Tweeting Economics: Co-Constructing Expertise on Social Media

• In Event: 3163 - Digital and Social Media: Perceptions, Uses and Impact

Abstract

This paper focuses on economic and financial reporting to investigate how Twitter facilitates economic expertise. Through a case study of EconTwitter -- a decentralized, socio-professional, online collective whose members span from academic and professional economists to reporters to investment bankers -- it demonstrates how the everyday interactions on Twitter around economic data and analysis contribute to the mainstream coverage of economic news not only through reporting on economic data, but also common language, shared rituals, and collective sense-making. By using Twitter both as an object of research (to see how it shapes interactions) as well as a methodological lens (as it spotlights the publicness of journalist-source relationships), this study reveals how journalists and economic experts co-produce knowledge, thereby complicating the reasons why economic and financial news is repeatedly viewed to fail their watchdog role.

Author

• Burcu Baykurt, University of Massachusetts Amherst