Abstract
Journalists frequently turn to Twitter for quotes from elite and non-elite sources to include within their online news articles. While recent research has found that including posts from ordinary people can influence news consumers’ issue perceptions, there is limited research on the impact of including politicians’ posts. We conduct two similar survey experiments, with Republican and Democrat respondents, to test the relative impact of including Donald Trump’s tweets in a news article either in embedded format, quoted in plain text, or quoted in paraphrased format. Among Republicans, embedded tweets were unique in eliciting positive emotions which mediated higher ratings of Donald Trump’s warmth and competence. Among Democrats, no significant differences were elicited by tweet format on perceptions of Trump. However, Democrats rated articles containing verbatim Trump tweets as significantly lower in journalistic quality. Results are discussed in relevance to journalist–politician power relations and perceptions of journalistic quality.
Highlights
Journalists frequently turn to Twitter for quotes from elite and non-elite sources to include within their online news articles
News journalism is fighting for its soul, fending attacks from all sides: vocal anti-establishment leaders accusing journalists of bias; financial demands pushing the need for news with audience appeal; pressure for around-the-clock reporting; and the meteoric rise of social media platforms that compete for attention and give politicians unprecedented opportunities for unmediated expression
Given today’s confluence of media and political factors, what are the effects of news journalists including social media posts as sources and evidence? Research points to a growing reliance in news reporting on tweets from political leaders, along with posts from ordinary citizens (Brands et al, 2018; Broersma and Graham, 2012)
Summary
Journalists frequently turn to Twitter for quotes from elite and non-elite sources to include within their online news articles. While recent work has shown that embedding tweets from ordinary people in news stories can influence audience perceptions of public opinion on the issue at hand (Ross and Dumitrescu, 2019), there is little such research that investigates the impact of politicians’ tweets in online news. While research has taken place into the effects of direct quotes on audience perceptions of journalistic quality within traditional news media (Gibson and Zillmann, 1998; Weaver et al, 1974), this evolved format of embedding tweets may have new ramifications in the current hybrid media environment, both for perceptions of quality and readers’ appraisal of the quoted political leaders’ personal characteristics. Incorporating politicians’ social media posts may provide them with free advertising (Francia, 2018), opening the possibility that, by including tweets in news, journalists may inadvertently play into politicians’ electioneering tactics
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