Twitter is emerging as a new form of ambient journalism where journalists and news organizations share brief updates and links via tweets, allowing readers to passively follow breaking news and ongoing events in real-time. While some have criticized Twitter as just gossip or trivial updates, when used by journalists it creates a new fragmented and multi-faceted experience of consuming real-time news from many sources at once through brief micro-bursts of data. This new format leverages principles of awareness systems to help readers construct an ongoing awareness of news stories and discussions through a peripheral stream of tweets.

1. Twittering the news The Emergence of Ambient Journalism Alfred Hermida UBC Graduate School of Journalism

2. Twitter time The Daily Show March 2, 2009

5. Multi-faceted, fragmented news experience

6. Georges Seurat La Parade (1889) (detail)

10. Ambient journalism

11. Micro-bursts of data

12. Twitscoop.com

13. NowPublic.com Scan

14. Retweet: @DailyUs

16. The future of Twitter

17. Thank you