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Probably the most important part of a journalist's work is building sources and chasing stories, which is largely done privately (DMs, etc) for obvious reasons.
by npunt 6y ago
Probably the most important part of a journalist's work is building sources and chasing stories, which is largely done privately (DMs, etc) for obvious reasons. This analysis misses that.
The public face of journalists on twitter is primarily to build personal brand, broadcast, and generate leads for private scoops via their brand and strategically discussion of particular topics. Much of the reason for journalists smaller bubble is they're building each other up professionally, rather than just hanging out and chatting like most other twitter users. I think this study might be confusing these two very different use cases.
- rich_sasha 6y agoAgreed, though I would add that spending a lot of time on Twitter may well distort people’s idea of general sentiment of the wider population. Something like 0.1% of the society tweets actively with a following, you then narrow it down further to people with very similar background, you may well lure yourself into thinking it’s a semi-representative group.
- npunt 6y agoDefinitely. It depends on the industry though, some are well represented on twitter and others are not, and hopefully journalists are good enough to understand their beat and where signal really is. Politics twitter might be an especially bad example since that beat is so all-encompassing. From a design perspective, twitter really is an amazing distillation of the media mindset and approach to the world, focused on soundbites, building a following, 24 hour news cycle, etc. It's totally catnip for people in media, I'm not sure a product could be much better designed for them.
- japanoise 6y agoMy impression of twitter was of an insular bizzaro-world where communities that are essentially invisible in meatspace become enormous and have outsized influence; k-pop fans are huge on twitter and almost always trending, but are barely known outside of their own circles elsewhere, not to mention all the incredibly granular political groups (the long and bloody trad-cath-leninist vs pinetree-eco-fash wars are so drawn out you'd be forgiven for not realising it's only 20 people per side, posting 24/7) It always amazes me that normal people like journalists still use such a strange website.
- andybak 6y ago> trad-cath-leninist vs pinetree-eco-fash I'm intrigued and baffled by this. Would you so kind as to expand it into something I can at least google? I mean - I think I can guess the meaning but I might be wildly wrong so I'm not going to try without some further elucidation from yourself.
- monoideism 6y agoThe term "trad-cath-leninist" probably refers to folks like this (unless there's a hardcore Leninist faction of trad-caths socialists that I am unaware of): https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jappersandjanglers/2016/09/an-orthodox-catholic-socialism/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jappersandjanglers/2016/09/an-... And "pinetree-eco-fash" refers to ecofascism, which is not uncommon among fascist groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism I was unaware they were feuding on Twitter (since I follow no one in either of those groups), but it doesn't surprise me.
- Ericson2314 6y agoI think the exact conjunction is a bit tongue-in-cheek. While there are certainly leftist infighting on Twitter, I don't think Catholicism or pine trees has much to do with it. The joke is that ideological names can be like genre names---ridiculously fine-grained but also absurdly concatenated.
- newen 6y agoThere's actually a decent amount of fighting between leftists and trad caths in twitter, if spend too much time there I guess. I'm off twitter now, thankfully. And I wouldn't be surprised to find trad cath socialists there either.
- Avshalom 6y agotrad-cath and ecofascists imply right-wing infighting
- 6y ago
- MaximumYComb 6y agoWhat proportion of journalists are building sources and chasing stories verse the proportion that are just pumping generic clickbait to generate views? I prefer to get my news from user selected sources, such as Hackernews, for a variety of topics than rely on mainstream journalism. Too many articles that have very little substance.
- simplegeek 6y agoYes. But in many cases even before a DM people send each other replies publicly (e.g, request to follow so they can DM).
- jfax 6y agoPeople who build "personal brands" on twitter should be condemned. It should not be recognised as a valid use case. There is a reason why people like dril came onto the platform to lampoon and confront the absurdity of brand twitter: that corporate twitter accounts obliviously chose to cohabit the same space that everyone else uses to discuss ass eating and gender politics, and that there's assuredly nothing more pathetic than being a "personal brand". Journalists are the absolutely the most egregious examples of personal brand twitter. This use of twitter exemplifies the problem identified in this study.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Nasrudith 6y agoYou say that it shouldn't exist but don't elaborate in the assumptions of why. There are some major unspoken assumptions to their illegitimacy. My best guess is the sheer tackiness of self-promotion involved? The control of corporate brands being antithetical and clashing to the "rawness" of talking about being hit on by old men before menarche and thus deeply phony and "uncool". Are the objections moral (it is wrong even if it works), functional (it just doesn't work), or both (it is wrong and doesn't even work)?
- snowwrestler 6y agoThe other huge factor that people miss is just straight-up socializing. A lot of journalists are on Twitter because they think it's fun, and they follow people they personally enjoy reading things from. Not everything a journalist does, is done with professional intent.