To disseminate information, main use of Spanish newspapers on Twitter

Abstract

In less than fi ve years, Twitter has become one of the most popular social media. Its versatility has also been noted by media outlets, that after an initial phase of skepticism, are progressively joining Twitter. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the main Spanish traditional newspapers are using this service. We start from the hypothesis that they are underusing it not only in the purpose but also from a more formal perspective. To verify it, we have conducted a content analysis on the main 5 traditional Spanish newspapers’ Twitter accounts, from January 21st to 27th, 2011. The results of the 1001 analyzed updates certify some positive indicators, unable, however, to overcome the generalized use of a 2.0 tool with a mentality that, in several ways, still remains 1.0.