Marcel Broersma

SOCIAL MEDIA AS BEAT Tweets as a news source during the 2010 British and Dutch elections

While the newspaper industry is in crisis and less time and resources are available for newsgathering, social media turn out to be a convenient and cheap beat for (political) journalism. This article investigates the use of Twitter as a source for newspaper coverage of the 2010 British and Dutch elections. Almost a quarter of the British and nearly half of the Dutch candidates shared their thoughts, visions, and experiences on Twitter. Subsequently, these tweets were increasingly quoted in newspaper coverage. We present a typology of the functions tweets have in news reports: they were either considered newsworthy as such, were a reason for further reporting, or were used to illustrate a broader news story. Consequently, we will show why politicians were successful in producing quotable tweets. While this paper, which is part of a broader project on how journalists (and politicians) use Twitter, focuses upon the coverage of election campaigns, our results indicate a broader trend in journalism. In the future, the reporter who attends events, gathers information face-to-face, and asks critical questions might instead aggregate information online and reproduce it in journalism discourse thereby altering the balance of power between journalists and sources.

Twitter as a news source : How Dutch and British newspapers used tweets in their news coverage, 2007–2011

Twitter has become a convenient, cheap and effective beat for journalists in search of news and information. Reporters today increasingly aggregate information online and embed it in journalism discourse. In this paper, we analyse how tweets have increasingly been included as quotes in newspaper reporting during the rise of Twitter from 2007 to 2011. The paper compares four Dutch and four British national tabloids and broadsheets, asking if tabloid journalists are relying more on this second-hand coverage than their colleagues from quality papers. Moreover, we investigate in which sections of the paper tweets are included and what kinds of sources are quoted. Consequently, we present a typology of the functions tweets have in news reports. Reporters do include these utterances as either newsworthy or to support or illustrate a story. In some cases, individual tweets or interaction between various agents on Twitter even triggers news coverage. We argue that this new discursive practice alters the balance of power between journalists and sources.

New platform, old habits? Candidates’ use of Twitter during the 2010 British and Dutch general election campaigns:

Twitter has become one of the most important online spaces for political communication practice and research. Through a hand-coded content analysis, this study compares how British and Dutch Parliamentary candidates used Twitter during the 2010 general elections. We found that Dutch politicians were more likely to use Twitter than UK candidates and on average tweeted over twice as much as their British counterparts. Dutch candidates were also more likely to embrace the interactive potential of Twitter, and it appeared that the public responded to this by engaging in further dialogue. We attribute the more conservative approach of British candidates compared to the Netherlands to historic differences in the appropriation of social media by national elites, and differing levels of discipline imposed from the central party machines.

The Unbearable Limitations of Journalism On Press Critique and Journalism’s Claim to Truth

Though the impossibility of a mimetic and purely objective representation of reality is commonly accepted, it is striking that journalisms claim to truth and authenticity is still so vivid in journalism and in public discourse. Its supposed ability to to mirror reality by verifying true facts remains the basic assumption underlying press critique, as becomes clear in for example the books of Nick Davies and Joris Luyendijk who both criticize journalism for its inability to represent social reality accurately. This article contends that to go beyond the unbearable limitations of journalism and understand how it works, we should not approach journalism as a descriptive discourse but on the contrary as a performative discourse designed to persuade readers that what it describes is real. By successfully doing so, journalism transforms an interpretation into truth — into a reality the public can act upon. It is furthermore argued that journalism does not derive its performative power from its contents (the facts), but merely from its forms and style. News consumers tend to believe the contents that come with professional routines and conventions, justifying and masking the subjective interpretation and news selection of the individual journalist. If we acknowledge that journalism is a performative discourse it is impossible to be transparent about its limitations and its inability to discover the truth and introduce structural ambiguity in news writing as is suggested by press critics.

De-converging the newsroom: Strategies for newsroom change and their influence on journalism practice

This article introduces the concept of de-convergence to analyse recent changes in the newsroom at the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. While the concept of convergence or multimedia journalism has been introduced worldwide, de Volkskrant decided to separate their print and online newsroom. In this de-converged model the traditional print journalist has made a comeback, no longer charged with multimedia tasks. De Volkskrant initially anticipated the digital age by developing a cross-media strategy in which an integrated newsroom would serve multiple platforms. However, the lack of a solid business model and cultural resistance of reporters hindered these ambitions. By creating a new digital newsroom for all the web titles the chain owns, it is argued that convergence on a vertical level (within a brand) has given way to horizontal convergence (within the publishing house). The article analyses the factors which influenced decision-making and how these forms of (de)convergence affect journalism practice and the newspaper brand. Findings are based on an in-depth ethnographic study.

Activating the past in the Ferguson protests : Memory work, digital activism and the politics of platforms

This article analyzes the Facebook page Justice for Mike Brown—set up during the 2014 Ferguson protests—in order to rethink the role of memory work within contemporary digital activism. We argue that, as a particular type of discursive practice, memory work on the page bridged personal and collective action frames. This occurred in four overlapping ways. First, the page allowed for affective commemorative engagement that helped shape Brown’s public image. Second, Brown’s death was contextualized as part of systematic injustice against African Americans. Third, the past was used to legitimize present action, wherein the present was continually connected to the past and future. And fourth, particular discursive units became recognizable symbolic markers during the protests and for future recall. Based on this typology, we show that memory work, although multidirectional and in flux, is stabilized by the interactions between the page administrator, users, and Facebook’s operational logic.

