A likely story: Social media and Twitter sourcing

What is Twitter? The way I think of it is it's probably a bit like being in a massive pub, packed to the rafters with lots of different people. And quite often everyone is really drunk.



What's Twitter providing today? A quick perusal reveals that axed Queens Park Rangers boss Neil Warnock believes his reputation was damaged by tweeters and actor Rob Lowe continues to cause a bit of a hullaballoo by claiming that a quarterback is to retire from the NFL.

Twitter offers something for everyone – from the frivolous to the serious.

Let's continue the drinking theme – and do tell me if I'm making a bit of a stretch here – and set up an analogy between the microblogging site and an older way of finding stories – down the pub.

I don't know if it's true that the hacks of yore loved their ale as much as it is supposed but certainly lots of stories are, or used to be, generated in the boozer.

Isn't Twitter something similar? If we forgo the increasing number of 'packaged' and sponsored tweets that are popping up, Twitter is fluid, fast and loose – you hear about something, come across something and bang – a story is born.

It's delicious stuff for newsrooms and agencies. And readers, of course. It satisfies our need to supply a multitude of stories and provides users with savvy content.

But here is the crux of the problem. There is verification and general good judgement. There is common sense and there is good journalistic practice.

Twitter's strong point is also its core fallibility. Much like the pub.

For every genuine nugget of truth there is a fair share of questionable claims, dodgy characters, hoaxes and, well, downright untruths.

Something is created, it gets picked up, passed around, regurgitated, turned into something 'true' – much like a story passed round the pub.

More and more we are seeing embarrassed news organisations forced to backtrack because they've formally reported something that has no basis in truth.

We've also seen instances where Twitter accounts have been hacked – perhaps most notably when one of Fox News' accounts, @foxnewspolitics, falsely claimed that Barack Obama had been assassinated after it was commandeered by hackers.

Increasing demands to provide news as soon as possible are only adding to the problem.

So the call often goes that newsrooms and agencies need to put plans in place to manage how they deal with Twitter content.

Yet developing a social media 'strategy' or 'policy' is basically anathema to the very soul of Twitter and other social platforms.

Policy, by definition, attempts to control, arrest, define something, to bag it up. But social media doesn't work like that – it can't be controlled in this way.

The onus on us as content providers, then, is to develop new ways of harnessing its obvious potential, or to put it another way, manage the risk.

Anyway. I'm off down the pub.

Rob Taylor

Lead Correspondent