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New Knight Center Twitter feed showcases restrictions on social media freedom

Journalists increasingly are turning to Twitter to break stories, and even write stories ignored by traditional mainstream media.

Still, some reporters, such as those at The Miami Herald, are concerned about newspapers' over-use and mis-use of Twitter.

Whether Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, social media sites are raising questions related to freedom of expression and ethics. For example, people in both Guatemala and Venezuela were arrested for tweeting messages deemed a threat to the banking system. And reporters in Brazil, Guatemala and the United States have been fired for posting "inappropriate" information on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, respectively.

As such, the blog for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, as part of an on-going series of original projects, has created a Twitter feed detailing arrests and firings related to social media use during the past two years.

This Social Media Freedom Twitter feed will be updated as more incidents occur.

Previously, as part of this project the Knight Center's blog published a map of electoral censorship in Brazil, and a map pinpointing violence against journalism in Mexico.

Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.