Tweeting the public: journalists' Twitter use, attitudes toward the public's tweets, and the relationship with the public

Abstract

This paper examines the associations between Korean journalists' perceived attitudes toward the public, their relationship with the public, and their Twitter activities. Reading and following the public's tweets was the most frequent activity for journalists on Twitter, followed by Twitter use for their personal life, the promotion of their and their organization's news stories, and job-related interaction activities with the public. Results also demonstrate that Korean journalists actively utilize the public's tweets for their news stories (e.g. as news sources). In addition, journalists' perceived usefulness of the public's tweets and perceived influence of the public's tweets are related to job-related interaction activities and their use of the public's tweets in their news stories. Importantly, journalists' perceived relationship with the public shows a positive association with their Twitter activities such as personal use, interaction with the public, and promotion activities on Twitter. The findings indicate that journalists utilize the public's tweets for their professional work and that public opinions on Twitter can be incorporated in news stories through the interaction between journalists and the public in the Twitter sphere. This exploratory study contributes to our understanding of the potential role of social media, Twitter, in particular, in information/news flow in the digital media environment, and also opens a potentially fruitful avenue for further investigations in this area.