The Social Reporter in Action

Abstract

This study analyzed journalist Andy Carvin’s live coverage on Twitter along with his discourse on journalism and social reporting. Carvin was chosen as the subject for study as he is perhaps the most prominent example of the practice of journalism based on emerging techniques of collaborative verification, transparency and co-creation. A textual analysis of 3188 tweets published by the journalist between 11 November 2014 and 21 January 2015 was conducted to investigate his techniques, particularly in terms of verification and crowdsourcing. The elements of journalism in Carvin’s discourse and practice are discussed following Kovach and Rosenstiel’s work on the essential principles for journalism practice. Findings suggest that a social media journalist can integrate both collaborative reporting and established journalistic values of accuracy, trust and verification, with the community acting as a distributed and networked newsroom. Results show the use of specific and effective techniques to overcome misinformation and serve as a trusted node in the network. This study contributes to the emerging body of work that addresses how journalistic practice is evolving and adapting in networked and shared media environments, where the journalist plays a vital role as a mediator of information, but as one of many voices.

KEYWORDS:

• Andy Carvin
• citizen journalism
• crowdsourcing
• ethics
• social media
• Twitter
• verification

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spain [CSO2016-80703-R].