NDM: 'Three-fifths of Twitter's UK users follow a newspaper or journalist'

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/04/twitter-uk-users-newspapers-journalist-guardian-times

This article focuses on the issue of impact the social networking site Twitter has on national newspapers. According to research, 15 million of Twitter users are following at least "one newspaper, brand or journalist" and they are more likely to tweet than those who don't. Notably, NewsOnTheTweet have been investigating this issue to show how the social media has benefited national newspapers. Based on their findings, 59% of Twitter users are following at least one national newspaper journalist and 35% are following Daily telegraph and the Times. On the other hand, 17% are following brands such as the Sun's motoring Twitter account and Sunmotorsport. It could suggested that Daily Telegraph and the Times have more Twitter followers compared to the other newspapers, as they are more common and popular. 

Significantly, the most popular national newspaper brands with Twitter users are: Guardian's Technology account (2.14m followers), main Guardian account (1.97m) and the Times's fashion account (1.62m). This establishes that the Guardian is popular among Twitter users, which could be due to the fact that they target middle class individuals who would want to know the latest updates. To add,  some national newspaper sub-brands have a higher amount of Twitter followers than main newspapers. For example, Mirror Football has 275,000 followers which contrasts to The Daily Mirror with 110,000 followers. The Newswork chief executive, Rufus Olins, stated: "We want to be the first to know and also be guided by expert insight and interpretation. The combination of news brands and Twitter helps keep us informed and opinionated. The insights from this study show that Twitter and news brands are most definitely stronger together. He also believed that "immediacy and accessibility of Twitter brings valuable readers to newspaper brands – including publications that users would not necessarily read in print or online".

To conclude, it can be argued that the development of social media such as Twitter, has helped newspapers to gain more users and therefore they are more likely to subscribe. Twitter gives people the opportunity to actively engage with the content through posting tweets about the newspaper company or to follow the journalists. As a result, this interactively is significant as individuals can catch up with the latest news about the journalists or the company, which would not be done through print or online.