3 news stories that appeared on Twitter before mainstream media
With 316 million users sending half a billion messages everyday, the importance of Twitter from a communications point of view can’t be ignored. Regardless of the industry your organisation operates in, there’s an enormous user base ready and willing to engage with brands that play their cards right.
Social media analytics may be able to help you identify your key influencers and report the types of content they engage with, usage trends among your target audience and a range of other metrics that can ultimately increase your brand’s exposure.
However, it’s not only consumers who are using Twitter on a daily basis. The platform’s instantaneous nature, combined with the fact that anybody can effectively ‘report’ on the goings on around them at any time, means that Twitter has rapidly emerged as an indispensable tool in the news world. Increasingly, journalists, reporters and other media professionals are using the micro blogging service to get the scoop on stories as and when they break.
“Journalists use Twitter ever day to research stories and locate sources”
In fact, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford did a comprehensive examination of 135 journalists to determine just how pervasive Twitter use has become in the news room. The study found that of the 135 participants, 80 used social media on a daily basis to conduct research, develop contacts, search for interviewees and sniff out potential sources.
This particular piece of research was carried out in 2010, and it’s easy to imagine that the media relies even more heavily on social platforms today.
These statistics support the notion that the scope of news sources is widening, and this affects all communication professionals who are looking for ways to help their organisation’s news pieces gain traction. While professional press release distribution services are still usually the most effective way of getting information into the public eye in a timely manner, there have been a few instances when major news stories broke out on Twitter before they were picked up by major media outlets.
Here are three of the most notable:
1. Boston Bombing
On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon ended in tragic fashion when multiple bombs were set off near the finishing line, killing three and injuring more than 260 others, according to CBS News. With so many at the scene of the explosions – perhaps with smartphones already in hand, ready to take snaps of the runners – it may come as little surprise to learn that news of the event first broke on Twitter.
In fact, the social media platform proved itself as a valid journalistic tool throughout the disaster, with reporters on the ground publishing constant updates of what was happening in the city. The event quickly saturated news sources, as social media monitoring services could have showed. The number of Boston-related tweets hit six million on the day of the disaster.
Staff members of the Boston Globe, the city’s newspaper, were taking part in the marathon and they quickly transitioned from running into news coverage, according to Twitter, further demonstrating the flexible and dynamic nature of the platform. The newspaper sent out 150 tweets on the day of the bombing (up from an average of 40 tweets per day), with both their social account and website commanding an incredible amount of traffic in the days that followed.
2. Whitney Houston’s death
Singer and actress Whitney Houston’s passed away on February 11, 2012. Celebrity deaths naturally attract a lot of attention, and as a result the events are often covered extensively by media outlets. What was different about Whitney Houston’s death, however, is that the news first broke on Twitter.
Business Insider explained that Brittany J. Pullard (@BarBeeBrit), a frequent figure in the Hollywood nightclub scene, tweeted the news of the pop star’s death an hour before Whitney Houston’s publicist issued an official statement confirming the tragic event. You can see the tweet below:
Details never surfaced about how Ms Pullard gained knowledge of Whitney Houston’s death, but the news quickly went viral once pop culture heavyweights such as Katy Perry, Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj retweeted the official press release.
3. Twitter goes public
While most companies announce their stock market launch via conventional press release distribution channels, Twitter did something a little different. Leveraging the very technology that has enabled it to succeed, on September 12, 2013 the company tweeted that it had filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
This highlighted the ever-changing relationship between new and old media and was another step forward for Twitter proving itself as a legitimate and valuable news source.
In summary, Twitter continues to play an important role in the lives of both consumers and journalists. Communications professionals who make use of media monitoring tools may be able to identify their key influencers and increase the chance of their news stories gaining traction in the digital sphere.
Loren is an experienced marketing professional who translates data and insights using Isentia solutions into trends and research, bringing clients closer to the benefits of audience intelligence. Loren thrives on introducing the groundbreaking ways in which data and insights can help a brand or organisation, enabling them to exceed their strategic objectives and goals.
