is called rhetorical closure (Domingo: 2008, 25). Obviously, this closure often is non-permanent. New social groups can arise anytime and reopen the debate on a technology. Then, a new way to seek closure needs to be found.
There are more ways to accomplish closure. For example, if the social groups see the problem as being solved, because advertisers convince them that they have found a final solution, the need for alternative designs diminishes. Another possibility is that while debating how to solve a problem with a technology, a new problem is being invented that can only be solved by a specific design. For example, air tires were seen as ugly and that was problematic, until the use of air tire bikes in bike races became common as a solution to the “speed problem”. The tires were still considered just as ugly as before, but no one cared about it anymore because the ugly design of the tires was being justified by a second, more important problem (Wikipedia: 2010).
The developers of Twitter never thought that their product would be used as a journalistic tool. They simply meant it for people to let others know what they were doing, not for enabling journalists to report on what was happening. Similarly, the developers of Twitter did not mean for the medium to be used to display RSS feeds, a practice that nevertheless was and is occurring often, especially in the early years of Twitter (Rindfuss: 2009).
Actor-Network Theory (ANT)
Related to the SCOT-approach is the so called Actor-Network theory (ANT) of Michel Callon and Bruno Latour. Instead of focusing on social context as a whole, ANT focuses especially on the actors within that social context. Latour (1993) argues that we need to use actor categories and definitions when we describe a technology, for understanding why and how they use it. For ANT, every element related to technological innovation is an actor in the process of defining it. The relations between those actors shape the innovation. Actors can be human (a user, a designer) but also material (a computer, stationery). While human actors are proposing definitions of a technology, material actors limit that spectrum because of material limitations (Latour: 2005).
Inventors of a technology embed expectations in the design of the invention. Latour and Akrich call this an inscription of the potential users, uses and rules (Akrich and Latour: 1992). However, whether this corresponds with the actual users, uses and rules always remains to be seen. The network of actors involved in developing the technology is often so full of conflict and so complex, that the inventors can only make a simplification (Domingo: 2008a, 26). This means that after the technology has been released, an adaption process starts in which the technology will seek to answer to the needs of each individual actor. The Actor-Network Theory calls this translation (Latour: 2005).
Criticism on the constructivist approaches
what relevant social groups and relevant social interests are. Who determines whether a group is relevant or not? Who defines whether a social interest plays a role for a certain technology? Thirdly, Winner and others say SCOT ignores larger, underlying dynamics and structures that influence technology design, such as economical, political, ideological and cultural structures and social structures such as classes (Winner: 1993; Russell: 1986). These should also be taken into account when analyzing why a technology is accepted or not.
The Actor-Network Theory on the other hand has been said to be focusing too much on the individuals and local decisions in shaping a technology. Just like SCOT, it is ignoring the broader social context and existing power structures. However, Domingo (2008a) argues, it is not hard to integrate such macro-structural factors into the actor-network analysis.
2.3 Journalism and the adoption of the internet
In this paragraph, first I will explore how the technology of the internet has changed structures within communication (2.3.1). Secondly, I will explain the effects of the adoption of the internet on journalistic practices, using the theory of Pavlik (2.3.2).
Thirdly, I will talk about the changing role of citizens and the rise of forms of participatory journalism (2.3.3). Fourthly and fifthly, I will address the effects of respectively
hypertextuality (2.3.4) and interactivity for journalism (2.3.5), in more detail.
2.3.1 Changing communication models and structures
The internet as a technology has always had a very high acceptance level among
existing concepts of communication and the distinction between the public and the private sphere (Arceneaux and Schmitz Weiss: 2010).
Again, as the theory of social construction of technology supports, this is a totally different function than what the inventors of the internet had in mind when they designed it (Abbate, 1999). The invention of the internet was purely meant to decrease vulnerability, spreading valuable information over several places instead of having one big data center. Journalists were not even meant to use it, nor were citizens. With computers being connected, information could be spread on thousands of different servers, making it much harder to attack and take down the whole American information structure. The internet was formed by and changed by its users and is therefore a true socially constructed medium.
Although the acceptance of new technologies by journalism is nothing new, communication structures have been changing ever since the rise of the internet in the late 80s and early 90s. Where communication for a long time happened one-to-one, with a mentor teaching its pupil through oral tradition, Gutenberg’s press changed that into a one-to-many relationship, making books accessible to everybody who could read instead of just a very rich elite. With the internet this one-to-many relationship developed further, by allowing authors to publish in an instant second (Ballsun-Stanton and Carruthers: 2010, 3). It was by the rise of the social web however, that this transference truly transformed into a many-to-many relationship. Millions of people are publishing at the same time and pass their products onto large groups of people, changing communication structures.
Public relations scholar James Grunig (1976) described a set of two other
paradigms of communication. First is the one-way, asymmetric public information model, in which organizations distribute information to the public, with the intention of informing and influencing them. Traditional journalism is represented by this model (Pavlik: 2000, 235).
information, informing and influencing the other party.
