
Journalists’ Twitter use shows them talking within smaller bubbles - doener
https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/326226550
======
ravenstine
Having worked at a media firm, I find this very plausible.

At one point I decided to take a look at my journalist coworkers' Twitter
profiles. ~95% of the people they were following were not only other
journalists, but other journalists of similar, if not identical, political
bent. This makes sense, of course, because people will always prefer to hear
viewpoints that reinforce their own, but for journalists this is a problem
because they're supposed to be providing information, yet they are especially
subject to feedback loops created when they fail in attempting to understand
viewpoints that aren't intuitive to them. Worse yet, extremism is almost
always rewarded on platforms like Twitter, and because journalists are partly
driven by a need for fame and brand recognition, they're encouraged to be
openly biased.

EDIT: I don't want to paint all journalists in a bad light. What I described
just seemed common in my experience.

~~~
madeofpalk
> but for journalists this is a problem because they're supposed to be
> providing information,

I do not expect journalists to use their twitter timeline as the foundation of
all their reporting.

~~~
xkde
You would hope not, but given the number of stories these days that are just,
“hey look at this Tweet!”, I don’t think we can expect that much.

[https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA](https://youtu.be/mpHiDsnqOSA)

------
whack
> _Ng collected all the tweets, retweets and replies posted on most of those
> accounts over two months in early 2018, using Twitter’s application-
> programming interface. She winnowed those further to only those sent between
> or referencing other Beltway journalists. The final data set consisted of
> 133,529 Twitter posts from 2,015 journalists, about one-third of all
> credentialed congressional correspondents._

Couple things stood out here:

\- they are looking only at tweets/comments, not the people being followed

\- they have filtered the dataset to include only journalists, so you wouldn't
see any engagement they have with people outside their profession

\- What they have found isn't so much "bubbles" but rather "hubs"

\- there's no comparison to similar data on other professions. I would expect
that almost all professional networking falls into hubs that are either based
on exclusivity (eg, FANG employees, ivy league alumni) or professional niche
(eg, television producers, startup founders). Are these journalists really
exhibiting insular behavior, or is it perfectly aligned with every other
segment of society? We really can't tell without any basis for comparison

~~~
moduspol
> they are looking only at tweets/comments, not the people being followed

Journalists have already been called out for this, so it's likely not a useful
metric any more. The accounts they choose to follow are likely carefully
calculated since they're aware it's visible and people look at these things.

Anyone can have multiple Twitter accounts, so it'd be trivial to have another
account that follows a different set of accounts that one scrolls through
normally.

~~~
jb775
> Journalists have already been called out for this

This makes it even worse. They were called out for living in an echo chamber
and refused to acknowledge or fix it.

> Anyone can have multiple Twitter accounts

This is a generous assumption. Considering we're here talking about cold hard
facts scraped from Twitter, a blanket assumption like this to disregard
everything found is poor form. You sound like a journalist.

------
keiferski
I’ve been wondering what would happen if enough people and companies simply
ignored Twitter, entirely. Pretended that it didn’t exist, that tweets are on
the same level of relevance as graffiti messages scribbled on sidewalks or the
headlines on grocery store checkout conspiracy magazines. As in, nonsense.

I have a feeling that essentially nothing would change, and that in the long
run, totally disengaging from Twitter would make sense from a cost-benefit
point of view for most people and organizations. It really seems like it isn’t
an accurate indicator of anything except a very tiny percentage of the
population.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I found this to be true. I was involved in selling a newspaper, and Twitter
speculation from the journalists involved was rife and, frankly, full of
bullshit.

I decided there was no way to rationally deal with this. So I stopped looking
at Twitter. That turned out to be the best thing to do. People still said
things, but as I wasn't listening it didn't matter. The gossip and malicious
slander reached a crescendo as the sale went though, but ultimately had zero
impact on what actually happened.

As far as I can work out, what happens on Twitter stays on Twitter, and if you
don't pay it any attention it really doesn't matter.

However, the caveat to that is that journalists are on Twitter, pay a lot of
attention to Twitter, and report it as reality. Getting dogpiled on Twitter
may not matter, but having it reported in newspapers may make it matter.

~~~
sumtechguy
I have a few tech people I want to follow as they use it as a blog. But I do
not want an account on twitter as it is too easy for me to get dragged into
conversations that are unproductive for everyone involved. So I picked a
method where I link about 5 people created a folder in firefox and linked to
their pages. Then if I am wanting to 'see what is going on'. I open all links
in that folder. I do that maybe once a month. Twitter is an attention machine.
It feeds on getting your attention. Outrage does that quite nicely so they
boderline openly encourage it.

