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Twitter Journalism

Twitter Journalism is the most well known type of citizen journalism. Twitter is “an online social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as ‘tweets’” (Wikipedia) Through posts written in limited numbers of characters on Twitter the news is created very rapidly and gets distributed widely around the world in a matter of seconds. Anybody can publish news anytime and anywhere as long as they have a Twitter account. It is very powerful. Since March 21, 2006 when Twitter got launched, the site has been popularized continuously and finally in 2010 it hit the 12th rank in the most popular website in the world. Roughly 5000 tweets were published per day in 2007, 300,000 tweets per day in 2008, and 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009. In 2010, the number of users of the site reached more than 100 million. Kevin Weil who is a member of the Twitter analytics team said, “Today, there are 50 million tweets per day, with an average of 600 per second.” Since this information does not include any tweets categorized as spam, the power of publishing on Twitter using a maximum 140 characters is far remarkable. Although debates on whether Twitter itself can be a news generator or not is still going on among many journalists and media specialists, most newsrooms and reporters today are utilizing Twitter in various ways to find sources, verify facts, and promote their new stories so that stories are published much faster. Newsrooms inevitably confront the challenge of shrinking its staff size because they do not need as many journalists as before. In addition, the advent of Twitter means that journalists are given additional duties such as spending meaningful time on Twitter or Facebook. Lauren Dugan, a Twitter expert, introduces herself as a professional Twitter coach on her website. She provides valuable services to media professionals on how to make use of Twitter and live a Twitter-life balance. I love Twitter. Some might go so far as to call me a Twitter addict, but I honestly believe I've developed a great Twitter-life balance - and I can help you achieve this too, while walking you through the steps you need to take to start tweeting like a pro. Professionally, I'm the editor of the leading Twitter-specific resource on the web, Mediabistro's AllTwitter. I cover Twitter news, marketing campaigns, apps, tools and tips on a daily basis. I also teach a number of Twitter and social media courses, helping professionals of all stripes achieve Twitter greatness. What can I do for you? Check out my "Services" above for an idea, or contact me for more information. (www.laurendugan.com) Twitter definitely has become a very effective tool for journalism. It provides a communication tool to audiences and a news-gathering tool for journalists to disseminate news. One of the most popular journalism blogs, “10000 words”, defines Twitter as “a comprehensive and helpful resource for journalists of all levels hoping to gain some insight into Twitter’s potential for journalists.” And Twitter itself says, “We want to make our tools easier to use so you can focus on your job.” Currently, Twitter has launched “Twitter for Newsrooms”, also known as #TfN, for media professionals. This useful tool helps anyone in the media industry find news stories and verify facts properly. It offers four sections in order to make the navigation more effective such as #Report, #Engage, #Publish, and #Extra. Each section offers diverse strategies for users to optimize their reporting and publishing such as digging into the topic with advanced search functions or finding more related sources on Twitter. Pete Cashmore, an influential Internet news blogger, says, “The fact that Twitter has launched an official guide for journalists is indicative of the impact of social media on the news.” Lauren Dugan, a Twitter expert, forecasts a future newsrooms being incorporated with Twitter service, saying “I expect a number of newsrooms will begin adopting some of the strategies outlined in these guides, as they increasingly become aware of Twitter’s growing importance in breaking, sourcing, and publishing the news” in her article, Twitter Launches “Twitter for Newsrooms” For Media Professionals. Although Twitter is not categorized as a deep-thought blog, the 140 character posts can make the work of publishing faster and more efficient as it incorporates diverse modes of interaction such as one to many, many to one, one to one and more. Desiree Hill, a master student at the University of North Texas, published a thesis called Twitter: Journalism Chases the Greased Pig. In her study, she mainly focused on examining how today’s traditional media are underutilizing Twitter’s potential. She concluded her thesis by suggesting newsrooms need more understanding on a non-traditional medium to improve their journalism business in the future. “Conclusions include the need for more understanding of Twitter on the part of managers, a usage of Twitter that fits the medium, rather than traditional journalism models and more study in the future so that the journalism business can stay ahead of the curve when new communication technologies are introduced.” In Hill’s thesis, what journalism can mean in the medium of Twitter is summarized in 9 categories. 1.	Journalists may use Twitter to communicate outward to many “followers”- subscribers – with specific news-related information, like breaking news, weather alerts, sports scores and more.

2.	Newsrooms may use Twitter to “follow” users in the community to see what the community – real people as opposed to experts – is talking about, such as the President’s State of the Union address or pop culture discussion of “American Idol,” as examples.

3.	Newsrooms may create internal “Twitter feeds” of credible news sources, such as politicians and state government entities, for use as a mini-wire service. Journalists can also use Twitter to get tips for story ideas through updates from other organizations. Fire and police departments in many cities have accounts, as do the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many other official entities.

