Social Media: A Research Tool for Journalists

By Brianna Enders

The ability to attain real-time information through social media networking allows journalists to stay updated with user-generated content that pertain to their beat or article topic. Websites created to organize, search and monitor the subject matter of social media websites have established an efficient way for journalists to notice trends online and utilize them in their research and news reports. There are many tools in the world wide web that journalists can employ to monitor a topic and attain real-time information. I will outline a few of them here:

•      Socialmention.com -- The transition into online journalism can seem overwhelming due to the numerous social media websites that provide access to an endless range of information. Socialmention is a website that allows you to search the content of social media sites with a single search entry. It also compiles statistics about the keyword and its sentiment, usage per minute, related hashtags and sources where it was published. 

    

This screen shot of the search "Obama 2012" in Socialmention shows results from Facebook, Reddit and Delicious.

•      Tweetchat.com -- Twitter users use hashtags to convey the subject of their tweet. Tweetchat is a hashtag search engine that continuously updates itself. If the feed is moving too fast, there is a pause function that can freeze the tweet feed and can be resumed at any time. There is also a function to choose how many seconds between the feed's automatic refresh time, and a "block" and "feature" component where you can monitor certain Twitter users according to your preferences. 

    

This Tweetchat screen shot showcases the hype for the vice presidential debate tonight, with many Twitter users voicing opinions and excitement.

•      Storify.com -- This website enables you to compose a news story while searching and inserting appropriate material from social media websites. Liz Heron complied tweets in this Storify article of tips to give to her journalism students in a workshop on social media reporting at New York University. The Storify bookmarklet allows you to pull media from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Instagram, Google, as well as embed URLs to your news story.

This screen shot from the Storify article on crowdsourcing as an ethical framework for political coverage, shows the use of Youtube videos and tweets.