TWEETS AND TRUTH

TLDR

Verification is a core journalistic value that establishes authority, yet social media challenge the traditional individualistic, top‑down model of journalism. This paper examines how social media influence the core journalistic value of verification. The authors analyze journalism as a set of literacies, applying a new‑literacies framework to trace the shift from individual to collective intelligence and to examine how news organizations negotiate the tensions of a digital, networked media environment, making verification an iterative, publicly contested process.

Abstract

This paper examines how social media are influencing the core journalistic value of verification. Through the discipline of verification, the journalist establishes jurisdiction over the ability to objectively parse reality to claim a special kind of authority and status. Social media question the individualistic, top-down ideology of traditional journalism. The paper considers journalism practices as a set of literacies, drawing on the theoretical framework of new literacies to examine the shift from a focus on individual intelligence, where expertise and authority are located in individuals and institutions, to a focus on collective intelligence where expertise and authority are distributed and networked. It explores how news organizations are negotiating the tensions inherent in a transition to a digital, networked media environment, considering how journalism is evolving into a tentative and iterative process where contested accounts are examined and evaluated in public in real-time.