To Yell @ the Wind: The Everyday Making of Citizen Journalism on Twitter

Abstract: Manifestations of citizen journalism on Twitter have been mainly analyzed around trending stories, associated with public campaigns or breaking news. Microbloggers' everyday attempts to contribute to professional media coverage, however, have been scarcely addressed in the literature. This research analyzes the practice of tweeting at influential news outlets by using a mixed-method approach. Content analysis anddirected queries about users' own motivation to tweet at media explore the interactionbetween regular users and professional news networks. Results show that there is apredisposition towards negative media commentary followed closely by newsworthy topics generated by the users, which replicate to a large extent mainstream media's agenda. When asked directly in the feed 'why do you tweet at media?', users explain their motivations to address news outlets in diverging ways, from explicit citizen journalism mission, to visibility claims and coincidental tagging. The study contributesto the study of citizen journalism on social media platforms and elaborates a mixed-method approach suited for this type of online data.