Lecture 3 in the course From Gatekeeping to Gatewatching: News and Journalism in the Digital Age. This lecture series addresses the continuing transformation of the production and consumption of journalism in the contemporary media environment. It provides a brief history of the impact of participatory online news production and engagement practices – from the first wave of citizen journalism to the social media platforms of today – on how news content is disseminated and experienced; examines reactive and proactive responses to these changes by news organisations and journalists; and explores the longer-term impact of these developments on the public sphere, touching on the power of social media platforms and their role in shaping their users’ information diets. Readings are largely drawn from Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere (Bruns, 2018), with additional readings recommended for selected lectures. Reading for this lecture: Bruns, A. (2018). #BREAKING: Social News Curation during Acute Events. Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 3. Peter Lang.

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#BREAKING:
Social News Curation during Acute Events
Prof. Axel Bruns
Guest Professor, IKMZ, University of Zürich
a.bruns@qut.edu.au — a.bruns@ikmz.uzh.ch

2. From This…

3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackdorsey/182613360
To This:

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Social Media (and)
Breaking News

5. 2009:

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--a6wD5jRSs&ab_channel=InventingTheWorld
2004:

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1963:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-zapruder-film-capturing-when-the-world-changed-in-26-seconds/

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What’s New?
mobile recording devices (1963)
+
high-bandwidth communications networks (2004)
+
direct means of publication (2009)
+
instant mass coordination (2007)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy2qf_pR6OE&ab_channel=CNBCMakeIt

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News Breaks
on Twitter

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Why Twitter?
• Platform affordances:
• 94% of accounts are public
• Easy, instant posting (originally even via SMS, now also with added images and video)
• Their posts are visible to all online, without needing a Twitter account
• Anyone can follow anyone, without reciprocity
• #hashtags enable searching for and tracking events and topics
• This allows ad hoc publics to form and coordinate their activities
• Retweeting and on-sharing increases visibility and spread of key tweets
– gatewatching and news curation
• Trending topic algorithms pick up on these signals and provide further amplification
– algorithmic gatewatching and news curation

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https://www.sjpiatek.com/research/sandiegofire-the-first-successful-hashtag/

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There’s always someone already in the area:

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(No. But.)
The Twitter Revolution?

18. https://blogs.gwu.edu/ipdgcsmartpower/2012/09/11/new-media-and-conflict-after-the-arab-spring/

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#egypt: @mentions
1-28 Feb. 2011 15 June to 15 Sep. 2011
Arabic
Non-Arabic
Arabic
Non-Arabic
Axel Bruns, Tim Highfield, and Jean Burgess. “The Arab Spring and Its Social Media Audiences: English and Arabic Twitter Users
and Their Networks.” In Martha McCaughey, ed., Cyberactivism on the Participatory Web. New York: Routledge, 2014. 86-116.

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Covering the Arab Spring
(https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3890674/tweeting-the-news-andy-carvin-test-pilots-twitter-journalism)

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Social Media as Citizen Media
‘a vital source for real-time citizen news’ during crises — Stuart Allan
‘the witnesses are taking over the news’ — Jeff Jarvis
‘there is journalism before Twitter and journalism after Twitter’ — Emily Bell
‘a new seismograph for current and surprising events’ — Christoph Neuberger
‘a common medium for professional journalism and citizen journalism’ — Gilad Lotan et al.
‘social awareness streams … outside the formal structures of journalism’ — Alfred Hermida
‘crowdsourc[ing] prevalent actors and their tweets to prominence’
— Sharon Meraz & Zizi Papacharissi

22. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2015/usgs-twitter-data-earthquake-detection

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Ad Hoc Communities

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https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-will-flood-again-and-no-dam-can-stop-it/news-story/86992b3d2a6511143fe05d1563403d54
2011:

26. Axel
Bruns,
Jean
Burgess,
Kate
Crawford,
and
Frances
Shaw.
#qldfloods
and
@QPSMedia:
Crisis
Communication
on
Twitter
in
the
2011
South
East
Queensland
Floods.
Brisbane:
ARC
Centre
of
Excellence
for
Creative
Industries
and
Innovation,
2012.

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(NZ Herald)
2011:

28. #eqnz 2011: @replies Received (Including Manual Retweets)
mainstream news
authorities
utilities
Axel
Bruns
and
Jean
Burgess.
“Local
and
Global
Responses
to
Disaster:
#eqnz
and
the
Christchurch
Earthquake.”
Paper
presented
at
the
Australia
New
Zealand
Disaster
&
Emergency
Management
Conference,
Brisbane,
18
Apr.
2012.

29. 2016:

30. https://marketing.twitter.com/en/insights/twitter-conversation-report-black-lives-matter
2020:

31. https://marketing.twitter.com/en/insights/twitter-conversation-report-black-lives-matter

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But…

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https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-22214511
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/a/2013/the-boston-bombing-how-journalists-used-twitter-to-tell-the-story

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And Journalists?

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Collective Gatewatching and News Curation
‘a user-generated collaborative argument on what is news’
— Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira
‘differences lie not in the news values that are prevalent,
but in who makes the decisions based on the same news values’
— Papacharissi and de Fatima Oliveira
‘organically emerging leaders’ — Papacharissi

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(https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/23/3890674/tweeting-the-news-andy-carvin-test-pilots-twitter-journalism)
‘Carvin, himself, has described his Twitter network as
“my editors, researchers & fact-checkers. You’re my news room” … .
He has said his work is “another flavor of journalism,”
seeing himself as “another flavor of journalist.”’ — Hermida et al.

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Journalists in Acute Events on Social Media
• Consequences:
• Recognition as news actors in themselves (not just as working for news outlets)
• Change to the hierarchy of sources – more diversity of voices
• New news frames emerge from communities – networked framing (Meraz & Papacharissi)
• Corrections and alternative perspectives compete with journalistic reporting
• … and this may affect further mainstream news reporting

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Disintermediation, Reintermediation, Conflict
• Disintermediation:
• Removing journalists as necessary intermediaries between events and news audiences
• Reintermediation:
• Inserting Twitter (and other platforms) as new intermediaries – including the journalists who use
social media to report
• Conflict:
• Journalists and news media outlets remain unwilling to give up their roles
 From journalism as a ‘first rough draft of history’ to Twitter as a ‘first draft of the present’?

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‘such will be our new view of news:
urgent, live, direct, emotional, personal’ — Jeff Jarvis

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Next Time

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Readings
3. 7.10.: #BREAKING: Social News Curation during Acute Events
Bruns, A. (2018). #BREAKING: Social News Curation during Acute Events. Gatewatching and
News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 3. Peter Lang.
4. 14.10.: Random Acts of Gatewatching: Everyday Newssharing Practices
Bruns, A. (2018). Random Acts of Gatewatching: Everyday Newssharing Practices. Gatewatching
and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 4. Peter Lang.

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Lecture
• NOTE:
• Week 4 lecture will be pre-recorded and made available through the OLAT site.

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Any last questions?