The shareable, the conversation, and the news : an analysis of content posted on Twitter by New Zealand news journalists and news organisations.

Abstract

This research endeavours to assess the relationship between Twitter, journalists, news organisations, and content. This research aimed to drill into the content on Twitter and to what extent this content can tell us about the intentions and communications of New Zealand news journalists and organisations. By examining practising journalists and news organisations on Twitter, and using news values as a unit of measure, this research helps to look at the extent tweeted content reflects traditional news values. Lasorsa et al. (2012) have become a flagship study for social media and journalism, and this study seeks to build upon their methodology and employ O’Neill and Harcup’s 2001 news values to help assess the content produced by New Zealand journalists and news organisations. This research collected New Zealand journalists’ and news organisations’ tweets over a two-week time frame. From the 5,614 tweets collected (4252 from news organisations and 1362 from news journalists), the data showed evidence of distinct differences between journalists and news organisations Twitter feeds. Journalists showed a mix of personal, conversational and news content, and news organisations displayed a firmer representation of news content with elements of sensationalism and design tactics present. The importance of this research is to help address social media’s growing popularity and its integration with traditional journalism norms and routines.