Follow breaking news with social media

Screen capture: Twitter posts with #bradenlopez tag at Tweetchat.com

Staff reporters and editors with Lake County Publishing use social media accounts to promote breaking news and to “live-Tweet” events as they are happening. Interested viewers can follow along.

The “toddler-killing” trial in Lake County courts has generated much interest among our community. As such, it serves as an excellent example of how viewers can follow breaking news.

As reported by staff reporter Jeremy Walsh for the Lake County Record-Bee, on its website and in print, authorities allege that two defendants — Orlando Joseph Lopez Jr., 24, and Paul William Braden, 22 — fired shotguns into a group of people gathered for a barbecue, killing 4-year-old Skyler Rapp and injuring five other people. 

Lopez and Braden have pleaded not guilty to 15 felonies, including murder, and denied more than 30 special allegations.

The majority of happenings in Lake County, Calif. are curated with a Twitter hashtag: #LakeCountyCA. But some stories, such as this one, receive their own unique tags because of anticipated interest and/or volume of tweets.

Walsh uses the the #bradenlopez tag when he live-Tweets during court proceedings. I re-tweet Walsh’s posts via Twitter accounts I curate for the Lake County Record-Bee and the  Clear Lake Observer American.

When stories are posted to www.record-bee.com, I publicize them on Twitter with the #bradenlopez tag.

Viewers can follow with a hashtag search on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23BradenLopez.

Viewers can also input the hashtag at Tweetchat.com: http://tweetchat.com/room/bradenlopez. Tweetchat will launch the 20 most recent posts bearing the designated hashtag and will auto-curate each new post as soon (or shortly after) it is made.

Read more about using Tweetchat at http://tweetchat.com/. For a further explanation of hashtags, read the Twitter Fan Wiki at http://twitter.pbworks.com/w/page/1779812/Hashtags.