ABSTRACT

The use of social media is now widely accepted within journalism as an outlet for news information. Live tweeting of unfolding events is standard practice. In March 2014, Oscar Pistorius went on trial in the Gauteng High Court for murder. Hundreds of journalists present began live-tweeting coverage, an unprecedented combination of international interest, permission to use technology and access which resulted in massive streams of consciousness reports of events as they unfolded. Based on a corpus of Twitter feeds of 24 journalists covering the trial, this study analyses the content and strategies of these feeds in order to present an understanding of how microblogging is used as a live reporting tool. This study shows the development of standardised language and strategies in reporting on Twitter, concluding that journalists adopt a narrow range of approaches, with no significant variation in terms of gender, location or medium. This is in contrast to earlier studies in the field.

摘要

社交媒体的使用现在在新闻业中被广泛接受，作为新闻信息的出口。正在发生的事件的实时推文是标准做法。2014 年 3 月，奥斯卡·皮斯托瑞斯 (Oscar Pistorius) 因谋杀罪在豪登省高等法院受审。在场的数百名记者开始在推特上进行现场报道，这是前所未有的国际关注、技术使用许可和访问权限的结合，导致事件发生时大量的意识流报道。基于 24 名报道审判的记者的 Twitter 提要语料库，本研究分析了这些提要的内容和策略，以展示对如何将微博用作实时报道工具的理解。这项研究显示了 Twitter 上报告中标准化语言和策略的发展，结论是记者采用的方法范围狭窄，在性别、地点或媒介方面没有显着差异。这与该领域的早期研究形成对比。