Traditional media still play a large role in news making, but have gotten company of a lot of new institutions: bloggers, search engines, news portals, social media and community websites. All these sites guide and direct their readers to information of
interest, an intermediary role formerly played by the traditional news media (Bowman and Willis: 2003, 48).
In the old situation, traditional media used to control everything: from the choice of topics to the choice of sources to the forms of content that was being produced. Now, in the digital age, they have lost that control. Citizens contribute in news making, commentary, analysis and fact-checking. Not because they want to be journalists, but simply because they want to contribute and participate, to address topics that traditionally, news media did not cover (Gillmor: 2004, 66-78; Bowman and Willis: 2003, 47-52). These participatory media challenge this hegemony of traditional news media. Even though it took many newspapers and broadcasters years to build up the trust of their readers, recent surveys suggest that people are beginning to place more and more trust in online sources and seek increasingly diverse news sources and perspectives (Bowman and Willis: 2003, 49).
In the next paragraph, I will explain how this changed communication structure works in practice, using Pavlik’s four technological changes: changing daily practices, changing nature of news content, changing structures in news organizations and changing relationships with the audience, news sources and competing media (Pavlik: 2000).
2.3.2 Changing journalism daily practices
As Pavlik says, technological change affects the way journalists do their job, changing their daily practices (Pavlik 2000: 229). How did this work regarding the invention of the internet?
In a survey of the Online News Association, 57 per cent of the online journalists agreed that the internet changed the “fundamental values of journalism”. The biggest change in their opinion was the loosening of standards (mentioned by 45 per cent),
cent) (Project for Excellence in Journalism: 2009).
Pavlik specifically names the change in news-gathering. Sources did not have to be carried to the newsrooms anymore, but could be checked anytime from anywhere in the world. The amount of sources increased significantly and it became much more easy to get in touch with them. Checking facts has become easier. The internet also allowed journalists to work right up to the deadline, as sending the reporter’s material could be done more quickly (Pavlik: 2000, 231).
Chung (2007) names multimediality as another important change. Whereas newspaper journalists used to only do writing, now they are also being asked to produce audio and video for the online versions of their paper. However, although empirical research shows that how a story is being told has diversified with news stories now being delivered in various forms, this development has not been embraced by journalism: text is still the dominant form (Chung: 2007).
For Burnett and Marshall (2003, 48), the key distinction between the web and other mass media forms is its continuous character. Where journalists used to enter newsrooms around ten in the morning, sending the paper to be printed and distributed around midnight, online journalism does not know such a strict production process. News can and will be produced anytime, because there is a demand for it anytime.
Whether the use of the internet by journalists has actually improved the quality of journalism remains a topic of debate. With every invention, journalists seem to spend less time out in the field, observing directly the events and processes on which they report (Pavlik: 2000: 230). Where journalists used to go out to do face-to-face interviews, many of those are nowadays done by telephone, email or social media. The lack of non-verbal communication could decrease quality of pieces. Furthermore, it is not always possible to be sure that the person you are speaking to is the person you think he or she is. On the other hand, Pavlik says, the internet can help improve the quality of news-gathering as it has become more easy to check facts and find sources (Pavlik: 2000, 230).
to increased use of blogs as sources, discussion of blogs in planning meetings and adoption of the blogging form on news websites” (Lowrey and Burleson Mackay, 2008: 64).
I will elaborate on this some more later (see paragraph 1.5 on journalism and the adoption of blogging) but of course the same holds true for the internet itself. Readers felt the need to have access to the news at any time, whenever and wherever they wanted. Newspapers addressed this by going online and making online versions of their papers on their websites. Email addresses were opened and put online, so readers could get in touch with the newsrooms 24 hours a day.
Changing nature of news content
When looking at the way technology changes the nature of news content, normative studies say there are six important changes that need to be taken into account.
Firstly, the amount of information available has been increased enormously by the internet (Dahlgren: 1996, 62). Not only can everyone look up information from any place in the world, the speedy character of the medium, making it possible to publish stories within a second, has also increased the production speed and therefore also the production size of journalists.
Secondly, cyber-journalism has accelerated the fragmentation of the audience. Online, niches emerge from continuing “sociological segmentation” (Dahlgren: 1996, 63). The long tail theory is related to this development and argues that, because of the enormous size and global scale of the internet, it has become easier to find an audience for a specific subject (Anderson: 2006). Furthermore, the internet provides new opportunities for journalists to extend their reach geographically and increase readership (Chung: 2007). Whereas newspapers are more or less obligated to bring general news to attract as much readers as possible if they wanted to make a profit, online it is possible to make a profitable news website on specific subjects, such as news on philosophy or religion or green issues, just because the market size is so enormous. Of course, this especially is the case with news sites written in globally used languages such as English, but even for news outlets in smaller languages market size has increased by the internet.
the length of that content decreases (Pavlik 2000: 232). The internet made the speed of news faster. Stories circle around the globe instantly and financial reporting can change the markets in seconds. Stories also get shorter, because of the hypertextuality of the web (Dahlgren: 1996, 63; Oblak: 2005, 96).
