Inter-country differences in breaking news coverage via microblogging: Reporting on terrorist attacks in europe from the Usa, Germany and UK

Abstract

The micro-blogging service Twitter proved to be a suitable social media platform for (breaking) news dissemination and commentary. Its immediate penetration and strong ability to spread such news was already investigated by several researchers. Breaking news themselves play an important role in the “24-hour news culture” we live in today. In less than two years several terrorist attacks stroke Europe. Twitter was one of the live reporting tools that kept people from all over the world in the loop on the attacks as well as on the proceeding investigations. Did news agencies from three different countries report in a similar manner on all these attacks? Did their follower disseminate the breaking news through re-tweets on the same scale? Are tweets on terrorist attacks more likely to be retweeted?.