IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/meanco/v5y2017i2p67-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crises, Rumours and Reposts: Journalists’ Social Media Content Gathering and Verification Practices in Breaking News Situations

Author

Listed:
  • Klas Backholm

    (Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland)

  • Julian Ausserhofer

    (Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria, and Research Group Internet Policy & Governance, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Germany)

  • Elsebeth Frey

    (Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway)

  • Anna Grøndahl Larsen

    (Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway)

  • Harald Hornmoen

    (Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway)

  • Joachim Högväg

    (Experience Lab, Åbo Akademi University, Finland)

  • Gudrun Reimerth

    (Department of Media and Design, FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences, Austria)

Abstract

Social media (SoMe) platforms provide potentially important information for news journalists during everyday work and in crisis-related contexts. The aims of this study were (a) to map central journalistic challenges and emerging practices related to using SoMe for collecting and validating newsworthy content; and (b) to investigate how practices may contribute to a user-friendly design of a web-based SoMe content validation toolset. Interviews were carried out with 22 journalists from three European countries. Information about journalistic work tasks was also collected during a crisis training scenario ( N = 5). Results showed that participants experienced challenges with filtering and estimating trustworthiness of SoMe content. These challenges were especially due to the vast overall amount of information, and the need to monitor several platforms simultaneously. To support improved situational awareness in journalistic work during crises, a user-friendly tool should provide content search results representing several media formats and gathered from a diversity of platforms, presented in easy-to-approach visualizations. The final decision-making about content and source trustworthiness should, however, remain as a manual journalistic task, as the sample would not trust an automated estimation based on tool algorithms.

Suggested Citation

  • Klas Backholm & Julian Ausserhofer & Elsebeth Frey & Anna Grøndahl Larsen & Harald Hornmoen & Joachim Högväg & Gudrun Reimerth, 2017. "Crises, Rumours and Reposts: Journalists’ Social Media Content Gathering and Verification Practices in Breaking News Situations," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 5(2), pages 67-76.
  • Handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v5:y:2017:i:2:p:67-76
    DOI: 10.17645/mac.v5i2.878
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/878
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17645/mac.v5i2.878?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:meanco:v5:y:2017:i:2:p:67-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira or IT Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.