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Sizing Up “Media Twitter”: Exploring Population Extent, Beats, and Utility of Social Media

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Communication and Smart Technologies (ICOMTA 2021)

Part of the book series: Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies ((SIST,volume 259))

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Abstract

This mixed-methods study explores which types of journalists are on social media and what forms of knowledge-related utility they find there for their practice. We leverage computational techniques to identify more than 166,000 journalist profiles, in English, on Twitter and to examine their beats, follower counts, and volume of activity. We pair this with findings from an original 2019 survey with policy-oriented journalists (N = 450) who work on a variety of beats. Two-thirds of journalists believe social media tools help them frequently in their reporting work across many dimensions. Regression analysis finds significant associations with the technology and international affairs beats, as well as among younger journalists and those with a national audience. Our Twitter analysis, based on a dataset of 2.5 billion tweets collected in mid-2020, finds that the beats of politics, international affairs, and technology see the highest relative number of journalists on Twitter. The findings furnish a descriptive, quantitative picture of “Media Twitter” and speak to questions about social media’s place in journalism.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northeastern University School of Journalism, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    John P. Wihbey & Daniela Rincon Reyes

  2. University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 14260, USA

    Kenneth Joseph

Authors
  1. John P. Wihbey
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  2. Kenneth Joseph
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  3. Daniela Rincon Reyes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John P. Wihbey .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISEG, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  2. Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá D.C., Colombia

    Daniel Barredo

  3. University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Paulo Carlos López-López

  4. Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    Iván Puentes-Rivera

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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Wihbey, J.P., Joseph, K., Reyes, D.R. (2022). Sizing Up “Media Twitter”: Exploring Population Extent, Beats, and Utility of Social Media. In: Rocha, Á., Barredo, D., López-López, P.C., Puentes-Rivera, I. (eds) Communication and Smart Technologies. ICOMTA 2021. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 259. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5792-4_54

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