Social media platforms, especially Twitter, have emerged as networks for real-time news and information where reports, rumours and speculation are challenged, contradicted or corroborated. The characteristics and use of Twitter nourish an always-on, ambient news environment, affecting how individuals interpret and communicate information in meaningful ways. This paper applies research in new literacies to contextualize the interplay between networked communication technologies and journalism. As new forms of communication emerge, journalism seeks to adopt and adapt new affordances that disrupt prevailing norms and principles through a contested process of negotiation. The new literacies of Twitter and similar platforms give rise to tensions between conventional ways of working and new possibilities in reporting, analysing and explaining the news. This paper explores how journalism is being shaped by, and shaping, the new literacies of networked communication architectures.

1. Rewiring journalism:
The new literacies of
networked communication
architectures
Alfred Hermida, University of British Columbia
@hermida
ICA London, June 20 2013

2. Journalistsand Twitter:It’s complicated
Photo: the half-blood prince - http://www.flickr.com/photos/unconstructive_bry/

3. Frommodern,industrial literaciestowards
post-industrial,knowledgesocietyliteracies
LankshearandKnobel,2011
Photo: phub - http://www.flickr.com/photos/phub/

4. Journalism: Uniform, monolithic,
enclosed, stable, linear
Photo: Mike65444 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike-f/

5. Twitter:Distributed,open,collaborative,dynamic,
non-linear
Photo: Kristina Alexanderson - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalexanderson/

6. The finished product
Photo: albyantoniazzi - http://www.flickr.com/photos/smoy/

7. Journalismasatentativeanditerativeprocesswherecontested
accountsareexamined&evaluatedinpublicinreal-time
Photo: Cathy Arkie - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shepaused4thought/

8. Andy Carvin: Twitteras newsroom
Photo: personaldemocracy - http://www.flickr.com/photos/personaldemocracy/

9. Networkednews,networkedpower
Photo: Matthijs - http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthijs/

10. Thank you
alfred.hermida@ubc.ca @hermida
• WORKS
• Hermida, Alfred, Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith. (forthcoming).
Sourcing the Arab Spring: A case study of Andy Carvin’s sources
on Twitter during the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications
• Hermida, Alfred. (in press). Twitter as an ambient news
network, in Bruns, K. Weller, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt & C.
Puschmann (eds.), Twitter and Society. New York, NY: Peter
Lang
• Hermida, Alfred (forthcoming). #journalism: Reconfiguring
journalism research about Twitter, one tweet at a time, Digital
Journalism