Andy Carvin, the NPR social media strategist known as the man who tweets revolutions, gave far more room to protesters than to officials while covering the Arab Spring on Twitter. That was the finding of Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, presented at the International Symposium on Online Journalism at UT Austin on 21 April 2012 by Alfred Hermida with Seth C. Lewis and Rodrigo Zamith.
The authors analysed more than 5,000 tweets and categorised 322 sources across two windows in 2011: 12 to 19 January, covering the Tunisian demonstrations that brought down Ben Ali, and 24 January to 13 February, covering the Egyptian protests and Mubarak’s resignation. Activists and bloggers accounted for 48.3 per cent of the messages on Carvin’s stream while making up only 26.4 per cent of his sources. Mainstream media journalists were 26.7 per cent of sources and 29.4 per cent of tweets.
The contrast the paper drew was with settled practice. Journalists have tended to cite a small number of sources holding institutional power — officials, police, business leaders — and when covering protests to quote officials while discrediting activists. “The prominence of what many may consider to be rebel voices raises questions about traditional journalistic approaches to balance and objectivity,” Hermida said. Lewis framed the case narrowly and its implications broadly: “This research focuses on the work of a single person, but it’s a key case study for understanding larger transformations occurring as journalism evolves through social media.”