Fleck, MatthesMatthesFleckMeckel, MiriamMiriamMeckelFieseler, ChristianChristianFieseler2023-04-132023-04-132010-06-23https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/96273In situations of extreme uncertainty, such as the public riots after the Iran elections, journalists often have to rely on few and sometimes intransparent sources of information, increasingly located in the online realm. In our paper we retrace the information sources of key journalists during and after the Iran elections. To achieve this end, we applied social network analysis on data from the online micro-blogging service twitter, collected using an open-source Ruby-on-Rails web-application for gathering information on twitterers, their tweets and their shared interests. Focusing on three twitter accounts from prominent bloggers with expertise about Iran, Nico Pitney (Huffington Post), Andrew Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly) and Robert Mackey (N.Y. Times), we identified three different patterns. In structural terms, Nico Pitney�s network resembles an expert network with close relationships to other similarly interested actors. In contrast, Andrew Sullivan�s network is widely spread out among topics and interests, functioning more as a radar screen for issues on the rise. Finally, a third role is characterized by Robert Mackey whose network shows brokerage patterns, with his contacts either being colleagues from New York Times or experts about Iran among whom he is in an intermediation position. This case study of these three prototypical journalistic roles in online networks has implications beyond the particular example of the Iranian Elections, as it might illustrate how professional journalists might discover and develop stories in a future, more and more online driven environment.enconference paper