Journalists increase use of social media for story research, new survey finds

Networks and blogs gaining momentum as viable sources of information

Cision and Don Bates of George Washington University recently conducted a national survey of reporters and editors to gauge their use of social media sources when researching stories.

This is a topic I’ve written about in the past, related to a separate survey that found 70 percent of journalists use social media for reporting, but the Cision survey provides a more up-to-date look at the data and an interesting counterpoint to my recent post about whether journalists are on board with social media

The Cision survey found 89 percent of journalists turn to blogs for story research, 65 percent to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, 61 percent to Wikipedia, and 52 percent to micro-blogging services such as Twitter. At first glance, it would appear that the majority of reporters and editors are “on board” with social media.

Is social media important to journalists?