Closing the gap?: Twitter as an instrument for connected representation

In this chapter, we present a typology of the tweeting behaviour of candidates as a means of analysing the extent to which politicians are harnessing the potential of social media to actively interact with their constituents. Our research, which included content analysis of tweets (n = 13,637) from all the Conservative and Labour tweeting candidates during the 2010 U.K. General Election, focused on four aspects of tweets: type (normal post, interaction, retweet, retweet with comment); interaction (with, e.g. a politician, journalist, citizen); function (e.g. updating, promoting, advice giving, debating); and topic. Additionally, a qualitative reading on the use of personal tweets was carried out. By examining candidates’ tweeting behaviour, we show that British politicians still mainly use Twitter as a unidirectional form of communication. They are neglecting the possibility this social network offers for, what we call, connected representation.

A Question of Power : The changing dynamics between journalists and sources

News is born in a display of courtship between journalists and sources. The former have to seduce the latter to contribute to news stories, to give them information and to provide interesting and attractive quotes, preferably on the record. After all, an iron rule in most news rooms is that there is no story without a source and a story should at least be supported by two independent sources to be aired, wired or printed. According to the normative framework of the profession, sources are indispensable to confirm and validate information that underlies news stories, even when shorter routine stories based on information subsidies are circulated without being thoroughly checked or checked at all (Lewis, Williams, and Franklin 2008). However, just like love affairs journalist source relations are not unidirectional but reciprocal by nature. They are ‘‘driven by a strategic complementarity of interests’’ (Franklin 2003, 47). Both parties need to feel they have something to gain and they both can take the initiative for a conversation. Sources like politicians, social movements, business companies or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have a fixed interest to be visible in news coverage. They tempt reporters through informal communication or by providing information subsidies to grant them access to the news in a way that fits their interests. PR departments and communication professionals have to both manage information flows and push stories. Other sources, for example judges or other civil servants whose positions depend on confidentiality, are harder to get and less inclined to share information or speak in public. They can take the liberty to ignore the advances of journalists or only agree to participate on their own conditions. The dynamics between journalists and sources*the social interaction that determines the trade of information*thus lies at the heart of journalism practice. Journalism is in essence a struggle over the boundaries of the public sphere; a struggle over what information becomes public and what remains in the private realm, and which topics are discussed openly and which remain concealed. Journalists and sources have no fixed roles in this struggle and the balance of power between them is not a given. It is constantly (re-)negotiated both on the practical and the symbolic level. After all, the power to determine which interpretations of social reality are legitimate is at stake. While sources decide what could be published, journalists eventually determine what will be published and who will get a voice in the news. This structured mutual dependency is key to understanding journalism and is deeply engrained in the profession’s norms (like being independent), practices (for example, fact checking) and textual forms (such as attribution). Although sourcing is a central and defining element in journalism, it did not attract the undivided attention of scholars. It has mainly been discussed in the context of studies that analyze news production and the construction of reality. The articles in this special issue aim to address the power balance between reporters and their sources specifically.

Witnessing in the new memory ecology: Memory construction of the Syrian conflict on YouTube

With the pervasiveness of mobile technologies, witnesses have the opportunity to mediate up-close and seemingly truthful recordings of events. As such, “witness videos” have become prominent in news reports and serve as authoritative resources in the construction of memory. However, once they are uploaded to video-sharing sites and popular archives such as YouTube, they are being reassembled and remixed by distinct actors, along the lines of their own ideological agendas. Focusing on the chemical attack on Ghouta, Syria, this article investigates how witness videos are represented by uploaders (ranging from established media to activists) and structured by the affordances and sociotechnical practices associated with the platform. Hence, we argue, although the future memory of the attack is constituted by witness videos, it is powerfully shaped by various actors, both human and nonhuman. These mechanisms of memory construction are empirically explored by qualitative and quantitative analyses of meta-data and (remixed) content.

Repositioning news and public connection in everyday life : a user-oriented perspective on inclusiveness, engagement, relevance, and constructiveness

News has traditionally served as a common ground, enabling people to connect to others and engage with the public issues they encounter in everyday life. This article revisits these theoretical debates about mediated public connection within the context of a digitalized news media landscape. While academic discussions surrounding these shifts are often explored in terms of normative ideals ascribed to political systems or civic cultures, we propose to reposition the debate by departing from the practices and preferences of the news user instead. Therefore, we deconstruct and translate the concept of public connection into four dimensions that emphasize people’s lived experiences: inclusiveness, engagement, relevance, and constructiveness. Situating these in an everyday life framework, this article advances a user-based perspective that considers the role of news for people in digital societies. Accordingly, it offers a conceptual framework that aims to encapsulate how news becomes meaningful, rather than why it should be.