I stumbled upon this utterly hilarious Storify article under the hashtag #traintales which encompasses all the live-tweets made by a comedian who overheard a conversation on a train. If you have some time to kill I’d definitely give it a read here. Although neither participants were journalists it shows a great form of journalism.
There’s really nothing quicker, straight-from-the-scene and better than live tweeting – it’s almost the backbone of journalism! A smartphone goes everywhere a journalist goes, which means Twitter goes everywhere a journalist goes. Rather than waiting for the source and writing a story, live-tweeting is the story.
Take Oscar Pistorius’ Trial. With so much new information throughout the day, it would be time consuming for a journalist in the court room to be writing multiple stories on the updates. Therefore live-tweeting was the perfect way to send out a story.
‘Laws governing court reporting, including via Twitter are different in South Africa than the UK, where journalists cannot report/tweet anything that could prejudice the outcome of a trial’ (BBC) which had to be considered by BBC reporter Andrew Harding who gained over 80,000 followers over the course of the trial. I also followed his tweets at the time without really considering this was where I was getting all my news on the matter.
It’s very easy to take a tweet for granted or perhaps question the credibility of it, as discussed in previous posts, however when it comes to live-tweeting it can be a very valuable source of journalism which is why following a range of reporters on Twitter can be very beneficial to you.
Andrew Harding also detailed some advice about live-tweeting for any other journalists looking to send a story into the universe in the same fashion. He claimed ‘setting the scene’ and ‘relaying the atmosphere’ is very important, for example, detailing people’s facial expressions, body movements and reactions to updates is necessary to the live-tweet story.
‘Predicting an outcome’ before it happens he says, is also good for the story as well as ‘tweeting fast’ and ‘being concise’.
The whole article on his feedback from the event as well as a lot more advice can be found here at the BBC Academy and makes for an interesting read on a relatively new subject.
Straight-from-the-scene live-tweeting isn’t the only form it can take as this is really quite old hat for news organisations in general. Since Twitter started they have been posting updates.
Coming in on my Twitter feed just now I have ‘Five fishermen rescued off #Norway coast after boat lost in rough seas‘(1) and ‘Four-year-old boy cut free by firemen after getting finger stuck in toy fire engine‘(2). These can also be classed as journalism and are technically live-tweets as it’s only just happened. Although not straight from the scene it has become a standard tool by news organisations to get information to the public.
I think everyone with a Twitter account can make use of this, especially citizen journalists as this is the tool that gives them the most power.
However, it is a very good point to make to remember that anything you write on Twitter can spread very quickly and cannot be retracted so think first, tweet second.
Journalizm Speak 