Beyond 140 characters: a Tow Center project about the forces that shape journalists’ strategic Twitter engagement

In 2009, The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi wrote a feature for the American Journalism Review on what he called the “Twitter Explosion”. He questioned the micro-blogging platform as the “world’s most overhyped technology” and “latest media obsession” and set out to argue for its value as a journalistic reporting tool. Seven years are a lifetime in the tech world and today, we don’t need much convincing (if any at all) that Twitter has long since found its place in American newsrooms and journalists’ digital lives