Sourcing the BBC's live online coverage of terror attacks

The live blog or live page has emerged as a bespoke format for covering breaking news online and represents an important 'site' to investigate the impact of social media on news sourcing. This article assesses whether the adoption of live online coverage has facilitated a more 'multiperspectival' journalism through the inclusion of 'non-official' sources. The article is based on comparative content analyses of the BBC's coverage of Anders Behring Breivik's killing spree in 2011 and the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008. The article is strengthened by 'triangulating' data from interviews, access to BBC documents and observation work at the BBC. The comparison reveals that the incorporation of eyewitness accounts has driven an increase in the inclusion of 'non-official' sources in the BBC?s live online coverage, but it suggests that further significant increases are unlikely. In particular, the use of Twitter was becoming normalised by 2011 both in the range of actors who use the microblogging tool and the BBC's approach to sourcing content from Twitter. The article suggests that journalists' approach to sourcing continues to depend as much on conceptions of news values and editorial approach as it does on the live blogging platform through which the news is disseminated.