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

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 (<em>N </em>= 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.

What Eye Movements and Facial Expressions Tell Us about User-Friendliness: Testing a Tool for Communicators and Journalists

“…A second usability test of a close-to-working prototype with a reactive interface was conducted. Central results from the first usability test were used in the process to transform the static first prototype into an interactive one (see the previous book chapter by Backholm et al, 2017 Another was due to the incorporation of psychophysiological measurements. Talking affects both SC levels and facial expressions detections (Johnson & Campos, 1967) and has a negative impact on task performance (van den Haak, de Jong, & Schellens, 2003).…”

“…The main focus of the first test was to see if users understood 'the big picture', investigating whether the features included fit the mental models that journalists use when gathering, monitoring and validating information. The test is described in detail in an article byBackholm et al (2017). In this chapter, we focus on the test measurements of psychophysiology.The laboratory part of the test was conducted in a room furnished as an office, where the test person could use a stationary computer to try out the prototype.…”

Tailoring Tools to the Rescue: Lessons Learned from Developing a Social Media Information Gathering Tool

“…Avoiding lower-and higher-level usability discrepancies in a product is especially important to maintain SA in high-stress environments. Although not outspokenly using the low/high level categorisation, Endsley and Jones (2004) (2) semi-structured interviews with news journalists (N = 22) from midsized media organisations in three European countries (Backholm, Ausserhofer, et al, 2017) and…”

“…(3) observations of, and semi-structured interviews with, five journalism students participating as journalists in a regional crisis training scenario (information about region not provided due to participant anonymity; Backholm, Ausserhofer, et al, 2017).…”