Fourthly, online, one moves easily from commercial to non-commercial sites and back. Likewise, information and entertainment are more connected (Burnett and Marshall: 2003, 91). Infotainment spreads and there is an increasing trend towards the popularization of journalism (Dahlgren: 1996, Oblak: 2005).
With the internet, the question what is journalism has become more difficult to answer. The boundaries between journalism and non-journalism are blurring (Dahlgren: 1996, 62). A good example is the rise of infotainment. Can celebrity and entertainment news or travel journalism be considered journalism? Although this is not exclusively an online phenomenon, on the internet the lines between journalism and advertisements are more blurry. More and more, news sites are filled with advertorials, which makes it hard for the audience to distinguish between journalistic content and ads. Where placing advertisements on the front page was a practice often frowned upon in the print age, in the online era there is hardly any main page left that is not decorated with a large banner to create the most revenue possible (Pavlik: 2000, 233).
Fifthly, the style of online journalism is different. The inverted pyramid news writing has to some extent been replaced by interactive multimedia news reports that give readers a feeling of presence like never before (Pavlik: 2000, 232): the figurationality aspect of media logic named by Dahlgren (1996).
Changing structures of newsrooms and news industries
As mentioned in the paragraph on journalism’s changing daily practices, the heterogeneity of journalism has increased (Dahlgren: 1996, 62). Reporters that work for websites of newspapers often do not only write their articles, but also design them, publish them, edit the work of the other online reporters, search images to accompany their texts and sometimes do the photographing or videoing themselves. Also, online editorial
departments sometimes serve as a helpdesk for website users having questions on technical issues, manage public relations through social media as Twitter and Facebook and have a say in advertising on the website. Like Dahlgren already predicted in 1996, in cyberspace, the definition of a journalist is merging with other information-handling functions
(Dahlgren: 1996, 62).
As a consequence, the internet has also led to a change in the hierarchical structures in traditional newsrooms. Broadcasters used to have strict rules about for example
changing tapes or making edits. Now, because everyone can edit material until right up the deadline and there is a smaller risk of a complete breakdown in the reporting process (Pavlik: 2000, 231). Also, combined, convergent newsrooms have emerged where journalists work for both print, web, radio and tv (Pavlik: 2000, 234), so convergent media content can be produced.
That newspapers and journalists are still struggling with their hierarchy on the web and social media, follows from the fact that much news organizations have felt the need to develop special policies for journalists’ online activities and to put these online, publicly available for the audience. NOS, the Dutch national public broadcaster, forbids its reporters to tweet about internal affairs or post photos of the newsroom (Stekelenburg and Overdiek: 2009).
may cover for the paper (Smith: 2009).
But there are of course more structural changes. With the invention of the internet, newspapers, radio and television broadcasters and online news media became head-to-head competitors in the same business field: online news. Moreover, media are now competing on a global scale (Pavlik: 2000, 233).
Empirical research shows that this increased competition and the technological impact of the internet has led to a decrease in local news, whereas news at the national and international level is growing (Noam and Freeman: 1997). On websites, the lines between advertising and editorial are blurring. More and more websites publish advertorials as if they are regular news content and much websites have become intertwined with the advertisers enabling their existence.
Newspaper distribution has radically changed by the internet (Pavlik: 2000, 234). Printing and distributing newspapers, two of the biggest costs when producing a paper, have become choices instead of necessities. Some newspapers have quit their paper edition and only exist online, such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Quinn: 2009).
2.3.2.4 Changing relationships between news organizations and the audience
Not only the hierarchy in news organizations has changed, also the relationship between journalists and their audiences has altered. Where the journalist used to be the expert that knew it all and hardly got any feedback on what he or she wrote, now articles can lead to thousands of comments of readers - and many of them might know more about the mentioned subject than the journalist himself.
According to a lot of readers that have taken up roles as citizen journalists, traditional journalists should get off their ivory tower and move away from the idea that journalism is a mysterious, special craft that can only be carried out by “a select priesthood – a black art inaccessible to the masses” (Lasica: 2003, 73).
This is being reinforced by declining newspaper readership all over the world. In a lot of countries, reading a newspaper has become an activity for the “informed elites”, who stand out from the “entertained majorities” (Dahlgren: 1996, 63).
generated content, the journalist has lost its function of defining what the public reads and thinks about. The top-down model no longer applies. Because, as Gunter (2003) argues, although online users can still rely on journalists for their news, they are no longer obliged to do so.
Where traditionally sources would speak to journalists who then communicate what citizens have to say to the public, now citizens simply put their message online. The editorial gate-keeping mechanism and journalistic mediator disappears (Gunter, 2003: 171). Sources directly communicate with the audience and now participate in defining the news agenda and producing news.