This month, we chat to Shirish Kulkarni, Director of Monnow Media about effective storytelling. He shares his research about why the way we tell stories needs to change to make news more engaging, inclusive and informative.
Isentia’s Insights Director, Ngaire Crawford also shares some of the trends we’re seeing across social and traditional media, and how we’re seeing the notion of ‘effective’ storytelling change for our clients.
https://youtu.be/tz8LuhjuzBA
Ngaire Crawford talks about the storytelling trends across social and traditional media
3:41 - Mainstream media is talking about:
Back to end-to-end COVID coverage with a regular cadence of updates
Anti-maskers are in the spotlight and the phrase “Bunnings Karen” has returned over 6000 media items
A slight increase in global coverage related to second waves of the virus.
Considerable reduction in racial inequality discussions
Across New Zealand where COVID isn’t quite the main focus, there is a lot of coverage about elections and electioneering.
5:12 - Across social media, there is a lot of division:
Between openly calling out misinformation, and perpetuating misinformation.
Between those ‘doing the right thing’ and those who are not. This is more about calling out individuals rather than organisations.
6:12 - On Google Trends, people across Australia and New Zealand are looking for search terms:
Kerry Nash (Bunnings Karen)
A lot of TV shows and celebrity content (Kanye West etc)
Sports (NZ)
7:06 - In terms of storytelling, it’s important to understand the context in which you are communicating. The things to consider:
Impact of video - divisiveness can breed “recipients” or “evidence” based culture. Video is the easiest way for messages to spread quickly and for media to lift the story. Consider this from a risk perspective (media and customer service training) as well as your content - it might not the time for beautifully produced videos just yet.
Echo chambers -heightened emotional states can mean that audiences seek out information that confirms information they want to believe. Keep an eye on misformation that’s relevant to you and your organisation.
Media as a moral high-ground: Anti-maskers, “fake news” etc can cause a really visceral reaction from the public, and from news media. Unfortunately, this misunderstands the context of those arguments.
9:37 - The narratives to watch at the moment:
Rules fatigue: People are getting tired of being told what to do, it’s a natural reaction (psychological reactance) but it’s something to be really mindful of when communicating right now. There is a heightened emotional state, especially for those who are entering a second lockdown.
Shirish Kulkarni talks effective storytelling
10:26 - Over the past year I’ve conducted research on how we can better tell news stories, and my findings can be applied across the communications industry. We are all storytellers in one way or another.
11:00 - We’re hardwired for stories, at an anthropological and neuroscientific level, stories help orientate us within the world. They are a virtual reality simulator helping us practice for real life.
11:53 - Typically, news stories do the opposite of traditional storytelling (i.e have a beginning and an end to the story). Instead, we (journalists) use the inverted pyramid structure where the top line is the conclusion and then filters down to the least interesting or least important information.
12:39 - The concept of the inverted pyramid structure dates back to the days of the telegraph, the original newswire. It was expensive, unreliable and it made sense to put the most important information at the beginning, just in case you lost the end of it. Although we don’t use the technology of the telegraph anymore, we still use the habits formed by that technology which continue to define journalism and communications.
13:03 - We conducted research with 1300 participants and the results showed users prefer stories that work in a straightforward and linear structure, much like traditional stories. More information was picked up as it fits with how we are hard-wired to navigate the world.
13:28 - Journalists are failing because they are ignoring what users need from the news. In an attempt to reverse that, I came up with six key principles that should be at the forefront of our minds when telling our stories.
Content - is it useful or relevant and does it help us understand the world better?
Context - are we providing enough context? News largely focuses on breaking or moving news but that's often to the detriment of context, analysis and understanding.
Users have agency - they are not just passive victims of the news, they can be part of creating solutions and want the opportunity to choose how to engage with the news.
Tone - we need to consider the tone we are using. We tend to fall back on journalist language which is old fashioned and formulae.
Diversity and inclusion - are crucial when storytelling. It’s about telling different stories, ones that reflect the richness of our societies. This is very important.
Inverted pyramid - is this the best structure to tell a narrative? What are the alternatives? What we are doing isn't working so we’ve got nothing to lose by trying something different.
