Social media now a key info source for journalists

Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook are commonly used by journalists as sources of information, according to a survey by Cision and George Washington University. More than half (56 per cent) of 371 respondents said social media was important or somewhat important for researching and producing stories. Although Google (100 per cent), corporate websites (96 per cent) and weblogs (89 per cent) are still used most often for online research, 65 per cent also reported using social networking sites such as Facebook while 58 per cent said they use photo/video sharing sites like Flickr and YouTube and 52 per cent used microblogging sites such as Twitter. Wikipedia is also popular, used by 61 per cent as a research source.