Twitterising journalism and J-Ed: an Australian political reporting case study

Twitter is transforming pockets of journalism practice 140 characters at a time (Posetti 2009f) and challenging core elements of traditional journalistic ethics and professionalism in the process. In Australia, professional journalists have invaded the Twittersphere en masse, using the very popular micro-blogging platform as a diving board into the Real Time Web and a new model for interactive journalism which could be called ‘New Journalism 2.0’. Twitter’s transformative effect results in the merger of opinion, observational journalism and real time reportage, while fostering interaction between competitors, greater transparency of the Fourth Estate’s processes and practices, and unprecedented audience engagement. This transformation is well demonstrated by a case study of the biggest crisis to afflict Australian conservative politics in decades – a leadership ‘coup’ which became synonymous with the crowd-sourced Twitter hashtag #Spill. That case study, featuring a qualitative survey of eight high profile tweeting Australian political journalists, conducted in the immediate aftermath of the story’s conclusion, is the subject of this paper.