17:24 - Based on these principles, I created a number of prototypes and tested them with users. When compared with a BBC news article, users overwhelmingly preferred our prototype. They picked up more information in less time and found it easier to navigate. This proves there is a better way of telling stories, we just need to be prepared to think differently and put users at the centre of our thinking.
Q&A
18:40 - How do you think the media coverage of COVID-19 applies to your research?
Media has a crucial role. The only justification to have journalism is to provide reliable and useful information. There’s a big thing about news being about entertainment and there’s a focus on the drama of news rather than the information of news. What do we need to know? We are users as well as the audience and this should be taken into consideration when wanting to drive engagement.
23:46 - Do you have any tips for making the linear narrative structure more effective especially through face to face presentations rather than emails?
What really worked for us was using a "narrative accordion". We had 5 questions, and the answers could be expanded and read based on the user's interest. It didn't matter whether the question was at the beginning or end as it was up to the interest of the user. Simplify what you’re saying, and question whether it’s useful to your users.
28:15 - What have you learned about younger generations and their behaviours?
People have an incorrect characterisation of young people and get their needs completely wrong. There is a perception you can’t make a video longer than two minutes for the younger generation because they have a short attention span and are unable to comprehend what is being said. This generation is the most emotionally and culturally intelligent generation we have ever had. Young people aren’t put off by complexity or depth, they are craving it. Don’t underestimate them.
If you would like toview other Webinar Isentia Conversations: Communicating through Change:
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Isentia Conversations with Shirish Kulkarni from Monnow Media
We chat to Shirish Kulkarni, Director of Monnow Media about effective storytelling. He shares his research about why the way we tell stories needs to change to make news more engaging, inclusive and informative.
A look into the changing consumption of news, and believability
It’s not a new statement to say we’ve shifted the way we consume or engage with news. However, it’s often forgotten that this shift isn’t occurring at a ‘moment in time’, it continues. While whether we click, scroll or turn a page, how we choose to consume our media is also more interesting when considering how this changes the behaviors or trust surrounding this activity.
‘When we are no longer able to change a situation- we are challenged to change ourselves ‘– Viktor E. Frankl
Much like the saying ‘you are what you read’, is our chosen method of consumption a reflection of our identity and which does our level trust in what we read, depend on the format.
While it may be easy to image an older generation still pouring over the news within a double page spread, every generation is playing its part in this shift. Looking at Australia specifically, the younger generation is still driving the most change but is this perhaps only a result of never relying on ‘one’ channel for news.
We look into how the landscape has changed, and what else can be unearthed.
Key findings in the shift of the media landscape
The growth of stories format and the shift to online videos, audios, images and live streams
Digital rival’s TV for news consumption
Social media has replaced ‘serious news’ with the trending, the viral and the buzzworthy
The news cycle is now 24/7
There has been a significant increase in fake news and a shift in the amount of trust people have in news
Australians get their news from the following sources:
Facebook 41%
FB Messenger 11%
WhatsApp 10%
Instagram 9%
Snapchat 5%
6 out of 10 New Zealanders read news content online and audiences spend almost 3 hours per watching broadcast TV
Trending news
With unlimited access to news and a 24/7 news cycle, people have to find a way to process the information. News happens instantaneously now and what happens today is often forgotten tomorrow. In the world of social media, most scroll through their newsfeed and only stop to look at topics and buzzworthy or trending stories that are relevant to their current situation. Not only that, watching short video clips that provide main headlines and brief conclusions are on the rise.
Fake news
A recent study conducted by the News and Media Research Centre revealed that 73% of Australian news consumers have experience a range of fake news including:
Poor journalism (40%).
Politically or commercially fabricated news (25%)
Stories pushing a political agenda (38%);
Advertorial (33%);
Satire (25%); and
The use of the term ‘fake news’ to discredit the media (37%)
Those who mainly use online news as their news source were more susceptible to encountering fake news compared to print and TV and as a result, their trust in the news has diminished.
