ABSTRACT

Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduits to surface the words of ‘ordinary people.’ This practice treats tweets more like content, an interchangeable building block of news, than like sources, whose ideas and messages must be verified. Using a corpus of U.S. news stories with tweets in them, we provide empirical evidence for our argument of the power of platforms to legitimate speech and shape journalism. This study illuminates journalists’ role in transferring some of the press’s authority to Twitter, thereby shaping the participants in and content of public deliberation.

摘要

研究表明，记者和 Twitter 之间的相互依存度越来越高。这种相互依赖的背后是什么，它是如何在新闻文本中体现出来的？我们认为，社交媒体平台（尤其是 Twitter）已将自己定位为合法内容的提供者，记者们并未完全挑战这一预测，有时甚至是在怂恿。取而代之的是，记者依靠这些平台来接触强大的用户，并作为传播“普通人”话语的渠道。这种做法将推文更多地视为内容，一种可互换的新闻构建块，而不是类似的来源，其想法和信息必须得到验证。我们使用包含推文的美国新闻报道语料库，为我们关于平台对合法言论和塑造新闻业的力量的论点提供经验证据。