Summery:
The purpose of the study was to broaden our understanding of journalists’ use of twitter and to complement prior studies. Their work can be used to “inform the design of more customized tools for this group of professionals.” The study conducted on 5, 000 twitter accounts in order to extract eighteen summarizing features. Based on multiple findings, the study provided the following conclusions:
- the accounts of news outlets use an official style and share more links than journalists
- Arab journalists broadcast more tweets and are more distinguishable
- television journalists share similarities with radio and print journalists
- Print and radio journalists are the most dissimilar groups
Reflection:
With twitter becoming the most powerful medium to reach the public, it essential to study the usage paten of journalists, news organizations, and news consumers and contrast their strategy. Considering their findings and summarization, we can reflect on different aspects and their implications on the journalist’s’ use of Twitter.
Reflection I (Organizations Broadcast, Journalists Target)
According the study, “For each tweet published by a journalist, an organization publishes three, on average.” Moreover, an organization shares a link in every other tweet (perhaps from its own website). But a journalist shares only one link in six tweets. This probably great indication of how organizations and journalists differ in terms of twitter usage. I believe that while journalists use twitter to express their idea and connect with people, Organizations uses it for promotion and to attract audiences. These findings also raise another question which is: Are journalists concerned more about the creditability of their sources to share it with news consumers, thus limiting their influence toward news consumers. It is clear that more work must be done to exactly determine the impact of the above findings.
Further Interesting work regarding this:
- The effectiveness of sharing a link in a tweet in terms of promoting your organization. By collecting data how many times the link accessed by news consumers, we can find out if sharing a link, a good way of promoting organization.
- Are there any similarities or differences between the journalist’s audience and the audience of the organization which the journalist affiliated with? This might indicate if the organization the journalist works for influences his/her twitter usage.
- I am also very interested in finding out how effective is to use twitter as a source of information. If it does, it might also affect the culture of journalism either in a positive or negative way.
Reflection II (Arab Journalists Are More Distinguishable)
According to the study, “Arab journalists are less likely to have this communication pattern, though. They also are more distinguishable from news consumers than English journalists are.” These might raise a big question on the relationship between Arab journalists and their news consumers. Is there any disconnection or mistress between the news consumer and the Arab journalists? We can further our understanding by conducting more research based on the findings provided by this study.
Further Interesting work regarding this:
- Does a difference in culture affect or influence twitter usage? Conducting research on journalists from different part of the world might provide some meaningful findings
- Does the journalist communication patter with the news consumers indicates creditability of the journalist or the news organization he/she represents? Does having less communication pattern indicates the journalist is not trusted or affiliated with organizations not supported by most of the news consumers?
- Is there any significant difference in word usage between Arab and English journalists? How they conduct themselves on twitter might indicate the cultural shift in twitter usage by the journalists.