~~~
keiferski
This is a good idea. Unfortunately other social media sites have started to
force logging in to see content (Instagram, for example) so I worry that
Twitter will do something similar soon.

~~~
sumtechguy
Do they let you log in and 'remember' or is it every time?

~~~
keiferski
I don't think Instagram lets you view any pages without logging in.

------
npunt
Probably the most important part of a journalist's work is building sources
and chasing stories, which is largely done privately (DMs, etc) for obvious
reasons. This analysis misses that.

The public face of journalists on twitter is primarily to build personal
brand, broadcast, and generate leads for private scoops via their brand and
strategically discussion of particular topics. Much of the reason for
journalists smaller bubble is they're building each other up professionally,
rather than just hanging out and chatting like most other twitter users. I
think this study might be confusing these two very different use cases.

~~~
rich_sasha
Agreed, though I would add that spending a lot of time on Twitter may well
distort people’s idea of general sentiment of the wider population. Something
like 0.1% of the society tweets actively with a following, you then narrow it
down further to people with very similar background, you may well lure
yourself into thinking it’s a semi-representative group.

~~~
japanoise
My impression of twitter was of an insular bizzaro-world where communities
that are essentially invisible in meatspace become enormous and have outsized
influence; k-pop fans are huge on twitter and almost always trending, but are
barely known outside of their own circles elsewhere, not to mention all the
incredibly granular political groups (the long and bloody trad-cath-leninist
vs pinetree-eco-fash wars are so drawn out you'd be forgiven for not realising
it's only 20 people per side, posting 24/7)

It always amazes me that normal people like journalists still use such a
strange website.

~~~
ageitgey
If someone I follow re-tweets an annoying hot take by someone I don't care
about, I'll just block the random person they retweeted and move on with my
life.

But what's really surprising to me is how often I see those few randomly
blocked annoying people show up again in totally unrelated twitter threads
with "This tweet is by someone you blocked". It really seems like the same few
people just roam around the twitter universe spreading outrage and contention
everywhere they go. It's like a playground for society's most unbearable
people.

~~~
TLightful
Maybe that says more about -your- bubble and usage than about twitter.

I've rarely had that experience. Maybe once in 5 years.

It actually suggests you hate your bubble, lol.

~~~
friendlybus
What do you use twitter for? I remember seeing Jack on the colbert report in
the 2000s talking about being profitable as company. In those 20yrs I've never
felt the need to tweet or read tweets. What's the appeal?

~~~
TLightful
I imagine it's horses for courses.

I detest / deleted Facebook with an ungodly passion ... but I can see how some
people find some use for it.

I like twitter, apart from the political loons ... but, of course, everything
is a function of what you put in and who you follow.

To answer your question: timeliness, access to "top" thinkers, a bubble
created and curated without baby pictures.

------
DamnYuppie
I have worked on systems for large media companies back in 2008-2010. The main
feature they always wanted were as follows:

1\. The ability to create a poll on their website, but only count votes that
aligned with the desired outcome they wanted. So they could create a poll and
before posting on their site they could set a target outcome of the various
options.

2\. For comments if it was flagged they wouldn't hide it or notify the user,
instead it would be removed from everyone else's view except the users.

There were a few other very eye opening requests as well. Since that time I
have assumed all media is in the business of manipulating and forming
opinions. Trying to tell this to regular people seemed to only get me labeled
as a conspiracy nut and that there was no way their beloved institutions would
behave in such a way.

------
BelleOfTheBall
Twitter, in and of itself, isn't exactly a platform for useful discourse. A
journalist leaning to a certain end of a political spectrum starting a civil
conversation with a journalist on the other end of the spectrum would likely
lead to both of them getting accosted by readers asking why they're talking to
"the enemy" or something like that.

I do think journalists need to mix with circles that are out of their bubble.
I don't, however, find Twitter to be the most crucial platform for that. Talk
in person, communicate in opinion pieces and clash ideas. Just don't let it be
filtered through hundreds of users shouting about how the other side is bad.

~~~
pjc50
One of the odd things about the news business is the kind of omerta that
prevents journalists directly going at each other as political actors. There
are a few exceptions; everyone feels comfortable abusing Owen Jones, for
example. But even journalists and newspapers that get censured for inaccurate
or distorted stories (e.g. [https://hackinginquiry.org/press-release-
islamophobia-times/](https://hackinginquiry.org/press-release-islamophobia-
times/) ) don't become the story as much as they should.

This is especially relevant when _Spectator_ journalist Boris Johnson became
Prime Minister, but evaded being interviewed on the BBC by _Spectator_
chairman and BBC journalist Andrew Neil; or when Russian media oligarch and
"Independent" owner Evgeny Lebedev was appointed to the UK's permanent
unaccountable legislature, the House of Lords. In the UK, there is no boundary
between journalism and party politics.

