Indian journalists using social media as alternative to press releases

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The network has in collaboration with the Advertising and Public Relations Department of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) launched a report that provides an insight into what tools would benefit India's media and communications industry in the years to come.

With a tremendous media explosion and the proliferation of large amounts of data online, including social media, and the emergence of more than 300 round-the-clock news channels, the speed at which information is sourced, sifted and included in news stories has undergone a paradigm shift.

When a piping hot story is on the anvil, only one in eleven journalists would use more than half the press releases that flood their email inboxes.

An emphasis on the diversity of content from the media has driven a series of compelling changes in the conventions of news sourcing among journalists and other media professionals.

The public sentiments that are considered in constructing a story, the advent of the social media space as a hub for story ideas and extensive use of official websites to cull out authentic data are some of the most striking industry-wide changes that the report has highlighted.

The managing director of the firm, Chetan Mahajan, said that they jointly conducted this research with IIMC in order to address the gap between news-makers, news-consumers and the media. He believes that this report will help PR practitioners in best aligning their strategies and tactics.

The report was based on statistical data sets, including the ratio of stories produced by senior correspondents to those filed by young reporters, the frequency of social media usage in newsrooms, the reliance that journalists place on the Internet for sourcing news and, the male versus women reporters' behavior towards different news sources.