For the birds: Media sourcing,Twitter,and the minimal effect on audience perceptions

Abstract

Twitter has emerged as a key news source, but questions remain about the ethics of relying on it as a source and the implications of such reliance for audience impressions. Two experiments test perceptions of news attributed to Twitter. Study 1 (N = 699) tests the effects of quoting from Twitter and showing actual tweets. The results suggest minimal influences on credibility or quality perceptions. Study 2 (N = 311) tests the equivalence of quotes attributed to various sources and investigates the effects of attributing the origin of a news story to Twitter. Results suggest that visual representations of tweets may have a negative effect, but otherwise perceptual effects remain minimal.

Keywords

Credibility journalism news routines source selection Twitter

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