The number of stories labelled ‘fake news’ seems to be increasing almost as quickly as our concern about it. The term has been used for everything from hoaxes and satire, to contentious articles, and genuinely false information. After a data search was conducted for the number of fake news mentions across broadcast, press and online across ANZ, it was discovered Australia had a significantly higher mention rate over a 6-month period in comparison to New Zealand especially across broadcast. Over November, December and January we saw a large spike in fake news mentions across the ANZ region, especially across online - this could be as a result of Facebook being in the spotlight around fake news stories on their platform and several inquests happening during this time.
With this data it can be assumed that with so much fake news being reported, our trust in news will be affected.
Trust in news
'Trust in the news is up — but there's still only a 50-50 chance you'll trust me on that', ABC News Online
The trust in news on social media remains low however trust is highest in established news brands, public broadcasters and print newspapers. Consumers seek quality, credibility and reputation when seeking out the news and albeit its use has been declining since 2016, television is still the most popular platform for news consumption. Although there is mistrust, consumption of news on social media is very much on the rise and although there has been a steady hold with the decline in traditional formats, it could be considered ‘a new balancing act’ as it becomes the norm for digital news consumption behaviours to coexist alongside more traditional means.
Shift in demographics
A study conducted by Western Sydney University outlines younger Australians are the ones driving change in terms of news consumption and below are some interesting facts from the study:
YouTube is their preferred social media platform (37 per cent), Facebook (15 per cent) Instagram (10 per cent) and Snapchat (6 per cent)
They do not trust news organisations and are not reading print newspapers
They engage with news stories as it makes them feel happy and motivated and knowledgeable
They think news organisations don’t understand young people’s lives and don’t cover the issues that matter to them.
Social media is a popular news source, but they are not confident about spotting fake news online
Paywalls
Trust leads to payment for news and those who pay for print newspapers or online news sources are much more likely to trust news than people who don’t pay for it. Australians remain overwhelmingly reluctant to pay for online news as there is so much information readily available for free. But when they do pay, they expect more than just the headlines – with trust in the brand and in-depth news analysis being the primary reasons that they would be willing to pay. Interestingly, although print runs are decreasing, their overall readership is not. The combined print and online readership of newspapers has been growing steadily over the past few years. One of the main reasons for the increased discussions around paywalls are due to businesses having a loss in net profit. As a result of this, businesses are introducing an online paywall, to “win back” their lost net profit. After some analysis, we found mentions around paywall to be increasing month on month in New Zealand as it is becoming more of a topical conversation in the land of the long white cloud. Comparatively, Australia are also discussing paywall however the more prominent conversations were earlier this year (February and March) and have been declining since. Could paywalls and digital subscription services be the future of receiving online content and news?
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Blog
How to keep the pace in the digital age
A look into the changing consumption of news, and believability
Would you trust a brand more if an AI model recommended it? For many, the answer is yes – and it’s changing the very nature of PR & Comms.
Our latest report digs into the changing nature of trust, as audiences turn to AI models for quick answers instead of going to organisations or media outlets directly, with AI fast becoming the final stop in the comms cycle.
This report unpacks:
Why trust has shifted, and where audiences are having these conversations
Why AI has become the last stop in the comms cycle
Methods for staying on top of your brand trust and reputation
To access the full report, fill in the form below:
If you ask ChatGPT or Gemini about your organisation today, the answer won't come straight from your website. Instead, it uses sources the model already trusts, which are often months or years old. So if your last big mention was a crisis or a controversy from 2023, that's probably still how AI describes you.
This is the tough reality for anyone working in PR and communications today. More people are getting their first—and sometimes only—impression of your organisation from an AI-generated summary, not from search results or the homepage. And these summaries often rely on outdated information.
What does freshness actually mean?
Content freshness refers to how recent the sources are that an AI model uses when it talks about you. It might seem like a minor technical point, but it's actually very important.
Search engines have always valued fresh content, and they let you update information quickly. If you change a page, Google recrawls it, and rankings can shift in days. Large language models don't work like this. As Lisa Main, Director at Main Bureau, said on Isentia's "AI as a Stakeholder" panel, "large language models are not databases of verified facts." These models are trained on a snapshot of the internet, updated only from time to time, and they rely on sources that were already prominent when they were trained. This means a past crisis or a controversy that is already resolved can keep showing up in AI answers long after it's no longer relevant.