This change has lead to the rise of people formerly known as the audience to pursue activities that beforehand were reserved exclusively for journalists. Because sending and receiving are equal functions, a communication model of many-to-many has emerged and a whole new brand of journalism has come up: citizen journalism. Now, anyone with an internet connection can reach a global audience. People themselves become the media (Bowman and Willis, 2003).
2.3.3. The role of citizens within journalism
Although media organized by citizens are of course not a new phenomenon – pirate radios, local talk radio stations and video artists have been challenging the dominance of established mass media since the second half of the 20th century – the scale of it has increased enormously with the potential of the internet (Paulussen et. al: 2007: 132). Public’s digital media literacy has steadily increased and media forms as blogs and communities have emerged (Paulussen et. al: 2007, 133).
There are several forms of non-traditional journalism in which citizens play a large role. I will not go into these in great detail as this subject is too extensive and diverges too much from the central theme in this thesis, the adoption of Twitter by journalism, but will just explain them briefly, using the models and definitions of the normative research of Joyce Nip (2005).
websites such as the American Indymedia (Nip: 2005, 14).
In the second form, participatory journalism, professional journalists and citizens work together in news gathering, production and publishing. Users contribute within a framework that has been put up by professionals. The South Korean OhMyNews is a case of participatory journalism (Nip: 2005, 12). This is different from collaborative
journalism, a sub-form of participatory journalism, in which journalists and citizens also
work together but the framework has been put up by the citizens instead of the journalists (Hermida and Thurman: 2007, 4).
In the third model, interactive journalism, the audience plays an active role on the news site, which is managed by professional journalists. There are technical capabilities that allow users to free themselves from linear structures of traditional journalism (content
interactivity), such as hyperlinks, and capabilities that allow users to communicate with the
content providers and other users (interpersonal interactivity) (Nip: 2005, 11).
Lastly, in public journalism, the user has even less power. Journalists try to engage people as citizens, both in news production and the use of news. They place polls on their websites and have reader panels. Professional journalists however remain gatekeepers in editing and publishing stories (Nip: 2005, 10).
These four forms are all opposed to traditional journalism, where people do not play any part in the news process at all, journalists are strict gatekeepers and most people, except government officials, have little chance of becoming sources (Nip: 2005, 10).
All the mentioned four categories of changes have had a huge impact on
journalism. However, there is also a lot that has not changed, or not as much as journalism scholars in the 90s predicted. As Winston says, every technological innovation also
confronts social reactions to stop it, giving existing institutions the time and opportunity to adapt to it (Winston: 1998, 11). I will now look at this concerning to key characteristics of the web: hypertextuality and interactivity.
2.3.4 Hypertextuality
several texts are embedded in one hyperlink.
Deuze (2001) mentions that there is an important distinction between internal and external hypertextuality. Internal hypertextuality can be understood as interconnectedness: links internally referring to other texts within a single text’s domain (Deuze, 2001: 5). For example, this could be a hyperlink in a news article that links to a category overview page with articles by the same newspaper on the same subject. External hypertextuality on the other hand points to texts located elsewhere in cyberspace, so for example different media linking to each other (Deuze: 2001, 5).
Oblak’s empirical research (2005) shows that external hypertextuality is typical for online-only news sites. At pure online news media, 27 per cent of news items connected to some other site, whereas for the websites of print media this is only 9 per cent (Oblak: 2005, 97). Internal hypertextuality on the other hand appears more often in printed dailies and their online versions (Oblak: 2005, 103).
There is a second difference. The smaller a news content is, the more likely it is that it is internally connected to other content. Regarding external hypertextuality however, the size of the content item does not have any effect on it (Oblak: 2005, 97).
The question is, of course: why didn’t newspapers embrace hypertextuality? Journalism scholars who analyzed the acceptance of the internet within media companies, argue that most of those companies did not have a new media logic the way Dahlgren (1996) describes it. Instead, they kept hanging onto their old logic of mass media and tried to reproduce the production model that they were using for the press and broadcasting. This is not surprising: after all, in the early years of the internet, there was hardly any expertise on online journalism and the mass media model was the one that owners of media companies knew well (Oblak: 2005).
2.3.5 Interactivity
it opens up possibilities for more direct communication between journalist and reader (Oblak: 2005, 98).
Stromer-Galley (2000) distinguishes between two types of interactivity: human and medium interactivity. Human interactivity is communication between two or more users, taking place through a communication channel, such as forms, email or Facebook. Medium
interactivity is interactive communication between users and technology, based on the
nature of technology itself and what it allows users to do, such as search bars, multimedia galleries and hyperlinks (Stromer-Galley: 2000). In some research, this distinction is also referred to as the difference between user-to-user and user-to-medium interactivity or interpersonal versus content interactivity (Chung: 2007).
