Non-Elite Twitter Sources Rarely Cited in Coverage

Agenda building, the process by which news outlets determine what to cover, is one of the most widely studied topics in mass communication research.1 As McCombs pointed out, however, the dramatic changes brought on by the Internet require additional examinations into which sources are influential in the agenda building process.2 According to the American Journalism Review, Twitter is one Internet-based source that seems particularly likely to change the dynamics of media agenda building. Indeed, because reporters are relying on Twitter "to find story ideas, develop sources, connect with local communities, network and share and break news,"3 the site may play an increasingly important role in determining which issues receive media attention and which do not.4Perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of Twitter 's ability to influence journalists occurred during the final weeks of the 2012 American presidential election campaign. In the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, Romney claimed:I'm gonna stop the subsidy to PBS....I like PBS, I like Big Bird.... But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.5Within five minutes of Romney's remarks, #BigBird was one of the fastest trending topics on Twitter-with 17,000 tweets per minute mentioning the popular Sesame Street character.6 Supporters of PBS took advantage of this spike in interest and quickly created parody accounts such as @SadBigBird and @FiredBigBird to mock Romney's statements. Almost immediately after the debate, President Obama entered the fray by tweeting, "Thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird."7The cascade of Twitter activity sparked scores of newspaper stories across the United States. USA Today, for example, ran a story titled "Romney's 'Big Bird' comment stirs social media."8 The Los Angeles Times published an article called "Mitt Romney's plan to cut Big Bird's funding sparks Twitter frenzy."9 Not to be outdone, the Global Post wrote "#BigBird: Mitt Romney provokes Twitter backlash."10The case of Romney and Big Bird illustrates that a few thousands tweets can create an instantaneous avalanche of media attention. But how common is it for Twitter to exert this kind of influence over media coverage? This study attempts to answer this question by providing an empirical assessment of how political reporters used Twitter to "find story ideas" and "develop sources" by tracking newspaper mentions of tweets during the 2012 American election campaign.11Literature ReviewSources in Media CoverageAccording to Franklin et al., "an understanding of the relationship between journalists and their sources sits at the heart of journalism studies."12 Shoemaker and Reese define news sources as "external suppliers of raw material, such as speeches, interviews, corporate reports and government hearings."13 Beginning with the work of Sigal, numerous studies of news production have attempted to clarify the role that these "external suppliers" play in structuring media coverage.14 Most notably, Gans described the relationship between journalists and their sources as a complicated, yet mutually beneficial, dance-where sources seek out journalists in order to reach the media's audience and journalists nurture relationships with sources in order to establish reliable channels of access to newsworthy information. According to Gans, the heavy informational demands and tight time constraints of the news business inevitably mean that this dance is led by sources rather than by journalists.15 Indeed, subsequent research has demonstrated that sources often shape news reports more than journalists themselves.16As a result of the fact that journalists so frequently follow their lead, sources are seen to be essential components of media agenda building. Unsurprisingly, therefore, researchers have conducted numerous studies of sourcing patterns in an attempt to identify the actors who are influential in shaping the media's agenda. …