She shared the example of how a day and a half after a notorious terror attack, she asked ChatGPT if the area had ever experienced a tragedy of that type. It replied that it had not." The model wasn't being careless, but it just hadn't updated to include the latest news. This gap between what reality is and what AI still believes is true sums up the content freshness problem.
Dr Nici Sweaney, founder of AI Her Way, explained on the same panel why this gap matters. She calls AI "an accidental narrator" — it shapes what people believe about your organisation just by repeating the latest information it received. The system simply uses what's available and is not trying to be harmful, so it's important to make sure that information is up to date.
How does this change the way organisations show up?
For PR and communications teams, this changes what "reputation management" means. Put simply, messaging that an LLM cites will remain relevant, no matter when it dates from. Messaging that has not been factored into the LLM’s answers, meanwhile, will have no discernible impact on an increasingly vital - even central - channel, regardless of how many other metrics it might win out on.
This leads to two important things to consider:
First, the conditions that surround recent earned media, statements, and announcements determine whether an AI model updates its picture of the brand, or keeps running on an outdated one. Catherine Arrow of the PR Knowledge Hub made a related point on the "Inside the AI Shift" webinar: LLMs and the agents built on them are "often forbidden from going behind paywalls, from scraping particular sites," which she said creates a kind of "news vacuum." The same logic applies to the brand’s own newsroom or press page. If it isn't feeding the model something current, the model has nothing current to draw from.
Second, owned content—like blog posts, media releases, and website pages — are strategically important because they’re something the organisation in question can control , but only if they are updated. If a page hasn't changed in eighteen months, it's much more likely to disappear from AI results, making any reputation built on it unstable. If something is published once and not updated, the brand risks letting older, less positive stories take its place.
For public sector and government communicators, the stakes are more immediate again. When a government agency's guidance changes, whether that's eligibility criteria, compliance requirements, or a service update, and the fresh version doesn't make it into what AI models are citing, people will still get fed old information, with potentially devastating real-world implications.
The evidence is already there
This is not just in theory. It's playing out in global research and in the day-to-day data right now.
AI is quietly replacing the front door to your content
The Reuters Institute's Digital News Report Australia 2026 confirms that many PR teams have noticed that Google organic search traffic to news sites dropped by a third worldwide between November 2024 and November 2025, and by 38% in the US, as AI Overviews and AI Mode launched. Publishers expect this traffic to nearly halve again in the next three years. Some now call this trend a move towards "Google Zero." For communications teams, this means people are increasingly less likely to click through to your website to check if information is current. More often, they're trusting what the AI says: hence why it’s so important to monitor content freshness.
AI models are now web-enabled and they might not actually guarantee source accuracy
One challenge is that most major chatbots are now web-enabled. For example, ChatGPT can browse the internet, Gemini uses Google Search, and Perplexity has its own live index. This makes it easy to assume that AI always knows the latest information. However, this does not mean that they are always accurate when it comes to citations. A study from Columbia's Tow Center for Digital Journalism tested eight AI search tools with 1,600 queries. They found that these tools failed to correctly identify or cite the source article more than 60% of the time. Some tools were wrong on most tests and rarely showed any uncertainty. New information has not had time to be checked or confirmed like older stories have. This is the real risk of relying on the newest updates — a story that is fast moving and poorly sourced about your organisation might end up in an AI answer before it’s even verified or fact-checked.
People are turning to AI chatbots specifically for what's new
The same report found that 35% of people who use AI chatbots for news do so to get the latest media updates. Dr Sora Park from the University of Canberra's News and Media Research Centre explained on the "Digital News Report Australia 2026" webinar that the main reason people use AI chatbots for news is that "AI collates stories from different news sources into a single response." People expect these tools to provide current information. If your organisation's newest content isn't included (and you have something current or novel to communicate) you miss the chance to reach audiences when they're most interested.
Fresh content doesn’t always equate to ‘new’ content
A notable example of creating freshness that LLMs reward and prioritise comes from updating existing pages, rather from creating brand-new content. Republishing and refreshing current material is more effective than many communications teams realise, as long as one actually updates the content, not just the date.