~~~
frockington1
Wow, I was completely unaware of this. I had read of similar things in spy
novels, but didn't think it actually happens in real life. Any other
scandals/stories I should look up other than Evgeny Lebedev?

~~~
Veen
In my opinion, the real scandal is the elevation of Claire Fox to the House of
Lords.

~~~
pjc50
Former revolutionary communist and IRA supporter Claire Fox? Well, I guess
that's in the past now and the real thing she was nominated for was support of
Brexit.

------
llarsson
Please note that this is not about personal filter bubbles, but rather
professional ones. I find this interesting and disturbing, as it would no
doubt improve reporting if journalists were more aware of all viewpoints
across the political (or otherwise) spectrum and what issues seem to matter in
different circles, not just their own.

What they do during their spare time is of course up to them. But their
professional ability to report on the news would surely benefit from a wider
range of perspectives.

~~~
watwut
Imo, they would achieve this better by reading what those other journalist
write rather then following them on twitter. The latter would most likely to
just lead to more ridiculous late night feuds.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
The issue IMO isn't about challenging their views in general; it's about
developing a skewed perspective of what's normal. There are a lot of common
opinions, even majority opinions, that journalists tend to write about as
though they're weird fringe beliefs, and I think this substantially misinforms
people about the state of the world.

------
auganov
Note that some journalistic organizations have strong rules on social media
use[0]. Not to mention many unwritten ones. Interacting outside the bubble
could come with repercussions. I'd wager that if you'd look at people in other
public facing professions you'd get similar results.

[0] Example: [https://www.ap.org/assets/documents/social-media-
guidelines_...](https://www.ap.org/assets/documents/social-media-
guidelines_tcm28-9832.pdf) "However, friending and “liking” political
candidates or causes may create a perception among people unfamiliar with the
protocol of social networks that AP staffers are advocates. Therefore,
staffers should try to make this kind of contact with figures on both sides of
controversial issues. "

~~~
raxxorrax
In an ideal case they should be able to express their opinions and people
wouldn't extrapolate them to the respective employer.

Journalists not able to express themselves freely because of guilt by
association would be a huge problem and being able to do so provides extra
information that can put articles in context.

Another fact worth mentioning is that large publishers all have a direct
business relationship with social media companies, primarily Facebook I
believe. Some better newspapers were transparent about it and lamented this
fact as a necessity in the current news market.

Thanks to companies generally having no backbone and disciplining employees
for social media use or generally for their opinions, we are at this bad
situation. If they just had ignored the complaints...

All that said, the opinions of the most outspoken journalists often seem very
predictable and in many cases they actually argued in favor of accountability
by social media use by writing their outrage articles about some random
tweets. I think a lot of those have missed their profession... Didn't take
disclaimers like "opinions are my own" too seriously, but apparently they
might be needed for some journalists at least.

~~~
mattmanser
This seems like extremely wishful thinking. Say one silly thing, or something
that could be interpreted wrong, you could lose your job from an indignant
mob.

It's not worth the risk.

------
swebs
And these are just the public bubbles. There have also been leaks of private
groups such as JournoList (and its successor, Cabalist), and GameJournoPros.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList)

[https://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php?title=GameJournoPros](https://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php?title=GameJournoPros)

------
op03
Recommend - Niall Ferguson's book The Square and the Tower about how the same
networks exist in all communities - science, business, politics etc etc.

As to the journos, human behavior doesn't change so easily by just showing
people their issues.

In fact if they feel judged too much, they can get more defensive about their
behavior or aggressively attack those pointing at it. The fact that analysis
of behavior happens publicly, makes unproductive outcomes even more likely. It
just creates spiraling reaction counter-reaction cycles.

You can see how well the approach has worked with changing Trump's behavior,
even though there are huge armies of people pointing out and documenting his
issues day and night seemingly without any awareness that all that work has
not changed outcomes.

Plus expecting behavior change on top of a social media architecture skewed to
self promotion and engagement is unrealistic.

So cut the journos some slack. The possible solutions are half baked or
constrained by the operating environment, with barely any examples of
solutions that have produce good outcomes.

~~~
rsynnott
> You can see how well the approach has worked with changing Trump's behavior,
> even though there are huge armies of people pointing out and documenting his
> issues day and night seemingly without any awareness that all that work has
> not changed outcomes.

Trump is arguably the exception, in that he either doesn't care about re-
election or (more likely) at some level misunderstands exactly why he won on
the first place. Public opinion often does have a significant impact on
government policy, though, especially in parliamentary democracies (where it's
easier to u-turn without showing that much weakness by simply sacrificing a
minister).

