News for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Study Up For 'Think': From The Trenches, On Twitter

stevegarfield
/
flickr

Does social media help or hurt the quality of news coverage? NPR’s Andy Carvin redefined reporting with his crowdsourced updates on Middle East conflicts via Twitter 7 days a week, sometimes 16 hours a day. He talks to Think host Krys Boyd about his book Distant Witness: Social Media, the Arab Spring, and a Journalism Revolution at 1 p.m.

Carvin’s reactions to the Newtown mass shooting in December drew sharp criticism from the Guardian’s Michael Wolff. Although Carvin (acarvin) became “a fevered spreader of misinformation” that awful Friday morning in retweeting reports (albeit with intent to verify), Wolff concedes that Carvin’s own words about his beloved son contributed a distinct empathy specific to the social outlet.

Carvin has an affinity for debating his methods with members of the media. So he wrote a piece addressing each of Wolff’s claims item by item -- complete with screengrabs of tweets in question via the curative tool Storify.

Listen to Think from noon to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday, on KERA 90.1 or stream the show at kera.org.

Lyndsay Knecht is assistant producer for Think.