Journalists and news media are using this Twitter tool for their own stories; however, sharing (other) content and engaging with their readers is quite rare. Both Pew Research project and George Washington University, both related to the journalism, media and public affairs, collaborated by reporting about the effects of the Twitter expansion use. Over 3600 tweets from over 13 (news organizations) were included in this report. During the week of February 14 through the 20th, they reported that 93% tweets contained several links to each organization’s sites. They also reported that only 6% (tweets) did not contain any links, however, only 1% were linked to other news sights. They also put into their report that non-news media was 1% linked to twitter use.
Publishing stories have become the norm between journalists and their many readers. With this approach, Twitter is basically seen as a medium to bring these two together. Only 2% were selected and chosen to get information to their readers. However, the popular Fox news network wanted feedback from their readers with 21% of tweets asking for their reader’s input.
This also was noted with individual journalists who had their own Twitter accounts; they accounted about 3% from their own personal Twitter to have their readers respond and get information to them. One Twitter users said, “When we had a huge fire at one of the local malls, he was twittering away giving information out that was important to all.” Twitter has become quite an impact on the informational highway for everyone; especially journalists who count on people such as these. Twitter becomes an important tool to journalist and media alike when it is used in this fashion.
Researchers remarked that Twitter has become like the web in early days, fear from news organizations and journalists thought they would be losing their audiences, but it looks like that isn’t so. People are pleased to get information, whether from Twitter or not, so it seems as though Twitter is being watched to see how it ranks up there when people are looking for mainstream news.