Are Social Media Posts a Legit Source?

In the past, I’ve used screencaps of social media posts when writing articles about controversial topics. Then, I learned this isn’t always a good practice.

(Source: Photo by Merakist on Unsplash.)

I came to that realization when writing my article on the Cait Corrain review bombing scandal. Internet news outlets were already putting together the first articles about the topic. From the outset, I noticed how sloppy work and bad choices in those articles upset the very people targeted by Cait Corrain.

Too often, posts are taken out of context — making it look as if somebody is making a wrongheaded response by highlighting the wrong post. Out-of-context posts can even make the wrong person seem like the villain.

What about privacy? If you use screencaps, you can blot out the name of the original poster — but people can still find the original post. Also, many outlets embed the posts rather than using screencaps. (As discussed by Natalie Waters in the article Pulling pictures from social media: the do’s and don’ts, embedding posts is perfectly legal. You don’t need permission to share a post or image because you’re linking to it. Check out this article as it gets into the other issues with this topic.)

However, keep in mind that embedding the posts also means that your readers can click those embedded posts and go right to that post. Some jerks go from there to harassing the posters.

The “Delve” Controversy Reaches News Outlets

Is it acceptable when journalistic outlets link to (or even embed) social media posts when reporting on a controversy? Or when they use screencaps? It depends. This practice has been controversial. On the other hand, I don’t want it to stop entirely. Whatever you think about social media, a lot of interesting debate shows up there first, so I don’t want journalists to ignore that.

In a recent controversy, British-American computer scientist (and venture capitalist) Paul Graham posted on Twitter that he rejected a proposal because it used the word “delve” — explaining that the use of the word “delve” was a sure sign that they had used ChatGPT to write the proposal. He went on to claim that no one uses words like “delve” and “burgeoning” in conversation — and that people use those words merely to…