Research into News Sharing on Twitter and its Convergence with the Means of Mass Media

Abstract

The need of an individual for news is greater than ever in the modern world, where there is a continuous stream of information and news. The widespread use of mobile devices to satisfy this need, the access to the Social Media by means of mobile devices upon the increases in mobile use and possibilities, the formation of clusters in the new media by users accordingly and the fact that the media organizations carried news to the Social Media in order to include the clustered users in their masses of viewers/readers created convergence between the news media and the Social Media. In this context, some 477 respondents were surveyed by employing the method of random sampling in September 2015 in order to reveal what the tendencies of users towards news sharing on Twitter were, whether the means of mass media had any convergence effect on the sharing of news content, and which demographic elements were effective on news sharing on Twitter and its convergence with the means of mass media. In the research, it was concluded that the university students preferred the Social Media also in order to acquire news, that the media features of Twitter positively affected news sharing owing to its unique and characteristic structure, that the users tended to share the agenda and political news on Twitter by either posting original current tweets or retweeting, that there was an increase in the frequency of using independent news (independent news sites and blogs) sources as they attached importance to tweeting or retweeting the accurate news, and that this turned Twitter into an alternative news center rather than a social network. Regarding Twitter news convergence with the means of mass media, it turned out that the convergence of magazines and radio with Twitter was not as strong as that of television and newspapers. Finally, it was discovered that the ages and employment statuses of the respondents were effective demographic elements with respect to tweeting news on Twitter, whereas the financial income condition, which made it possible to access the media, was the effective demographic element in the context of Twitter news convergence with the means of mass media.