------
dang
This is the silo effect. Sorry for the parochial comment, but I think about
this in HN's context a lot, because it's one of the rare cases of an internet
community (possibly the largest? at least that I'm aware of) which is non-
siloed:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=silo%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment).
That is, everyone's in the same big room and sees the same things.

This leads to paradoxical effects, such as people subjectively experiencing
the community as more fractious when objectively it is less so:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098).

~~~
pvg
I don't think this is really a sensible interpretation - the clustering is
derived by tracking twitter interactions and relationships on twitter. You
could do something similar for HN and identify some clusters, although you'll
be missing things like 'follows' which twitter makes public and explicit.

~~~
dang
I assume those relationships are based on who people choose to follow, which
is what I mean by 'silo'.

------
danielheath
People use social media to talk to their friends more than to strangers; news
at 10.

~~~
raziel2p
Exactly. I doubt the validity of "who follows who on Twitter" as useful data
in the first place, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other demographics
followed the same pattern, not just journalists.

------
Voxoff
This is a cursory criticism but this seems to be suggesting that journalists
who, say, specialise in Middle Eastern politics talk to other journalists who
specialise in Middle Eastern politics than others. And that’s supposed to be
surprising/vaguely interesting?

------
DubiousPusher
I've really been enjoying this guy's little viewed YouTube channel. It mostly
consists of his journalism school lectures but it hits so many of the ideas
I've been considering about journalism lately and takes them places I hadn't
been able to.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/robertwilliamjensen](https://www.youtube.com/user/robertwilliamjensen)

It's really brought me back to a pre-aocial media mindset of journalism. The
important things about the journalism we consume are somewhat irrelevant to
social media. So I'm fully off Facebook, mostly off Twitter and am consuming
as much as I can through periodicals and books.

P. S. Several of the videos of Anthony Shadid's conversations about the U.S.
involvement in Iraq are very compelling as well.

------
agumonkey
And also how long do they spend on a topic. I believe journalists use to take
their sweet time because to uncover / understand anything substantial you need
not to speed.

~~~
checkyoursudo
I think there have always been dual competing interests of thoroughness and
deadline.

Though probably the internet has made deadline a stronger interest at the
moment.

~~~
agumonkey
web clearly made fast pace a semi conscious desire

also I believe people mistake lots of quick verified fact with information

~~~
checkyoursudo
That's a good point. Brute facts strung together often get mistaken for
analysis or synthesis.

------
moomin
Not to be funny, but for anyone with even a slightly high profile, Twitter is
horribly broken. You fix it by muting everything. So yeah, I’m not surprised
that the only people they speak to are ones they know professionally or
personally.

------
jb775
No wonder there's so much division in the world considering people live in
their own echo chamber, and consume media that's an echo chamber comprised of
journalists creating their own echo chambers.

------
Vanit
Just think how small their bubbles were 20 years ago! /s

~~~
dazc
Was that a bad thing? Journalists seeking information from hard to contact
sources versus journalist instantly finding 1000 random people with the same
warped view on life as their own?

~~~
Vanit
That's exactly the point I was making :)

------
echevil
That explains so much

------
m3kw9
But how does one know they are in a bubble?? For example, am I in some tech
info bubble with the sites I regular visit or is it diverse enough?

------
Nacdor
This reminds me of a piece Glenn Greenwald wrote after Trump won the election.
He'd been saying the same thing for a while but Clinton's loss finally proved
his point:

> opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from
> the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that
> they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were
> unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-
> glorifying behavior.

[https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-
the-...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-
dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/)

Many of the most influential journalists and politicians are shockingly out of
touch with (and often hostile towards) the everyday people they're supposed to
represent. It's now painfully clear that the media has little or no interest
in reporting the truth, they want to create it themselves.

~~~
chillwaves
Trump's win was the product of an antiquated electoral process, not some "will
of the people" or he wouldn't have received 5million fewer votes.

------
secondcoming
Journalism is just retweeting, and writing articles about tweets, these days.

------
kabacha
Titles like this make me realize how awful english language is. Actually
readable title would be: "Twitter usage of journalists' show them talking
within smaller bubbles"

------
sharker8
Take this conversation to clubhouse.

------
paulcole
Wonderful article for any software eng to read. I certainly see some issues
(most will), but a great place to start.

------
GFunc
So, like tech twitter...

------
richardARPANET
Here's a great video on exactly this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sWcSxVjXcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sWcSxVjXcY)

------
arkanciscan
Are journalists not supposed to have friends? Is Twitter use indicative of a
person's entire communication pattern? Perhaps Twitter is best used as a tool
for communicating with close aquaintences than with the broader world.
Everyone is a dickhead on Twitter, so how can you blame anyone for
muting/blocking the hell out of everything on there?

