Information flows in journalism, diversified news sources: Turkey example with A Haber and TGRT Haber news sources

The recent history of journalism has been confused irreversibly with internet history. Along with the big changes that have taken place in the past few years, traditional media environments work in a way integrated with digital media. Recent years of developing technologies, media tools and applications have diversified alternative channels of news gathering for traditional media environments. There is intense information flow on news access.The relationship between traditional media and the Internet is of great importance to the journalism profession in terms of time, while user-focused digital news sources are regarded by news centers as much as traditional news sources. Technological developments, news centers that easily reach news sources through both traditional and digital media, the news collectively are trying different ways other than agencies and reporters. However, news centers offer a significant portion of news via news agencies, in which news sources from digital platforms are seen as alternative options. The news sources obtained from digital media accelerated sometimes exceed the reliability and validation criteria for news centers. Digital media applications (App) such as WhatsApp and BIP, which facilitate instant communication of news and information, have contributed to the rapid access to news sources. In this context, WhatsApp and BIP denunciation lines, which are becoming a part of traditional journalism news sources, emerge as important intelligence channels in mainstream news organizations. This study focuses on the number and proportion of digital news sources within total news sources of news channels. As there are many digital news sources, the study is limited to the use of WhatsApp and BIP as news sources. While WhatsApp is chosen due to its global use, BIP is also analyzed because it is a local alternative to WhatsApp to provide different point of views. A Haber and TGRT Haber channels are chosen because they are thematic news channels which use WhatsApp and BIP as news sources for the time period chosen for analysis. Although WhatsApp and BIP are used as news sources before 2017, 2017 can be determined as a milestone for these two media being used as news sources. 2017 is the year many news channels started using WhatsApp and BIP as news sources. Therefore, the study focuses on the usage of these two platforms as news sources in 2017, taking the period between August 1st –August 29th as a sample. This period is chosen due to availability of information from the two news channels which are the subject of this study. In addition to a quantitative analysis of the number and ratio of WhatsApp and BIP usage within total news sources, the study has utilized interviews with the editors of the two channels for additional information. At the end, the role of WhatsApp and BİP as a competitor for traditional news sources at initial stage will be assessed.