Using Twitter as a News Source

By Lisa Salabritas

The end of 2010 marked the first time that people turned to the internet for news over newspapers. While televised news is still the leading place people find their news, digital journalism – news online – continues to be a growing industry.

Saying that you’re getting your news from the internet is vague, though. Where do you go for your news online? You can turn to Google News for an overview of the latest national news stories. For local news stories, your local news stations have websites. It’s no surprise social media is an ever-growing way to find the most up to date news on a variety of levels, including global, national, local and hyperlocal.

Facebook and Twitter are both obvious choices for news. News outlets and other companies can almost instantly update their accounts, making it easy to provide audiences with breaking news stories. In addition to breaking that news, Facebook and Twitter offer the ability for the news to be shared among users, maximizing the audiences of the stories quickly.

Twitter gives people and businesses the ability to break news, too. Users can post what they’re seeing and act as citizen journalists. Businesses can use social media for breaking news about their company. Although, Twitter is making an update that will change the way news organizations give followers their news.

Twitter Makes Moves to Expand as a News Source

It’s no secret that many people turn to Twitter for information. There’s even a way to cite a Tweet in an academic paper. If Twitter is a credible source for a paper, it’s no wonder that people see it as a credible news source.

Here are some reasons to turn to Twitter for a news source:

• It’s quick. You can tell what the story is about by reading 140 characters or fewer and decide if you want to read on.
• It’s relevant. Twitter can be updated so quickly, making it a great place to find breaking news. In many cases, you can find a snippet of a story on Twitter before it’s up on a website or on TV.
• It’s everywhere. Journalists, news organizations, television personalities and more are on Twitter.
• You can get news from a variety of news outlets in one place. By following accounts from organizations such as CNN, NJ.com, NBC Philadelphia, MSNBC and more, you can receive local, national and global news all in one place.
• Lists allow users to group accounts into one Twitter feed. By making a list of news outlets, you can read through that list to get Tweets from only news outlets to quickly get all the information you’re looking for.

As stated above, one of the main reasons that Twitter is a great source for news is because of its quick and to-the-point word limit. Last week, Twitter announced that they will be offering expanded Tweets to partner news organization. This means that users will be able to expand the Tweet for more information before clicking through to read more. Users will still see the quick 140 character Tweet, but they’ll have the option to expand it to view the title, a preview of the story, the author and the author’s Twitter handle all without going to the article’s website for the full

This will also be on Twitter’s mobile app and will show all of the information on one screen with no scrolling or resizing necessary.

Photo from Twitter

The expanded Tweet is currently available only for select news organizations, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other select U.S. news organizations.

The expanded Tweet for news sources makes it even easier to users to get the basic information they need from the news story. Will this change the way that you get your news?

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Tags: news, social media, twitter