A tool for journos: The Fuego Twitter Bot

Love it or hate it, social media has changed the way we live our lives and acquire and digest news. Journos are no different, especially those working in radio.

While there's greater connectivity on global scale, allowing newsrooms to tap into the latest breaking story, it's also made for an increasingly 'noisy' world.

Facebook reports it has 1.11 billion users of its site every month. On average, there are 400 million messages being Tweeted per day: from the mundane to events 'as they happen'.

Journalists regularly use Facebook and Twitter to 'crowd-source', jumping onto stories as they happen, harnessing the power of the 'citizen journalist'. Given the vast amount of information being generated, new tools are being created to help the journalist to stay on top of things.

The Fuego Twitter Bot is one such tool. Created by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, it monitors the Twitterverse to see what journalists have been talking about, tweeting and reTweeting.

It then ranks the articles on popularity and freshness. Each 'tile' on its page is a story people have been talking about and arranged in order or popularity. The tile will include a headline, the source and a sample Tweet linking to the story.

While it's designed specifically for the working journalist, it's a great tool for any 'news junkie', wanting to keep up to date with the latest on events around the world. 

See more here or follow them on Twitter here
 

Nikole Gunn, 20+ years in radio, former DMG Melbourne news director. Now teaching Journalism, News Research and Radio Journalism at Macleay College, Melbourne.