Deuze (2003) also distinguishes types of interactivity: navigational, adaptive and functional interactivity. Navigational interactivity, like medium interactivity, allows users to ‘‘navigate’’a site, with features such as hyperlinks and menus. Adaptive interactivity lets users have interaction with the site content. Users can add or modify the site themselves (personal customization) or websites allow users to upload their own content. Functional
interactivity, much like human interactivity, allows users to communicate with other
individuals (Deuze: 2003, 214).
Journalists are in general very enthusiastic about interactive features. ‘‘More than two-thirds of the Flemish respondents believe that the future of online news production lies in interactivity’’, Deuze et al. write (2004: 22) in a survey among journalists on interactivity. In the Netherlands, 73 per cent of the journalists ‘‘support the claim that building a stronger and interactive relationship with the public is the best way to do online journalism’’ (2004: 24).
Interactivity: empirical research
Research has found that online news website use human interactive features are being used less than medium inactive features (Chung: 2004). Not only users, but also webpage designers and journalists have been less enthusiastic about human interactivity than medium interactivity, even though the first is often seen as “true” interactivity. Other than human interactivity, medium inactive features do not allow users to become involved in a dialogic relationship with other users or with newsroom staff (Chung: 2007).
While news media do see the benefits in communicating and decreasing distance with the audience, for the organization these do not outweigh the costs in time, money and space. This is why site producers tend to limit the features on their websites the medium interactive type (Chung: 2007).
Oblak confirms this: both online-only and newspaper websites know a large editorial distance. Of the pure online news sites, only 33 per cent offers editorial email addresses and contact information, whereas for the dailies online this is only 20 per cent (Oblak: 2005, 98). Quinn and Trench (2002) also found in a cross-European comparison of 24 news websites that online-only news media rank a little higher in interactivity features than traditional media do (Quinn and Trench: 2002).
Paulussen et. al (2007) also state that the traditional media in Belgium, Finland, Germany and Spain develop very little opportunities for audience participation, because of journalism’s reactionary culture. Participation in this context is not just political participation or being informed like it was the case in traditional journalism, but also includes social participation: the need to share, bond, connect and interact, both incidental and structural (Paulussen et. al: 2007, 134). Even though marketing and business strategies encourage the development of participatory projects, lack of resources, deeply-rooted work patterns and the way journalists look at such initiatives, prevent them from actually emerging. Traditional news media do not recognize the public’s need to participate, but still simply view the role of journalism in terms Schudson’s top-down trustee model, in which the reader puts trust in the journalist to select the most important, accurate facts.
interactivity between journalist and reader, but have not done so, because journalists didn’t include interactivity in their daily practices.
Chung also stresses the high workload for journalists. Interactivity has brought about increased time pressure for the reporter, who has to manage discussion boards. Also, the costs maintaining all interactive features are high (Chung: 2007).
Oblak names two other reasons for journalism not becoming truly interactive, next to the reactionary professional culture and journalism practices: audience fragmentation and content homogenization. When the public gets fragmented, it can get discouraged from active involvement in communities on websites that more and more bring the same news about the same topics (Oblak: 2005, 103).
Here again, inventors of a technology had an idea about how its users should use that invention, but it is the user who in the end decides whether he is also using that invention in the way for that purpose. Similarly, many professional and scholarly discourses tend to reproduce ideal models of what online journalism could or should be, but empirical research often shows that the development of those ideals in online news sites tends to be limited (Kenney et al., 2000).
There is a gap between what online journalists see as the internet’s potential and the actual use of interactive features (Deuze et al., 2004: 22), such as Twitter. Research of Domingo (2008) and Kenney et al. (1999) confirms that most online journalists in the traditional media companies indeed still were completely detached from audience contact, even though they used the internet extensively.
Kenney et. al. (1999) say interactivity could increase if: (1) the goal of journalists would be more to exchange information instead of to persuade; (2) if participants would be given a greater control of the communication environment; (3) if journalists would take an active role to fully benefit from the communication with users; (4) when they would actually react to the message being sent to them; (5) when the timing of communication would be more flexible and responsive to the demands of the users; and (6) when the communication environment would create a sense of place for users (Kenney et. al: 1999).
The internet challenges journalists to experiment with new information distribution practices, while also pushing them to involve new voices that are traditionally excluded from mass media. “We write, you read” is being undermined by forms of modern journalism (Deuze, 2003). According to Deuze, this impact of the internet’s interactivity and connectivity is something that media organizations have not always realized when they started to expand their operations online. A lot of them have maintained their old strategies instead of adapting to the characteristics of the new medium.
In a paper researching ideas of 11 British commercial newspapers on user generated content by Hermida and Thurman (2007), the authors mention a study by the Readership Institute (2000) that says newspapers generally have an aggressive-defensive culture. Newspapers are opposing change, which is becoming more problematic than in the past because consumer needs and interests nowadays change more rapidly. This is because competition has increased and technology is advancing more quickly (Hermida and Thurman: 2007).
