Sky News has appointed Ruth Barnett to the newly created role of Twitter correspondent.

The former multimedia producer for Sky News, who takes up her new role on March 16, will be responsible for sourcing news stories on Twitter and feeding them back to the Sky News team.

The new role shows the development of Twitter as an important newsgathering and news sharing medium, the publisher reported in a press release.

"Having a member of the team committed to Twittering will not only further increase Sky News' presence in the Twittersphere, but will also highlight the power of Twitter as a newsgathering tool," said online news editor for Sky News, Jon Gripton.

"We've used it many times to help report breaking news stories from the UK and abroad – most recently at the Oscars, where we were breaking news of the winners first - ahead of TV and the newswires - as well as posting pictures from the red carpet and interacting with fellow Twitterers".

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