The information is overloaded on social networks, particularly Twitter. Although, eye witnessed about any event Tweet the information, situation do matter for collect the timely news.
use in google engine the term/keyword "big data", and you'll find how much social networks may influence societies in news treating ;)
How do they give importance to tweets?
If the tweet is from a public figure, the tweet is considered to be a public statement, which is thus quotable and appropriate to critique.
When tweets are NOT from public figures, the "trending topics" is still considered to be a indicator of public sentiment.
Of course, trending topics are sometimes caused to trend by bots and not by real people, so journalists tend to be skeptical of reporting trending topics ONLY, unless there are other quotable sources also.
If it is twitter, number of retweets to the handle hashtag becomes a standard. If there are a large number of tweets on that handle it becomes a trend and that is where mainstream journalists pick up the material.
Twitter is maintain the balance of power between the reporter and the source. Mainstream media policy is influenced by the other factors, for instance Noam Chomsky filter of propaganda. Nevertheless, twitter is like a wall chalking. So any user whether it is known public figure or common public user is possibly to create the impression on the issues.
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