Therefore, you would expect that user generated content (UGC), a term that can refer to any mass media orientated contribution a user makes to public information without immediate profit motivation (Stoeckl, Rohrmeier and Hess: 2007), would not be embraced by traditional news media. However, the analysis of Hermida and Thurman reveals that the adoption of user generated content by mainstream news organizations is actually very progressive, although this is also dependent on the newsroom culture in the organization. News organizations are expanding the opportunities for users to submit user generated content. On a large scale, several forms of UGC – polls, message boards, have your says, comments, Q&A’s, blogs, and possibilities to upload text, photos, audio and video – have been adopted by news organizations and placed on their news sites (Hermida and Thurman: 2007).
Indeed, research of Chung (2008) shows that most users tend to consume news instead of participating in the production or selection process. For example, the website of BBC News receives thousands of user comments, but those users account for only 0.05 per cent of the daily visitors (Hermida: 2009). And The Guardian estimates that only 1 to 5 per cent of the users contribute to forums and other forms of user generated content on their website (Hermida and Thurman: 2007).
Research has proven that the costs of user generated content do not always outweigh the benefits (Hermida and Thurman: 2008). Managing and moderating user generated content does not fit within the current journalism practices, because those tasks are time-heavy and therefore very costly for news organizations. Often, journalists do not have the ambition to fulfill these tasks and the work is often outsourced to non-journalism IT companies. In the worst case, moderation is simply lacking, with user generated content therefore possibly damaging the professional image of the online news medium (Hermida and Thurman: 2008).
Because of such reputation issues that can also have legal consequences, journalists also remain reluctant to give up their traditional role of gatekeepers (Hermida and
Thurman: 2007, 3). This is why 80 per cent of the user-generated content initiatives are edited or pre-moderated (Thurman: 2008). Editors tend to view moderation as a way to offer value to the audience, by carrying out their old task as a gatekeeper (Hermida and Thurman: 2008). So even though the characteristic of the technology is that senders and receivers are equal, the social context in which it is applied makes that it is not used that democratically.
To summarize, Thurman (2008) argues that “the adaptation of established news websites to the increasing demand from readers for space to express their views is driven as much by local organizational and technical conditions as it is by any attachment to traditional editorial practices.”
that place other journalistic practices at its margins” (Matheson: 2004).
2.5 Journalism and the adoption of blogs
Even though user generated content as a whole may not always have been embraced by traditional news media, there is one specific feature that has been adopted at a large scale: the blogs. Where blogging used to take place largely outside the established media, it has turned into a practice frequently used by professional journalists.
Within a few years, blogs have been transformed into key mechanisms for communicating analysis and commentary to the public for news media (Hermida: 2009). In the United States, 95 per cent of the top 100 newspapers offered at least one journalist authored blog in 2007 (Duran, 2007). In Europe, already in 2008, 44 per cent of news organizations offered blogs (Oriella PR Network, 2008). Domingo and Heinonen (2008) suggest that media blogs have created a new genre in institutionalized media journalism, where the author is more visible and the style is more personal.
Why were blogs adopted so easily by traditional news media? Lowrey and Mackay (2008) name a model of Abbott in their article on journalism’s reaction to occupational competition in the form of blogging to explain this. The model suggests that professionals change their practices to address their vulnerabilities. It was actually meant to describe medical work, but Abbott argues that it can be applied to any occupation. Abbott says that this process of change consists of three stages: diagnosis, inference and treatment.
In the diagnosis stage, journalists diagnose the problem of their clients: the audience. Unlike doctors or lawyers, journalists do not meet with individual clients. The journalist’s client is an ‘every client’ (Lowrey and Mackay: 2008). The audience is uncertain how to act socially and politically given the conditions of a particular day or other time period. Therefore, journalists do broad news coverage to match the clients’ broad needs. In the interference stage, journalists make sense of the day’s conditions, so they can provide the appropriate treatments: news stories, opinion articles, photographs, videos, etcetera. In other words, they go out into the field for reporting. Lastly, in the treatment stage, the final news content is being produced.
practices to meet competition from bloggers. Journalists are out of touch with their audiences and bloggers therefore try to fill that gap by providing news on topics that traditional news media tend to ignore or downplay (Lasica: 2003). The journalists do diagnose this problem and will then, as Abbott’s model suggests, adjust their practices to address these perceived vulnerabilities.
One way journalists may choose to meet the challenge bloggers form, is to incorporate information of bloggers in their reports. Here journalists see blogging as a news gathering tool, as opposed to an occupational threat (Lowrey and Mackay: 2008). Or, for example, newspapers that feel the appearance of local bloggers that are active, could start paying more attention to news at a local level. Of course, managers of newspapers play a great role in this, as they can encourage or discourage reportages to use bloggers as a source.
In the treatment stage, journalist may try to use blogs as a content form. Recently, many news organizations have devoted sections of their websites to blogs and have created link buttons on site navigation bars to send readers to these pages (Lowrey and Mackay: 2008). Or, newspapers that feel out of touch with their audience could start providing more opportunities for the public to get in touch with journalists, such as providing email address, links to Twitter pages or other contact details next to their articles.
