From blogs to newspaper : A quantitative study about how journalists use social networks to find news

The aim of our study was to examine how Swedish journalists use the three social networks Facebook, Twitter and blogs to find news. We wanted to study which group of journalists that were using these networks most frequently and why. We also wanted to find out which of the three networks they use the most. We made a questionnaire which we sent out by e-mail to 400 Swedish journalists. 215 of them participated in our study. We analyzed the results of the responses from the questionnaire and discussed patterns and relations between them. The study establishes that the majority of the respondents believe that the networks are very useful and effective in their work. Our results show that out of the three social networks the journalists who participated in our study prefer to use blogs as sources in their line of work, as they are full of information from individuals and contain unique facts and stories. Alongside the results we discussed how social networks might be used in the future of journalism. Most of the respondents are aware of the possibility that they may need to increase the usage of them eventually, and that they will be an important part of the journalistic work process in the future.