Journalists are increasingly turning to social media to verify stories, research has found.

According to the fourth International Study of Journalists study by the Oriella PR Network the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter are becoming more common in being used to source and verify news stories with 47% of respondents saying they used Twitter and 35% using Facebook when searching for news.

478 journalists from 15 countries responded to the survey, with 42% admitting that they had drawn information from blogs that had not previously visited before for news.

62% also said that PR representatives were used when sourcing stories, while another 59% cited corporate spokespeople as sources. 

When it came to validating stories already in progress, one third of respondents said that they used Twitter, a quarter cited Facebook and another quarter said they used Blogs.