As 2026 progresses, the U.S. news and policy environments show no signs of relent. Day after day, PR and public affairs professionals everywhere are grappling with volatility from Washington that—in minutes—can drastically impact a company’s reputation, its stock price or an entire industry’s regulatory standing.
This is all playing out in an information system which feels chaotic to both monitor and interpret. Recently, Bloomberg financial columnist Conor Sen captured a stark reality about this dynamic and the role of X (formerly known as Twitter) in shaping it, sharing to his followers:
“For better or worse, objectively, from the Claude Code enthusiasm to the Citrini post, the catalysts for the [market] selloffs in all these stocks have happened on this website [Twitter].”
Well-known housing expert Lance Lambert then poignantly replied: “In the media world, this site is still largely upstream.”
Conor and Lambert are onto something; in particular the idea that X is still ‘upstream’ for the news that communicators need to know, flag and contextualize for relevant clients and principals. From reporter exclusives and newswire updates to announcements from elected officials around the world, keeping up with the platform and using it efficiently can be a real asset to communications teams.
But visibility is much different than utilizing the platform with the right setup and tools. X can be chaotic, and the website’s bots and echo-chamber tendencies tend to complicate the site even further. This is why implementing certain best practices and personalizing use of the site to specific clients and workflows is optimal.
How X (formerly Twitter) Still Breaks News
For a case study into the platform’s ability to make news and move markets, look no further than this Wall Street Journal headline: “Deleted Tweet From Energy Secretary Sends Oil Markets on Another Wild Ride.” Here, a deleted post from Energy Secretary Chris Wright moved the global oil market over 10%, with hundreds of millions of market dollars fluctuating in a matter of minutes. It’s a helpful glimpse into the site’s primary source tendencies. From Iranian leaders to U.S. regulators, such as the CFTC Chairman, X breaks news right from the primary sources that impacts a variety of stakeholders. Oftentimes these posts don’t have links but just videos with captions, such as the CFTC post linked above: a video with the simple caption ‘I have some big news to announce…’
Also, reporters across every industry have used Twitter (now X) to break news for years. Just recently, POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, Fox News’ Bret Baier, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl and more broke exclusives regarding President Donald Trump through X. While any direct exclusive from the President can be taken with a grain of salt, X tends to be where reporters go first—and then write the article next.
X also facilitates not just news, but narratives. Sen alludes to this phenomenon above—how industry-sharping narratives begin on X, such as Code’s market-shaping impact, leading to 30% software selloffs and financial firm Citrini Research’s viral X post on a hypothetical AI-dominated 2028 economy. Citrini’s post jumpstarted market moves and conversations across industries. Legacy media got onto it days later: Citrini’s viral post went live on February 22, which led to massive stock selloffs, but the Wall Street Journal didn’t publish a piece on it until midday, February 24: “Citrini Research’s post on AI risks appears to have sparked a stock selloff.”
Determining Signal vs. Noise
A lack of monitoring can lead to client teams being caught offsides. But, having access to a firehose of instantly-accessible information is not the same as understanding, contextualizing and interpreting it.
A recent Wall Street Journal article, “In a Chaotic Market, Investors Learn How to Cope With Surprises,” perfectly encapsulated the modern challenge—but also the opportunity that exists for those connected to Washington. Michael Rosen, Chief Investment Officer at Angeles Investments, talks about this phenomenon: “The noise-to-signal ratio has gone up dramatically. We need to spend a lot more time sifting through the greater amount of noise that’s in the world and try to discern what actually matters.”
This is key. For PR professionals, speed of monitoring is only half the battle; the real value lies in filtering out the noise to focus on what's truly important. When a bombshell tweet drops that will impact a client, flag with urgency, but remind them that clarity and context is on the way. Some questions to ask yourself before reacting include:
- Is this a policy with a pathway to implementation or just political posturing? A recent example is the President’s proposal to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, which drew swift condemnation and provoked large market swings, but lacked support from the Administration, votes in Congress or means to be successfully implemented.
- Is the proposed action legally viable? Such as with tariffs, the courts play a major role in determining the legal viability of most foundational U.S. policy.
- What role, if any, will Congress play in advancing or blocking this? Many announcements require Congress to advance legislation, even if sought via Executive Order. Congress moves slowly and meticulously.
- What do clients need to know about the immediate next steps, and how does this announcement alter the short- and long-term trajectory of their industry? Oftentimes, no reaction is better than jumping the gun on something regrettable, but on the contrary, political capital can be earned by announcing swift support of policy.
- How can social listening tools add context to takeaways? These platforms, ranging from public affairs-specific software like Quorum, to broader audience intelligence tools like Sprout Social, can deliver sentiment analysis at scale, as well as determine who is driving an X narrative. With paid influencers and bots abound on the website, contextualizing organic traction versus noise is critical.
How to Set Up an X Infrastructure
Say a comms pro works in-house, and part of their job is to alert C-Suite members and investors of breaking news and to coordinate a rapid response. Or someone works at an agency across six clients and needs to simply monitor and flag news as it happens. In both cases, X can be a real asset, set up through the following simple steps:
- Following the right folks: Identify active X users who provide relevant commentary for your respective industry. This could be as broad as active White House Correspondents and elected state officials, or as niche as trade reporters or influencers supporting an industry or cause. Separately, newswire accounts such as Bloomberg, Reuters and the AP work to aggregate news as it happens.
- Segmenting your feeds with notifications: One of my favorite tools on X is to set up account notifications, which can serve as a separate, one-off feed. These posts can be delivered as a push notification to your phone or segmented under ‘notifications.’ This can disseminate, say, medium priority versus high priority versus casually following your feed.
- Additional use cases: Monitoring is not the only way to use X. Utilizing social listening tools, DMing reporters, capturing client TV appearances and surveying reaction to news amongst key experts are just some ways to use it. This doesn’t even include clients or principals who want to have their own presence on the site, in which communicators play a key role in overseeing and managing that operation.
X has its deficits, but the evidence shows that its role as a public affairs radar tool is indispensable. PR pros and firms should strategize to have a presence on the website to monitor news and discern what matters. Navigating an unpredictable policy environment is challenging, but being caught flat-footed is worse. X adeptness can provide long-term value to those you work for as their eyes, ears and experts as news breaks.
Ari Neugeboren is Director at Signal Group.