Journalists' information needs, seeking behavior, and its determinants on social media

TL;DR

This study explores how journalists use social media for information seeking, identifying diverse need types and influential factors that shape their behavior, highlighting social media's dual role as source and story supplier.

Contribution

It introduces seven new information need categories and five influential factors, expanding understanding of journalists' social media use beyond prior research.

Findings

Social media serves as both an information source and a story supplier.

Seven new information need types identified.

Five influential factors affect journalists' information seeking behavior.

Abstract

We describe the results of a qualitative study on journalists' information seeking behavior on social media. Based on interviews with eleven journalists along with a study of a set of university level journalism modules, we determined the categories of information need types that lead journalists to social media. We also determined the ways that social media is exploited as a tool to satisfy information needs and to define influential factors, which impacted on journalists' information seeking behavior. We find that not only is social media used as an information source, but it can also be a supplier of stories found serendipitously. We find seven information need types that expand the types found in previous work. We also find five categories of influential factors that affect the way journalists seek information.