Social media is an essential of the journalist’s new toolkit, argued Julie Posetti in a Lunchbox/Soapbox presentation she recently delivered, which we’ve uploaded to watch and hear today. In an interview published on the Melbourne Press Club website, conducted while Julie was in Melbourne for her Wheeler Centre appearance, she was asked to define the term, ‘Twitterisation of journalism’.
“Through engagement with a platform like Twitter,” Julie replied, “journalists are changing their practices. Journalism is becoming more openly reflective and the reporting processes are being discussed live on the platform. We’ve seen journalists cross traditional barriers that used to separate them from the audience and the barriers that separated one news organization from another. Journalists are discussing things with one another in public before stories go to print or are broadcast. There’s collaboration between journalists in a way I haven’t previously seen and through social networking there’s a text-based version of the discussions that go on after work at the pub.”
But that’s not the end of how social media is redefining credible journalism: “There are also issues around the key tenets of 20th century journalism being redefined. That includes, importantly, objectivity, which has been challenged by Twitter’s capacity to encourage instant sharing of facts and opinions. There are also issues like verification: how do you assess whether what’s being said and shared on Twitter is true? And it’s also about engagement and how important that has been in the process of transforming journalism.”