ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that to best understand Twitter’s impact on changes affecting the institution of news journalism requires that we examine the two dominant views of Twitter as first enabling and benefiting news journalism, and second of Twitter as distorting and representing a cost to news journalism. The first view regards Twitter as a communicative space that provides an ambient news environment and constitutes a global village within which news journalism flourishes amidst diverse empowered audiences. The second view embraces three basic arguments: (a) Twitter causes irreconcilable professional pressures; (b) Twitter underpins information disorder; and (c) Twitter is ideally suited to mediate populism and the coarsening of political and civil discourse and devalues journalism.
