Abstract
Social media are increasingly used as a news source by journalists all over the world. To ensure credibility and gain the public’s trust, the verification of social media content and sources is critical to journalists and news organisations. We report on findings from qualitative interviews conducted with 24 journalists working with social media in major news organizations in Europe. We identified five working practices concerning the verification of social media content and sources. Further, we found that fast-paced news publishing in an environment with information overload is perceived as a key challenge for journalists. To avoid trade-offs between verification and fast-paced publishing, journalists need efficient and easy-to-use support both in the verification process and in structuring and organising an overwhelming amount of social media content. Our findings contribute new knowledge on journalists' social media working practices and suggest user requirements for future innovations in tools to support the verification of social media content.