Evergreen pages are the first casualties when AI overviews roll in
The DNR Australia 2026 report also notes that once someone is inside an AI chatbot conversation, they rarely leave it to check the source — only 4% of AI chatbot users say they always or often click through to the original article, compared with 19% for search and 17% for social media. The pages that used to earn traffic just by sitting there, permanent and useful, are now the ones most likely to lose visibility, because AI models favour what's recent over what's merely correct.
One fresh statement doesn't automatically undo a stale narrative
If an executive online, especially one who has a lot of weight to what they post online, says something controversial and it quickly spreads across media articles, social media and search — it will definitely be picked up by AI as well. There is a golden window of opportunity that they need to capitalise on to clarify what they said. If they don’t, the negative story that was already built into the data AI models use, will not be affected much by the executive’s clarification statement, which wasn’t that timely anyway. As Catherine Arrow of the PR Knowledge Hub said on the "Inside the AI Shift" webinar: "public relations and media relations are not the same thing," and relying on a single release misses the point. The real lesson is not to publish faster after a crisis, but to build a strong, up-to-date presence before you need it. In our latest report, “How can leaders communicate in an age of scrutiny”, we’ve outlined exactly how comms leaders can communicate by adapting their content to audiences exposed to the “AI way” of news dissemination.
What PR & Comms teams should actually do?
The challenge is that organisations can't make an AI model update its answers whenever they want. What they can do is track whether recent work is actually being noticed, which is what Lumina AI View can help with.
Lumina AI View monitors which sources AI models use when talking about your organisation, how strong and recent those sources are, and how you compare to competitors. Freshness is one of five key factors in the overall score. If your freshness score drops, it's an early warning that your latest campaign or announcement hasn't reached the AI ecosystem yet, and older stories are still dominating.
What’s important to note is that the tool provides a list of source citations, paired with reputation pillars like direction, integrity, performance and innovation — giving a comms professional a fully-rounded understanding of what they need to do. It’s not just the case of knowing source citations, but also of understanding your own AI perception and performance to make informed decisions — whether that’s for a brand,a government agency, a NFP or elsewhere.
This kind of tracking is even more important because it shifts by industry and by market, so "AI visibility" doesn't mean the same monitoring job for every organisation. AI answers for healthcare might draw from the smallest, highest-trust pool of sources (mostly clinical and government), but SaaS and fintech answers lean heavily on editorial reviews and comparison sites. Ngaire Crawford made a similar point regionally on the "AI as a Stakeholder" panel. For the APAC region specifically, she pushed back on the assumption that editorial media dominates AI citations — "there are a lot of really massive claims about the impact of editorial media... some as high as 85, 88%. That's not what we're seeing." Instead, she found "a fairly even split between (editorial media) and company content," alongside a real presence for review sites, forums, and academic sources. For a comms team, that means the freshness strategy that works for a media-heavy consumer brand might not work for a government agency whose AI visibility is really riding on review sites, .gov pages, or industry forums instead.
By tracking regularly — weekly or as a routine check— you turn the vague concern of "what is AI saying about us" into something that is super clear. You can see if recent coverage changed your list of citations, or if your owned content is still being found, or where there are gaps that need to be filled because old stories still exist and are causing problems.
The opportunity in staying current
There's a real advantage here too. If old content keeps you tied to an outdated story, fresh content is a direct way for PR and communications teams to influence how AI presents them. Publishing regularly, keeping your own pages updated, and getting recent, credible coverage is not just for human audiences. It's how PR professionals can make sure the systems shaping first impressions have the right information.
Teams that make it an ongoing habit of checking in regularly, watching for changes, and keeping fresh, credible content flowing, will have more control over how AI describes their organisation.
If you would like to know more about our Lumina suite, please reach out here and our team will get in touch with for you a quick demo.
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Blog
Why is content freshness the new currency for AI visibility?
AI summaries are replacing websites as your organisation’s first impression. Here’s why content freshness—and the sources feeding these models—matters more than ever.
