Study: 96% of UK journalists use social media every day

Almost all of the UK journalists who responded to a study into social media and journalism have said they use such platforms every day.

The related report, published today, states that out of the 589 journalists from the UK who took part in its worldwide 2013 Social Journalism Study – carried out by Cision and Canterbury Christ Church University – 96 per cent interact on social media "on a daily basis", and 92 per cent do so on Twitter in particular.

This compares to the 70 per cent who, two years ago in 2011, said they engaged with social media each day, and the 80 per cent for whom Twitter was a regular tool in 2012. A comparison figure for 2012, in terms of the percentage of respondents who use social media every day, was not available at the time of writing.

And 42 per cent of them "thought that social media was so important that they would not be able to carry out their work without it", the report added.

When the results were assessed based on the type of media the journalist worked for, the figures found more than double the percentage of broadcast journalists "use social media in their work for at least two or more hours every day", than those working for magazines. And while just 1 per cent of online reporters said social media was not something they made use of regularly, this rose to 9 per cent for newspaper reporters.

Respondents were also asked "to what extent social media tools have improved their productivity". Last year just 39 per cent said it had been beneficial for their productivity, a drop from 49 per cent the year before. Today's report found this had now increased to 54 per cent of respondents.

Looking across social media platforms, the study found Twitter "is proving to be the most essential for UK journalists", with 92 per cent said to be "using it for work in a typical week", compared to 70 per cent in 2011 and 80 per cent last year.

It appears that social media is more often used for "publishing and promoting" of content (by 91 per cent of respondents), than for finding stories, (89 per cent). As the report states, this represents a shift on 2012, when "there was a slightly higher level of use for sourcing (84 per cent) compared to publishing and promoting (81 per cent)".

Today's report is a UK snapshot of a worldwide study of more than 3,000 journalists and their use of social media, which is due to be published by the end of the year.

In a release, Kester Ford, head of product and marketing at Cision UK, said the findings show "journalists are using more social media platforms for a wider variety of purposes than ever before".

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