ILP 4 Twitter Credibility

Social Media has really sparked a change in the way society views and receives news. Ways of receiving the news has drastically changed over the past century from, newspapers and radios to television, however the past decade has inspired a change to a faster more accessible way, the Internet. Now most people use social media to quickly receive news information. Twitter has emerged as the quickest way of hearing news because it is instant and available on mobile as many people now have smartphones. However, there is also a problem with credibility as anyone can have a Twitter account. Generally, the common rule I use it to look at who posts the content on Twitter for example, information from a reputable account of a person from a trusted news provider is going to be more trusted than a random persons’ account. Thus, the credibility is important to gauge the information to analyze if it is trusted or no. Twitter also has a little checkmark system to verify if the person is the true person controlling the account, thus it confirms the information is coming from someone with knowledge about a certain topic. To begin this ILP, I searched Google News for information regarding the uses of Twitter for news and information. I received a bunch of articles of current news information coming from Twitter but only a few regarding how news is presented via Twitter and its impact on how society now receives news. Therefore, this probably wasn’t the most effective way to search for articles however did provide a few credible sources after scanning through the results. The first result I analyzed was from an organization called the state of media, where the authors By Amy Mitchell & Tom Rosenstiel of PEJ, and Leah Christian of the Pew Research Center were mentioned at the top of the article. The article discusses the recent emergence of information being provided via Twitter to millions of people very quickly. It discusses in depth the statistics of recent information exchange via social media especially on Twitter. The information is backed up with statistics provided from research completed by the organization, thus it didn’t compare with peers to validate the results, however the source is very credible because the authors are reputable, the information is provides to support claims made throughout and the information is current. The next article I examined is an article about Twitters’ influence on news regarding Hurricane Sandy. The article was written by Susan Berfield of Business Week. She discusses the spread of news about Hurricane Sandy via Twitter, mentioning the transfer of information while the power was out. This allowed the people affected to remain in contact with the news and developing stories regarding Hurricane Sandy. However, she also mentions how the credibility of Twitter can be off, because some people were creating lies about how the Statue of Liberty was underwater and destroyed. Thus, she addresses how Twitter can be a good source of information however, you must rely on trusted accounts for reliable information. The article isn’t as credible as the first article because it doesn’t provide statistics and wasn’t reviewed by numerous sources to confirm the information presented was correct. In the future, I would probably reference old articles published on trusted news source websites such as CNN, although I did find good articles after a bit of scanning the results.  

Berfield, Susan. "For Many, Twitter Replaced Traditional News Sources During Storm." Bloomsburg Business Week. Business Week, 31 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.

Mitchell, Amy, and Tom Rosenstiel. "What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News | State of the Media." What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News | State of the Media. The State of Media Organization, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013.