Social Media Monitoring Apps in News Work: A Mixed-Methods Study of Professional Practices and Journalists’ and Citizens’ Opinions

Abstract

Social media plays an important role for journalists, as a source of breaking news and a way of monitoring trends and sentiment. To help journalists find and filter newsworthy social media content, a number of sophisticated apps have been developed, some by social media platforms themselves and others by third parties. This article explores the use of such apps by UK journalists and the opinions of social media users who are surveilled by them. The results reveal that, as of 2018, a third of UK journalists use social media monitoring apps, and that some of these journalists believe these apps have pushed them to increase their reporting of social media trends. Journalists appreciate the speed with which such apps can alert them to newsworthy information but are skeptical about the claim that verification can be automated. Citizens raise concerns about social media surveillance, especially, but not exclusively, that occurring in the journalism context.

Keywords: computational journalism, news sourcing, newsworthiness, privacy, social media in news work, social media monitoring, surveillance, verification