“Twitter Just Exploded”

Abstract

News media regularly include the voice of the "man or woman in the street" alongside that of the actors involved in a news story. Journalists use these vox pops to give an impression of public opinion. With the coming of social media, access to people's opinions has never been so easy. Little research exists about how social media (Twitter in particular) are used by journalists to describe public opinion. This is the question this research aims to answer by using a combination of a qualitative and a quantitative content analysis of Dutch and Flemish news websites. We found several patterns regarding the use of Twitter vox pops. First, we found Twitter to be regularly used as a representation of public opinion. Second, many items generalised these opinions to larger groups with strong -mostly negative-emotions. Third, when referring to Twitter, the articles used (abstract) quantifiers and hyperbolic terms (commotion, explosions) to imply an objective basis for these inferences about the "vox Twitterati".

The responsibility of social media in times of societal and political manipulation

“…This opportunity is a blessing and risk, as Evan Williams, founder of Twitter, said in 2017: “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place … I was wrong about that” (quoted by Streitfeld, 2017 ). According to Beckers and Harder (2016) who analysed content in Dutch and Flemish news websites on Twitter, those are regularly used as a representation of public opinion which contain, as they say, “strong—mostly negative—emotions”.…”

Intermedia Agenda Setting in the Social Media Age: How Traditional Players Dominate the News Agenda in Election Times

“…Their content may, in turn, be used in journalists’ reports, making citizens co-producers of news (Bruns and Highfield 2012). Journalists anticipate audience feedback on the news they cover and incorporate it in their follow-up reports (Beckers and Harder 2016). Also, the breaking news genre is not exclusively a matter for television or radio any longer, nor is news always reported first by journalists (Bruns and Highfield 2012).…”

Social Media and Journalism: 10 Years Later, Untangling Key Assumptions

“…It is now common for journalists to point to social media posts, particularly tweets, as an indicator of what people are saying [4][13] [30]. The logic is that Twitter is a modern version of person-on-the-street interviews, or even a journalistic stand-in for actual polling.…”