4.	Journalists may use Twitter to directly contact a resource via Twitter’s internal message system, like a corporation, which may not be easy to reach by more traditional methods, via phone or email as examples.

5.	Staff may use Twitter to direct message colleagues or managers about the status of stories.

6.	News organizations can create useful lists within Twitter accounts like a list of resources during a damaging weather situation – FEMA, insurance companies, public health information – making it easy for users to find everything they need on that one topic at their fingertips.

7.	News organizations may monitor trending topics to determine blanket topics of interest to the public on any given day.

8.	Citizen journalists may become a voice for others by micro-reporting on narrow-expert topics like dairy farming.

9.	Accidental journalists may emerge when citizens find themselves unexpectedly in the midst of a breaking news situation, like the Haiti earthquake or Iran post-election protests. Example: those using Twitter during the U.S. West Coast fires in fall of 2007 kept neighbors and family up-to-date minute-by-minute (Poulson, 2007)

Twitter definitely is an efficient tool to use for journalists. It fosters the investigation of events by displaying issues and trends in a timely fashion so that it makes the examination much easier and faster. Therefore news today is no longer a mere result of work in the press room. Literally anybody can generate news on Twitter. Also, like any other news organization, Twitter reports world’s news very rapidly. For example, in 2008 when the earthquake hit China’s Sichuan Province, the first person who reported in the US was a blogger, Robert Scoble. He wrote in his blog, “It’s amazing the kind of news that you can learn by being on Twitter and the connections you can make to people across the world.” Similarly, when buildings exploded in Bozeman, Montana in spring 2009, Twitter users offered the coverage of the city’s press conference and acted like a large reporting team on the issue. Twitter users were the first ones who reported the incident. Michael Becker wrote in his blog, “At 8:12 a.m. MDT, an explo¬sion rat¬tled down¬town Bozeman, Mont., destroy¬ing three whole build¬ings and at least five busi¬nesses. Shortly after the explo¬sion, few peo¬ple out¬side of the imme¬di¬ate down¬town area knew any¬thing about the grow¬ing crisis. But Twitter knew.” Twitter shapes today’s new form of journalism business. The power of wording on Twitter is getting immensely larger. Michael Becker states, “For a long time, people have been talking about the potential of Twitter as a news source. Today, Twitter earned its stripes.” However, social media are impacting the purview of the news so that the ongoing growth of citizen journalism has blurred the line between journalists and the audiences. Despite all the positive view- points on twitter journalism that see it as a future standard form of journalism, there are still many negative perspectives toward the issue as well. The role of journalists can become greatly diminished so that journalism is reduced to becoming a tool for Twitter. Published work is not quality-proven since they are not written by professionally trained writers from an unbiased, critical point of view. On the contrary, it can be interpreted as an altogether different and innovated style of journalism according to the expanded range of public sphere due to online social media. Sue Robinson (2007) interviewed 35 writers, photographers, and editors to examine current new media’s effects on journalism. In her study, she states, “Journalistic authority in terms of its institutional cache cannot help but become diluted as it makes room for such expansions. With these changes to journalistic missions, routines, and societal relationships, newspapers and their websites are turning into an interactive public sphere that just may be forming a new kind of institution, one whose enduring boundaries are malleable and constructed as much by the content receivers as by the information producers. Such changes must have implications for the press’s power to dictate knowledge to society. The institution of the press is still fully functioning, but the news is no longer the sole purview of the press.” (Robinson, 2007) Despite these criticisms, the negative perspectives on Twitter seem much weaker compared to the positive appraisals since news can actually be more prolific and powerful by utilizing Twitter as a tool. The unprecedented dynamic relationship between readers and writers has been connecting people more directly. Jim Hopkinson, the associate marketing director at Condé Nast Digital, said, “From an internal stand point, each editor can focus on Twitter for an entire week and get into the back and forth flow with readers. From the user standpoint, they can see from the bio exactly which editor is managing the account and get a diverse viewpoint depending on the person who is in duty.” Hopkinson stresses the importance of utilizing Twitter in a news generating system, “The reason we interact with followers is because we want to create a two-way dialogue with them. Our audience is great and gives us feedback on stories. They tell us things they want to see, and they share links with us.” It essentially narrows the distance between the public and journalists. Therefore immediate and lively discussion becomes possible through using Twitter. Twitter in this sense can become a crucial tool for news gathering and delivering. Twitter is a source of information for journalism and an innovation in the news generating process. Dan Gillmor, a noted American technology writer and columnist, wrote in his article, Citizen Journalism, that “Our emerging world of distributed media has allowed the average person to become a citizen journalist just by being somewhere and being able to disseminate information. Spectators can take photos or video and upload them to the web. Even mainstream media uses the bystander who captures eyewitness footage as a resource for news broadcasts.” Furthermore Jeff Jarvis, a media theorist and a journalism professor at CUNY, even argues in his writing, the article as luxury or byproduct, that the standard news articles have become “a value-added luxury.” He says that we write articles according to demanding orders when necessary. He does not say that articles are useless or dead. They are just optional. “The bigger question all this raises is when and whether we need articles. Oh, we still do. Articles can make it easy to catch up on a complex story; they make for easier reading than a string of disjointed facts; they pull together strands of a story and add perspective. Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary for every event. They were a necessary form for newspapers and news shows but not the free flow, the never-starting, never-ending stream of digital.” Also, Twitter does the self-policing process by itself. Since quite a large immense number of people are using it at all times, all the correcting, fact-checking and editing processes occur in a very dynamically rapid pace. The feeds on Twitter are the separate byproducts. People choose what to cover in the stories and select the issues according to their taste and choices. However, the dynamic interaction makes the editing possible. Twitter users can add valuable points to the stories by pulling important information and deleting false information. Twitter itself acts like a human, not like a robot driven by technology. Emmett, the executive editor of Washington Post, said in 2009, “People want to know what their friends think and what people respect. One way to get content in front of you is to have your friends recommend it; that’s a social filtering of news.” Additionally Andy Carvin, National Public Radio’s senior product manager for online communities, defines the online community on Twitter as “a self-correcting group.” The twitter community itself provides checks and balances according to him. However in order to prohibit unqualified information getting published, media institution such as Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) have published guidelines for journalists on how to use social media like Twitter and Facebook for their work in order to reinforce the drawbacks of online social media. They outline processes such as: 1.	Procedures for fact-checking 2.	Protocols for corrections on social media sites 3.	Processes for copyediting on social media sites 4.	Any decision-making processes before something is posted 5.	In using photographs, does the individual who posted it have the rights to do so? 6.	Could a photograph have been manipulated in anyway? In May 2011 Brian Stelter, a New York Times journalist, had a master class on how to use Twitter as a news platform. Michael Becker declares that “Twitter did a job that traditional journalism could not possibly do” on his blog. For instance, an American news magazine, Time, has launched its Twitter account in August 2008. Its current audiences are more than 2 million followers, placing Time the forth rank on Twitter’s Watch chart. Time’s twitter publishes about 20 stories a day and sends out to their followers and the writers are directly interacting with readers. Jim Frederick, a managing editor, says that “Our writers actually do interact with followers quite a bit. If they get a direct message or a tweet that is asking for a response, most likely the writer will use his or her personal account to connect to the reader directly. We do that because we don’t want to junk up a channel that has 2.2 million followers with what’s essentially a private conversation.” However the professional journalists sometimes happen to be abused or threatened by users of Twitter although the large number of followers on personal account indicates the popularity of the journalist quite well. In September 2010, an Australian journalist had been abused by a Twitter user using the pen name Grog’s Gamut as Canberra public servant Greg Jericho. James Massola, the former assistant editor of Eureka Street and current journalist at the Canberra Times, said that the public had right to know Mr. Jericho’s identity since his blogging had been quite impactful to the public. According to ABC managing director Mark Scott, the blogging published by Mr. Jericho had been powerfully affecting the way the ABC covered the election campaign. In sum, Twitter itself is constructed by similar processes and functions of traditional journalism. Moreover, the restriction of the news stories to up to a maximum of 140 characters makes writers publish newsy, mysterious, and straightforward headlines to attract more clicks from followers. The users of Twitter use journalism-centric terms when they post what is happening now on their Twitter pages. Although personal taste and choice are imposed on what they post on Twitter, the dynamic self-policing interaction among users make checks and balances possible. The open source, Twitter, offers users the ability to correct misinformation in a very dynamic way. Thus, newsrooms take huge advantage of utilizing this social media tool as a news-gathering tool and a communication tool with audiences. This big change in communication due to digital innovations alters the whole process of publishing work. We still need to adjust to a new way of news reporting that incorporates a non-traditional. We still have to learn to resolve the drawbacks and negative aftermath that can result from utilizing online social media as a publishing means. This means we have to improvise the way we use Twitter for journalism since we are living at a transitional time of technology shifting. It is certainly an optimistic and a bright forecasting for future forms of journalism. The incorporation of Twitter on generating news is inevitable because of its immense power to report news almost immediately as the actual incident occurs and its ability to spread the word very rapidly. Twitter journalism will become a standard way of journalism in the future and newsrooms should utilize it more efficiently as professional journalists also are trained to use the tool to their best advantage.