An examination of the role of online social media in journalists' source mixMethodsResultsDiscussionPublic Relations Review 35 (2009) 314–316Contents lists available at ScienceDirectPublic Relations ReviewResearch in briefAn examination of the role of online social mediain journalists’ source mix夽Ruthann Weaver Lariscya,d,1, Elizabeth Johnson Averyb,Kaye D. Sweetsera,d,∗, Pauline HowescaDepartment of Advertising & Public Relations, Grady College, The University of Georgia, USAbThe University of Tennessee, USAcKennesaw State University, USAdThe University of Georgia, USAarticle infoArticle history:Received 23 January 20 09Received in revised form 7 April 2009Accepted 2 May 2009Keywords:Social mediaPublic relationsPractitionerAgenda buildingInformation subsidyJournalistBusinessabstractUsing telephone surveys of business/financial journalists in the United States (n = 20 0), thisresearch investigates the agenda-building role of social media content in journalists’ work.Understanding that more non-public relations content from user-generated and social net-work sites, like YouTube and Twitter, are fast becoming resources for journalists to get storyideas, break scandals, and find sources, we began this scholarly work to determine the fre-quency of such uses of social media. Overall, findings indicate very little use of social mediaby these business journalists. Results and implications for public relations practitioners arediscussed in detail.© 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Social media, the term commonly referring to blogs and social network sites online, have been heralded as ushering in achange allowing worldwide, networked communication instantaneous. Such media describe the online practices that utilizetechnology and enable people to share content, opinions, experiences, insights, and media themselves. As an illustration,compare the tragic events of September 11, 2001, in New York City and the breaking of that news story to the more recentplane crash of U.S. Airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River. The latter, while certainly covered extensively in the traditionalmedia outlets, features many more “eye witness” reports from microblogging sites such as Twitter, as victims and on-lookersbegan posting announcements and images as the event unfolded.Scholars have argued for the case that such social media can be used for agenda building, as journalists look to thesethird-party “general population” sources in writing their stories and certainly public relations practitioners have begunengaging social media content authors with this in mind. While some have begun to look at how journalists use blogs, veryfew academic studies focus on how journalists use – or do not use – social media as a whole.夽Note: This research was funded by the Public Relations Society of America Foundation. A previous version of this paper was one of the top three paperspresented at the Institute for Public Relations Research Conference in 2009. A full version of this paper is available upon request.∗Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 706 542 5008.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (R.W. Lariscy), [email protected] (E.J. Avery), [email protected] (K.D. Sweetser), [email protected] (P. Howes).1Tel.: +1 706 542 5008.0363-8111/$ – see front matter © 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.05.008R.W. Lariscy et al. / Public Relations Review 35 (2009) 314–316 315Telephone interviews with 200 journalists explored the use, extent of use, and perceived value of various social mediaas sources contributing to agenda building. If journalists are regularly monitoring blogs and chat rooms for story ideas andinformation, it behooves if not compels public relations persons within each industry to carefully monitor the informationplaced there and perhaps engage content producers.1. MethodsBusiness journalists (n = 200) participated in structured telephone interviews in late 2008. The majority were reporters atinfluential publications like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Business Week. Data collection, funded by a grantfrom the Public Relations Society of America Foundation, was conducted by a university survey research center and includedvarious questions on demographics, uses, and perceived value of social media by business journalists.2. ResultsThe majority of the sample worked for newspapers (90%), and the remaining worked for a trade publication, financemagazine, newsletter or others. They published both in print (primary) and online (secondary) (73%), one-quarter publishedin print only, and 2% were online only.Only 7.5% (n = 15) of journalists indicated that social media is “very important” to their work, and 24.5% (n = 49) believe itto be important. Although 22.5% of the sample was neutral, 34% considered social media use to be of little or no importance.Websites were by far the most often consulted online resource for journalists (n = 157, 79%), and blogs were the secondmost frequently use d (n = 8, 4%). Social media networks, messages boards, and Twitter were identified as the most usedsources by less than 3 journalists each, indicating only about 3% of the sample are finding the majority of their informationin online sources other than blogs and websites.Of the 200 journalists, 37 (18.5%) identified a social media tool they first utilize when writing a story. Of those 37, themajority of journalists (n = 22, 59%) first seek blogs as a source. Facebook and MySpace were the second most popular socialmedia tools as first sources of information (n = 9, 24%), and wikis were the third most frequently identified source (n = 5, 14%).Only one respondent (2%) used photo-sharing sites first when writing stories.Next, we identified how much time journalists spend time each day using social media for story generation and informa-tion gathering. A third indicated that they spend no time on social media in their daily professional lives (n = 65, 32.5%). Onaverage, journalists only spend 1 h using social media professionally, though the daily hours reported ranged from 0 to 9 h.The survey asked journalists to rate a series of uses of social media listed on a 3-point scale, with a higher number indicatinggreater use. Overall, journalists did not indicate high use for the motivations listed. The most common function of social mediafor journalists was surveillance (M = 2.01), though that use rating was admittedly neutral. Other functions were rated,