Week 4: TwitterThe Indispensable News Tool

1/ This week: following and sourcing news on Twitter

2/ Next class: producing news on Twitter

3/ Practice: finding what you’re looking for on Twitter

4/ blog workshop

Is Twitter really thatindispensable?

Why?

News breaks faster on Twitter thananywhere else, including the agencies that

once dominated the speed contest.

If you’re not on Twitter, in a position to findand follow the breaking news, chances are

you’ll be among the last to know.

Use caution

But sometimes news breaks toofast.

What examples?

Use caution

• Set up systems to follow the news withsources you trust (we’ll talk about how)

• Verify or source all the news (we’ll also talk about that)

• But start by being engaged: creatingcommunity, a reputation, and above all justfiguring out how to navigate in the Twittersystem.

Learn the language and customs.

Following news on Twitter

• follow the actors in your stories: in other words the accounts tweeting about your beats and your interests.

• Find those people on twitter and follow them.

Who should you follow?

How do you find them?

News events generate twitter accounts

Following news on Twitter

• Create lists

• Create lists especially if you have multiple beats or verticals of interest.

• Look at other people’s lists and subscribe (youdon’t have to follow any of the people on the list to subscribe)

• Make lists as you go along (too time-consuming later)

What kind of lists might you want to create?

Following news on Twitter

• Use #hashtags

• Locate the ones relevant to your beat or community, or relevant to an event

How do you know what the right ones are?

How do you find out what’s trending?

Searching for news on Twitter

Twitter has lots of great, advanced search tools integrated within the search function, easy to use (and so do lots of twitter clients).

• Experiment with searching on Twitter

• Simple search, advanced search

• Save your searches!

Why would you want to save your searches?

Saved searches

If you’re covering a community or a beat, you'll want to craft some custom searches that turn up useful sources

and observations.

You can save these searches and check them daily.

Do you know these twitter clients?

HootSuite

TweetDeck

Seesmic

Beyond Twitter Itself

There are dozens of great tools to help journalists find news on Twitter, with more

being developed all the time.

Twitter is aggressively pursuing this (and then buying them out).

Some Examples: SnapBird

SnapBird:

Free tool allows you to search by keyword for a particular tweet in your timeline, as well as favourites and mentions. You can also searchthese categories in other people's tweets, whilesearching for direct messages is of course limited to your own account only.

Some Examples: Topsy

Topsy:

Topsy is a search engine that lets you findarchived tweets – and now includes every tweetsent since the dawn of Twitter. Literally.

Still being tested and reinvented:

A new partnership between Dataminr, Twitterand CNN, announced last year:

Dataminr technology looks at tweets and findspatterns that can reveal breaking news when it’sstill in its “infancy.” Those alerts can be deliveredto journalists in a variety of ways, including via desktop applications, email, mobile alerts, and pop-up alerts.

How to start using twitterto source news?

Start by using Twitter regularly. Don’t wait for the breaking

news to break to figure out how to use it.

Once you start searching and gathering, you’ll also need to

start verifying.

This is just part of the waytwitter works. It’s not a media,

it’s a platform.

Verifying news on Twitter

Who is the source?

• Have you interacted before?

• How long have then been on twitter?

• What’s in their previous tweets?

• Are they an expert?

• Check who the person follows and who followsthem: what does this say?

• Do they have other elements of identification in their bio: a blog, an address, a number?

Verifying news on Twitter

What’s in the Tweet?

• If it’s breaking news and an eye witenss, check the time of tweet and if there’s a photo

• Use advanced search to find other tweetsabout same news to confirm (or infirm)

• If it’s eye-witness account, check person’sprevious tweets to confirm that they live in/have access to/know about the news they’re tweeting

What are some more aggressiveways to verify information?

Verifying news on Twitter

• DM them if they follow you• Follow them, they might follow back and DM• Send them a tweet starting with @theirname

asking them to contact you via email or phone• Find a non-Twitter contact for them: is there a

blog, affiliation, FB page mentioned in the bio? Find them on FB and send message

• If you can reach the source, ask tough questions (ie what they saw in person vs. What they heardfrom someone else, can they send more pictures)

Verifying news on Twitter

Crowdsourcing verification.

• Another reason to have built up a communityon twitter is when you want to ask whetherpeople can confirm a fact

• Send put a question with a hashtag of the news event to broaden the reach

• But then make sure to verify the sources of th answers you receive

end

Set Up Third Party Apps

• Work with multiple Twitter accounts simultaneously

• View multiple streams of Twitter information simultaneously

• Schedule tweets for posting when you're away

• Add photos to tweets

• Faster/smoother/more keyboardable performance

• Tracking and analytics

• Better URL shortening

• Integration with other social networks