Foreign reporting and sourcing practices in the network sphere: A quantitative content analysis of the Arab Spring in Belgian news media

This article analyzes foreign news coverage and sourcing practices in contemporary newsrooms. It builds on theories concerned with the interplay between digital technologies and journalistic practice to explore the use of social media sources at professional journalistic outlets. The central research question deals with the diversity of sources in Belgian newspaper and TV news coverage of the grass roots uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria in 2011. The quantitative content analysis shows how journalists under normal circumstances in their coverage of the street protests in Egypt and Tunisia still value traditional sourcing practices. In contrast, coverage of the Syrian uprising displays more characteristics of network journalism practices, which can be related to factors of proximity regarding news values. Moreover, we found that when covering Syria, Belgian journalists relied more on on-the-ground, non-mainstream sources that circumvented the restricted information access by means of digital networks and social media platforms.