A new study from University of Maryland research team Anthony Herman and Elizabeth Klinck shows that Twitter usage between college journalism majors and non-journalism majors is markedly different.
This difference, primarily seen in how the two different groups disseminate and gather news on the social networking site, manifests itself when news is “breaking” in the community and around the world. Those that use Twitter more often and for more purposes relating to news – the journalism majors – tend to be more ahead of the curve than their counterparts.
TWITTER IS BECOMING A WIDELY USED TOOL FOR PEOPLE EVERYWHERE
Twitter is a social networking tool accessible via an application on smart phones and for free on the Internet at Twitter.com. Users can sign-up to receive a profile. From there, they can share their thoughts to all of the people that choose to “follow” them – as long as the text is in 140 characters or less. Perhaps more importantly, they themselves can follow whoever has a Twitter. Media outlets use Twitter both to break news and to share links to existing news stories. Celebrities and athletes use it as a soapbox for their (often) rambling thoughts about life.
More prevalently, Twitter has been a key instrument in aiding and spreading word of the revolutions in Egypt and Libya. Those witnessing the uprisings shot video with their mobile devices and uploaded it to Twitter, where it was spread throughout the Internet and seen millions of times. In addition, during a time where traditional forms of communication proved to be fruitless, Twitter proved to be a strong way of helping people stay connected.
RESEARCH TEAM USED SURVEY TO GATHER RESULTS
The research question from Herman and Klinck posed: “Do college students who are journalism majors use Twitter more as a news-gathering service than other college students?” Both Herman and Klinck believed the answer to their question would be a resounding “yes;” after all, in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in which they (and the majority of the journalism students taking the survey) are studying, Twitter use was being taught in several classes.
The team used a survey that was distributed through University of Maryland students of all majors. The team eliminated the results of those who did not use Twitter and those who took the survey that were not currently enrolled and pursuing an undergraduate degree and then compared the responses of the two groups (journalism majors and everyone else).
JOURNALISM STUDENTS FOLLOW MEDIA; OTHERS FOLLOW ENTERTAINERS
The results were typical in some areas and vague in others.
Journalism majors logged in to Twitter more and created content – “tweeted” – more than their non-journalism counterparts, but those two factors did not translate into more followers for either of the groups.
Instead, the biggest difference was seen in whom the two groups were most interested in following (displayed in the above chart). Journalism majors reported to be most interested in receiving news when logging onto Twitter – over half responded that their primary purpose was to receive news in some form (every major media outlet, from Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP to the Los Angeles Times uses Twitter, as well as sport websites like ESPN). Only 20 percent of non-journalism majors responded that way; they were far more interested in following entertainment icons (36 percent) and friends and family (32 percent).
In addition, the students studying journalism showed a tendency to “retweet” – copy a tweet from a source and then tweet it oneself, while giving the original source credit – far more often than other students. This was the most statistically significant discovery of the entire study.
The implications of this study were recently seen in a non-lab situation. The recent earthquake and resulting tsunami that devastated Japan occurred slightly past midnight on March 11. Many people in the country did not receive news about the devastation until the next day, but those connected to social media knew of the events before they were reported on CNN or written about in the Washington Post.
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