Finally, the model suggests that these stages mean a repair of vulnerabilities in the profession. News managers that are now participating in a great deal of conferences and workshops on new media, the internet and web 2.0, are more likely to take steps to accommodate the blogging challenge. There are also a few other, more objective factors that shape the professional process, such as organizational size, public ownership, level of competition from other newspapers and the level of success reaching audiences. The larger the news organization, the more resources it has and therefore is it more likely to invest in new practices (Lowrey and Mackay: 2008). Newspapers that are publicly owned are less likely to develop such expertises, because they seek high profit margins. High competition from other newspapers will accelerate investment in newsrooms, just as a weak market position, because in such cases managers are more likely to take measures and change, to increase the medium’s profit (Lowrey, 2005).
or have the ambition to make news media more transparent. Nor do all bloggers see
themselves as alternatives to the mainstream press that does not, in their opinion, do its job adequately (Matheson: 2004). There are also a lot of bloggers who do not call themselves journalists and are simply looking for a way to share their news-gathering about the world (Matheson: 2004, 44). In other words, Matheson points out that the blogosphere is a very diverse group. Robinson (2006) agrees and says that “right now, the blogs are too varied and too changing to have definitive implications for the news media as a whole.”
The role of blogs within established news organizations
Normative research such as a study by Robinson (2006) describes this process in which mainstream media have started blogs to recapture their journalistic authority. Singer (2005) argues that blogs challenge journalistic norms and practices, especially
non-partisanship and gate-keeping. Historically, the open and participatory nature of blogs has not been part of professional journalism, because it doesn’t go with journalism’s notion of professional distance (Singer: 2005). Wendland (2003) thinks the value in blogging lies in the real-time reporting that is now possible, which is not filtered or edited in the way established media are. Blogs are subjective and give authors’ opinions and perspectives, which contradicts journalism’s value of objectivity (Allen: 2006). Thus, blogs challenge journalistic practices and norms.
Singer (2005) suggests that – again - journalists are normalizing blogs by maintaining a traditional gatekeeper function, even in a format that is characterized by its participatory nature. Journalists who write blogs on mainstream media still look for objectivity, credibility and accuracy and do discuss journalistic standards, but also take over characteristics of citizen bloggers: they draw conclusions from non-traditional sources as readers’ comments or other blogs, mix news with personal views and ask readers to be co-authors. Such “J-blogs” use traditional no-no’s, such as superlatives, first person, questions without answers and abandon mainstream news frames (Robinson: 2006, 77).
Lasica (2003) says that bloggers have been exposing the weaknesses of traditional news media. Mainstream media, she says, should understand that they need the
angles, insights and ideas for newspapers. Furthermore, weblogs can help traditional news media to connect with the audience – promoting interactivity and giving the public insight in how they work, building trust – and push traditional media to journalistic innovation.
Lasica gives the example of freelance journalist Christopher Allbritton who used his weblog to raise money for making a trip to Iraq, bringing back stories about the fall of the town of Tikrit and etnic tensions there among different groups. Regarding microblogging service as Twitter, one could name The Guardian’s travel journalist Paul Smith, who simply packed his suitcase, tweeted about his plan to put his itinerary in the hands of his 2.000 followers, and relying solely on the hospitality, charity and advice of the Twitter community travelled all over Europe to the USA and back, reporting about all the places which had been recommended to him by the audience (Paul Smith: 2009).
However, according to Hermida and Thurman (2008) the widespread adoption of blogs cannot be attributed solely to editors’ fear of marginalization. Interviews showed that news executives were also motivated by a desire to keep control of journalists who may have otherwise created their own blogs (Hermida and Thurman: 2008). It will be interesting to see whether news managers for Twitter feel the same need to control the journalists' behavior.
Hermida (2009) showed that the BBC journalists interviewed in his research saw blogs as a way to reconnect with their audience again. They often named editors blogs as examples of a method to do this. However, they did not start blogging because they were interested in dialogue with their readers, they just wanted the audience to feel connect with their medium again. “If blogging is considered as a process that involves both the author and the audience in an exchange of ideas, then BBC News blogs fall short” (Hermida: 2009).
BBC News is an example for a lot of traditional media that did embrace blogging, but are not using it as a tool to make their journalism a truly social practice (Thurman and Jones, 2005: 254). Whereas comments, the ability of users to send in replies to blog posts, are a common feature of blogs, blogs in the mainstream news media often lack this functionality or in a heavily moderated form.
Since the launch of Twitter in 2006, the microblogging tool has been gaining users rapidly. The social medium has been embraced not just by individuals, but also by a range of different organizations, from commercial enterprises to government agencies, using it for marketing, publicity and customer service tasks (Arceneaux and Schmitz Weiss: 2010). Almost every news organization has at least one account now at the website that in 2010 ranked 26th in the list of most visited websites on the internet (Compete: 2011) and social media skills become more important for online editors when hiring employees.
