Het journalistieke brongebruik in tijden van churnalism en Twitter: Een surveyonderzoek bij Vlaamse beroepsjournalisten (2008-2013)

• Published in: Tijdschrift voor communicatiewetenschap 2015-03, Vol.43 (1)
• Main Authors: Van Leuven, Sarah, Deprez, Annelore, Raeymaeckers, Karin
• Format: Article
• Language: dut
• ISSN: 1384-6930; 1875-7286
• DOI: 10.5117/2015.043.001.064

Journalistic sourcing practices in times of churnalism and Twitter: a survey of Flemish professional journalists (2008-2013) In order to assess the impact of cost-cutting, digitalization and globalization on journalistic sourcing practices, we report the results of a large-scale and longitudinal survey among Flemish journalists. The findings show that pre-packaged content from a journalistic (news agencies and media brands) and non-journalistic origin (press releases), and elite actors (politicians, government institutions, experts, journalists and corporations) are important information sources. In contrast with often heard complaints about unequal news access, the findings nonetheless show that Flemish journalists acknowledge the importance of ordinary citizens and NGOs as news sources. The responses to the questionnaire moreover point to the development of new sourcing practices: Flemish journalists are increasingly turning towards social media in the news gathering process but overall the importance of Facebook, Twitter and the like as a news source remains fairly limited.