Who breaks news first: Media or Twitter?

Twitter may be great for following Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs play-by-play, but new research quashes the idea that news breaks faster on Twitter than on traditional sources such as newswires.According to a new study, “traditional newswire sources” still often break big news first.Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow created a computer algorithm to study 77 days worth of news from 2011 — 51 million tweets and 47,000 articles from outlets such as BBC, CNN, New York Times and Wired. The news they studied ranged from natural disasters and accidents to celebrity news and scientific discoveries.

more