Reaping and sowing the news from an Arab Spring: the politicised interaction between traditional and alternative journalistic practitioners

The 'Arab Spring' has been discussed in the mainstream media as a 'social media revolution'; a seismic shift away from the traditional news correspondence towards an era of citizen journalism and social media reporting. This paper reports on a preliminary analysis of the ways in which mainstream and alternative modes of journalistic practice in particular, interacted during the initial months of protest in Egypt and Libya in 2011. Using both quantitative and qualitative forms of analysis of mainstream news reports as well as social media and blogging, the paper compares the ways in which the two modes of journalistic practice collaborated to disseminate news and information about the protests. The preliminary analysis indicates that productive interactions did occur and led to changes in traditional journalistic practice, though true collaboration was hindered by the organisational constraints posed by the reporting practices of each group.