Exploring journalists and researchers use of social media methods

• This study explores journalists' and researchers’ use of social media methods. An exploratory approach guided by validity and reliability elucidates the nature of “good social media methods for journalism”. Empirical material is my invitations for conferences and courses for journalists, journalism researchers, and digital methods researchers; my teaching and research in these fields. Furthermore, I engage my experiences from being a conference participant in a journalist conference for primary practitioners and researchers. Journalism researchers use social media methods to study how journalism changes through social media by researching journalism forms on specific social media platforms. The findings suggest that, for journalists, suitable social media methods as validity and reliability depend on revealing the online and for fact-checking the validity in the truth-claims to the “offline world”. In this, good social media methods become valid and reliable on their own and as “given”. Whether the social media methods tools have built-in biases or not, and whether all journalism, not only the studied social media, is changing, is not as discussed in journalism research or for practitioners, as in digital methods and critical data studies. Future research is needed to understand how broad and essential the issue of online research methods concernsthe built-in hidden biases in both platforms and tools. 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Social media; Method; Online research; Digital methods; Journalism research

Media and Communication Science

Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)