TWITTER AS A REPORTING TOOL

                                                                

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When Mendy Weiner reported the Kebles case in court using twitter, so many journalists thought it was unprofessional to do so. But with time and the dominance social media has on media in general, journalists followed pursuit.

A huge story broke on the 16^th of August in Marikana. Basically what happened is, miners were striking and it got out of hand and the SAPS started shooting and lot of people died. So journalists who were there had to fight for a spot to get that information out there first. And twitter was the better, easy and fast way of informing people.

Many media houses if not all of them, have twitter accounts which they use to inform people using just 140 characters. So we take a look at three reporters who did just that.  The EWN Reporter reported from when the miners were gathering. They took us through the whole incident in just few words. They even went on to twitting about what major media houses like BBC, were saying about it. They told a story and they managed to tell it in few words.

Another journalist Charl du Plessis also made use of twitter to report on the Marikana massacre. He was there days before the incident occurred, so he has been twitting and #tagging Lonmin and Marikana. He did that to indicate that his tweets were about Marikana and Lonmin. Plessis took his followers to a journey and made them feel like they were there too. He even went to the extent of re-twitting what other journalists were twitting.

Adriaan Basson is our third journalist who used twitter to report. He pretty much did the same to inform his followers.  He tried to cram all the information so he can get the information out there using only 140 characters.

Twitter has become a fast tool of reporting, taking the number one spot of broadcast. And one can never question that the number of people who are using twitter is increasing which means journalists are now able to reach masses before even getting to the editor. This also helps journalists to have a say in what they give to the public.