Abstract
ABSTRACTTwitter has been identified as a potential game changer for reporters and a way of shifting to the values of ‘next journalism’, where newsworkers spend less time lecturing and more time in dialogue. However, there is little local research about its use by Kiwi journalists. This article documents emerging journalism practice by exploring how Twitter was employed, by the political editors of the country’s two major television networks (TVNZ and TV3), in covering the inaugural Labour Party leadership campaign in 2013. Both Corin Dann and Patrick Gower used Twitter to inform their followers about new developments in the story, and to promote their networks’ news coverage, and their sources were predominantly institutional. However, TV3’s Gower was markedly more active and interactive on Twitter, with a broader range of people, than TVNZ’s Dann. Both journalistic persona and organisational influences appear to impact on Twitter use. The paper concludes that while New Zealand journalists are using Twitter to ‘bear witness’, they are currently falling short of realising the full democratic potential of this form of social media.
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