Journalists and Twitter: A Multidimensional Quantitative Description of Usage Patterns
Summary:
This is a paper that talk about their study on twitter in the news. They did extension research into the Twitter accounts held by journalists, news organizations, and consumers. Using the data from the accounts they were able to use Welch and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests to show statistical differences in eight comparisons across two regions, Arab world and European world. They found that journalists use a direct form of communication design to engage their audience and use twitter as a source of information. On the other hand, news outlets use a professional style in their tweets and are more likely to use links in their post. They also they found that Arab journalist are more distinguishable from news consumers than English ones.
Reflection:
- Quote: “Journalists and organizations also differ in the medium used to publish their tweets. In fact, while they both use a desktop in about 30% of the time, mobile is the preferred medium for journalists (54.95%), and organizations tend to use special Twitter applications for posting more than 28% of the tweets”
- Honestly, this makes totally sense to me because I think that most of the Journalists in this study are younger Journalists who would be more incline to be on their phone all the time. I know that my generation is always on our phones and it would make sense that Journalists who are in my generation or the one before would also be on their phones all the time. I would love to see an age breakdown of the journalists in this study.
- Overall, I didn’t find the results of the study suspiring because Bagdouri’s results says that news organizations are less likely to retweet posts or engage with users. This makes sense because when the news organizations accounts post they are posting for the whole company and thus can’t risk endorsing a tweet that would bring the hate from their twitter community. Whereas, a journalist is only speaking for themselves so they can post more of what they believe in.
Additional Questions:
- How does the “fake news” change the way we view tweets from journalists and news organizations?
- How does journalists or news organizations political leaning affect how the public looks and engages with the tweets?
