ABC has announced the appointment of Walkley award winning journalist Latika Bourke as its first ever social media reporter. 

Bourke, who won the 2010 Young Australian Journalist of the year award for her coverage of the Tony Abbott Liberal leadership challenge for 2UE Radio, will take up the post next year.

“We realise the importance of social media and how it can be used to enhance and expose new issues as they happen,” ABC TV Publicity’s Rachel Baugh tells Marketing magazine. “She’s basically going to be reporting on the news at hand, focussing on social media outlets.”

Bourke, who is an established social media presence with over 10,000 Twitter followers, will be working for AM, The World Today, and PM on ABC Radio. Apart from that, it’s not particularly clear what Bourke will be doing.

The new role will be attached to the ABC’s existing award-winning radio news and current affairs team,” reads an ABC release, “and will be part of a range of measures designed to explore how social media can be used to enhance and extend the ABC’s coverage of national politics.

‘I am delighted to welcome Latika to our Canberra team’ said ABC’s director of news, Kate Torney. ‘The ABC has a strong tradition of embracing and exploring new ways of communicating with our audience across a range of new and emerging platforms. This latest appointment continues that tradition’.

Bourke did not respond to request for comment, she was pretty busy responding to hundreds of messages of congratulations from her Twitter followers.