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As a related study describes, Twitter has come to play a crucial role in the way that news functions during events like the Egyptian revolution—like an overloaded newswire filled with everything from breaking news to rumor and everything in between.
The evolution of what media theorist Jeff Jarvis and others have called “networked journalism” has made the business of news much more chaotic, since it now consists of thousands of voices instead of just a few prominent ones who happen to have the tools to make themselves heard. If there is a growth area in media, it is in the field of “curated news,” where real-time filters verify and redistribute the news that comes in from tens of thousands of sources, and use tools like Storify to present a coherent picture of what is happening on the ground.
One of the additional points the study makes is that the personal Twitter accounts belonging to journalists were far more likely to be retweeted or engaged with by others than official accounts for the media outlets they worked for. The point here is one we have tried to make repeatedly: Social media are called social for a reason. They’re about human beings connecting with other human beings around an event, and the more that media outlets try to stifle the human aspect of these tools—through repressive social-media policies, for example—the less likely they will be to benefit from using them.
Another benefit of a distributed or networked version of journalism is one sociologist Zeynep Tufekci has made in the course of her research into how Twitter and other social tools affected the events in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere. As she wrote in a recent blog post, one of the realities of mainstream media is what is often called “pack journalism”: the kind that sees hundreds of journalists show up for official briefings by government or military sources, but few pursue their own stories outside the official sphere. Tufekci says social media and “citizen journalism” can be a powerful antidote to this kind of process, and that’s fundamentally a positive force for journalism.
As we look at the way news and information flows in this new world of social networks, and what Andy Carvin has called “random acts of journalism” by those who may not even see themselves as journalists, it’s easy to get distracted by how chaotic the process seems, and how difficult it is to separate the signal from the noise. But more information is better—even if it requires new skills on the part of journalists when it comes to filtering that information—and journalism, as Jay Rosen has pointed out, tends to get better when more people do it.
1. It can be inferred from Para. 1 that ______.
A) the Egyptian revolution resulted from the application of Twitter
B) the world financial crises led to the Egyptian revolution
C) the Egyptian revolution brought Twitter into wide application
D) Twitter has played an important role in news media during the Egyptian revolution
2. Which of the following is true according to Para. 2?
A) “Networked journalism” has got the business of news into great disorder.
B) Jeff Jarvis believed “Networked journalism” was the mainstream of the news media.
C) “Networked journalism” is dominated by famous people.
D) The business of news will develop quickly due to the use of Twitter.
3. The word “retweeted” in Para. 3 probably means ______.
A) retreated
B) hailed
C) sent
D) forwarded
4. By saying “pack journalism” the author probably means ______.
A) news will be packed like a baggage
B) “citizen journalism” will replace “networked journalism”
C) the journalists prefer “networked journalism”
D) the journalists depend on official briefings, so homogeneous news reporting emerges
5. Which of the following can best state the main idea of the passage?
A) Twitter is getting more and more important in modern journalism.
B) How journalism works in the age of Twitter.
C) Networked journalism is superior to the traditional journalism.
D) More and more people prefer Twitter.