Social media as a primary news source is no longer a myth. The past twelve months have shown the true value of real-time news updates via platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Last year’s Iranian election protests were brought to us in full detail via the ‘twitterised revolution’ as conventional media were prevented from reporting from within the country’s borders.

More recent events like the Haiti earthquake disaster has forced traditional news outlets to reassess the way in which they engage with online sources.

Next month, five journalists plan to lock themselves away in a French farmhouse with access only to Facebook and Twitter to test the quality of news from the social networking and micro-blogging sites.

The experiment will seek to understand whether or not these forms of social media (which between them have nearly 400 million users) form a serious threat to established media.

When the reporters arrive in the farmhouse in France’s southern Perigord region they will be forced to go five days without their smartphones and will be given mobiles that cannot connect to the internet. In addition, the journalists will be banned from using television, radio and newspapers. Instead, they will each be provided with a computer with a blank hard drives. No web surfing will be allowed other than to access Twitter and Facebook.

The experiment which will feature guinea-pigs from Canadian, French, Belgian and Swiss radio stations is being organised by RFP – the French-language public broadcasters association.

The trial should prove to be very interesting indeed – particularly when looking at the validity of news found on Twitter. Recently the death of a senior French politician, Philippe Seguin, was recently first made public on Twitter. However a tweet about a computer meltdown in French post offices quickly proved to be false.

Such hoaxes are common on Twitter and Facebook, with one this week saying that US airlines were flying doctors and nurses to Haiti free of charge to help with relief efforts.

Reputable media organisations will always check such stories by phoning the parties involved or checking against other sources, such as news agencies, online media or their own reporters.

So come February 1, as you spend hours surfing the web – spare a thought for the Perigord* Five who will be ‘doing time’ in a French farmhouse.

*[aptly an anagram of ‘Porridge’]