However, how actively those Twitter accounts are being used, differs a lot. Although overall nine in ten journalists have investigated an issue for work, due to information that was sourced from social media, the number of stories originating from social media is higher in the US than in mainland Europe (Brunswick: 2011).
Not just where a journalist works, but also the field of journalism he works in has an impact on Twitter usage, a US survey among 1600 media shows. For the online journalists, thirty-seven per cent of the journalists has been asked to actively use Twitter by their employers. Thirty-six per cent of the online journalists employs Twitter as a research tool and 42 per cent has used a Twitter message in a story. Figures for print journalists are much lower: only 19 per cent of the reporters used Twitter for research and also just 19 per cent had used tweets in a story (PRweek and PRNewswire: 2010).
Rindfuss (2009) found that in the US only 62 per cent of the newspapers actively promoted their Twitter accounts from their website. In many cases, Rindfuss (2009) reports, those links were very difficult to track down, buried down on some well-hidden subpage. Just 56 per cent maintained a directory of their Twitter accounts on their website. In The Netherlands, this is also a rare practice. This is consistent with research of Oblak (2005), who found that newspaper websites contain less external links than websites from online-only media do.
How journalists use Twitter: normative and prospective research
service and social responsibility, because through Twitter they are giving consumers the necessary information they need to function and react in a crisis (Armstrong and Gao: 2010, 222). Gahran (2008) says Twitter is strong in spreading breaking news rapidly, because messages are posted immediately.
Smith (2009) says she sees most potential for social media in how reporters can take advantage of it for five functions: promotion, sources, niche topics, crowdsourcing and connection. It is easy for journalists to incorporate links to articles they’ve written or their medium has published. Secondly, Twitter enables journalists to find sources more quickly than in the past when they would have to talk to friends of friends of friends one by one. Thirdly, reporters can cover niche topics better because they will be able to find specific sources and information by the use of hashtags and keywords. Fourthly, the speed of Twitter makes it easy to quickly check the accuracy of facts or get the public opinion. Lastly, as a social medium, it is perfect to connect with the reader community.
The British Alison Gow (2009), journalist at the Liverpool Daily Post and
Liverpool Ecco, names seven slightly comparable reasons for newspapers to use Twitter: to build a network, to catch breaking news, to understand what’s relevant to your readers, to engage with people, acquiring information from experts, to seek opinions on issues and to keep in touch with reality outside the newsroom.
Julie Posetti (2009) reports that Australian journalists in the first place use their Twitter accounts for finding sources and information. Many are using it to crowdsource contacts, story angles, background and case studies. A few also use it as a live reporting platform. Most of their tweeting is done at personal accounts, whereas some also
contribute to organizational Twitter accounts. Some journalists also reported using Twitter as a means of subverting the increasingly dominant modern PR machine. They said it allowed them to quickly go beyond press releases and official sources, like lobby groups and politicians, by interacting with followers who provided alternative perspectives, useful background and sometimes crucial facts in a story. Finally, Posetti mentions journalists’ use Twitter as a sort of media job agency.
How journalists use Twitter: empirical research
newspapers and three television stations, the researchers found that 86 per cent of tweets were written to drive traffic to the individual news sites and to show links, rather than for news updates or previews of upcoming stories. About 67 per cent of tweets from news organizations were the same as the headlines in the news items that the tweets linked to. Especially newspapers are likely to have similar tweets and headlines, as opposed to television broadcasters (Armstrong and Gao: 2010, 230).
The same research shows that journalists on Twitter do have a preference for news on topics such as crime, entertainment and other sensational news, that fits with the young, dynamic audience present on the microblogging service (Armstrong and Gao: 2010, 225-230). Twitter is especially popular among young people: nearly one in five use Twitter or similar services (Armstrong and Gao: 2010, 222). In The Netherlands, the average age of people on Twitter is 27. About 85 per cent of the tweeps is between 10 and 40 years old (Van Ringelestijn: 2010).
Because of time limits and to be able to make a good comparison, in my research I will focus on national newspaper organizations only. That this may have its consequences for the results, follows from the results of Armstrong and Gao (2010), who conclude in their research that regional media tended to differ in Twitter usage from both local and national media and that broadcast news agencies were more likely to tweet multimedia packages than were print-based organizations.
Interesting is that most mainstream media do not use Twitter as a social or
interactive medium, just like is that case with blogs (Hermida: 2009). The interaction with other tweeps was low: a third of the newspapers replied to users in less than 1 per cent of their tweets and 15 per cent of the accounts didn’t reply to any tweets of other users at all (Rindfuss: 2009). Only about 5 per cent of the newspapers were truly connecting with their audience and did reply to other Twitter users in over half of their tweets. Similarly, retweeting, repeating Twitter messages, was a rare phenomenon.
