U.S. Newspaper Editors’ Ratings of Social Media as Influential News Sources

Masahiro Yamamoto, Seungahn Nah, Deborah Chung

Abstract


Social media, as one key platform for citizen journalism, are becoming a useful news-gathering tool for journalists. Based on data from a nationwide probability sample of newspaper editors in the United States, this study investigates the extent to which newspaper editors consider social media an influential news source. Results show that variations in editors’ ratings of social media as a news source were related to multiple levels of influence, including professional journalistic experience, organization size, community structural pluralism, and citizen journalism credibility. Implications are discussed for the roles of social media in news production.


Keywords


citizen journalism, credibility, newspaper editors, social media, structural pluralism

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