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Peddling or Creating? Investigating the Role of Twitter in News Reporting

Lecture notes in computer sciencePublished 1 January 2011Open access
Ilija Subašić, Bettina Berendt
Citations48
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TL;DR

A framework for exploring divergence between news sources is introduced by providing multiple views on corpora in comparison and suggesting that a major role of Twitter authors consists of neither creating nor peddling, but extending them by commenting on news.

Abstract

Abstract. The widespread use of social media is regarded by many as the emergence of a new highway for information and news sharing promising a new information-driven “social revolution”. In this paper, we analyze how this idea transfers to the news reporting domain. To analyze the role of social media in news reporting, we ask whether citizen journalists tend to create news or peddle (re-report) existing content. We introduce a framework for exploring divergence between news sources by providing multiple views on corpora in comparison. The results of our case study comparing Twitter and other news sources suggest that a major role of Twitter authors consists of neither creating nor peddling, but extending them by commenting on news. 1

Keywords

Social SciencesPhysics and Astronomy