Analysing Journalists Written English on Twitter : A comparative study of language used in news coverage on Twitter and conventional news sites

The English language is in constant transition, it always has been and always will be. Historically the change has been caused by colonisation and migration. Today, however, the change is initiated by a much more powerful instrument: the Internet. The Internet revolution comes with superior changes to the English language and how people communicate. Computer Mediated Communication is arguably one of the main spaces for communication between people today, supported by the increasing amount and usage of social media platforms. Twitter is one of the largest social media platforms in the world today with a diverse set of users. The amount of journalists on Twitter have increased in the last few years, and today they make up 25 % of all verified accounts on the platform. Journalists use Twitter as a tool for marketing, research, and spreading of news. The aim of this study is to investigate whether there are linguistic differences between journalists’ writing on Twitter to their respective conventional news site. This is done through a Discourse Analysis, where types of informal language features are specifically accounted for. Conclusively the findings show signs of language differentiation between the two studied medias, with informality on twitter being a substantial part of the findings.