How Local Newspaper Journalists Gather Information? A Study in Social Network Approach

• Main Author: 李品葭
• Other Authors: 陳百齡
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/90985675699674823732

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 新聞研究所 === 102 === Information gathering is one of the major tasks in journalistic work. Among the resources that journalists employ to gather news, social ties is an important factor that contributes to journalistic work. However, it is rarely known how social network was used as journalistic resources in daily news-gathering activities. This thesis aims to explore the above issues by employing a field study. This field study is based on a case of newspaper reporter who is assigned to local beat in Central Taiwan. The researcher made participatory observation and intensive interviews in a period of 30 days. Data was collected and kept in field journals. The data gathered were analyzed by both quantitative and qualitative methods. Two social graphs were plotted to show how the news sources distributed in both news reported and daily journals. This paper further found that journalist benefits of social ties are quite diverse; social ties not only facilitates gathering of routine information, but also exclusive news, knowledge, experience, referral resources, power and trust. Strong and weak ties also provide different types of resources. In conclusion, journalists contact many social ties in their daily information gathering tasks. Only very few appear on news reporting, while many were hidden behind the scene. These social ties provide reliable aid in news gathering activities. And a journalist has to identify, activate the connections, and make exchanges to get help according to the types of ties and resources needed.