The people behind Facebook group, People looking for TV work: Runners ran the survey among 267 of its 15,000 users. They were questioning the value of sites such as Production Base and My First Job when it comes to finding entry-level employment in the media industries.

Jude Winstanley at an RTS Futures event. Credit: Paul Hampartsoumian

One group admin, production manager Jude Winstanley, who also set up free TV jobs site The Unit List, told the RTS modern developments mean that social media can be a far more efficient way for applicants to find TV runner and researcher-type roles.

She said: "Social media such as Twitter and Facebook is a massive part of that. Our budget and our schedules are so much quicker now that we have no time to plan things, we find that social media works amazingly well for sorting people or props or locations or anything that you need."

Winstanley added: "The response is so immediate - You don't have time at nine o'clock at night when someone goes 'we need a sewing machine tomorrow', what you want is somebody to be able to inbox you going 'this is the mobile number.' How would you do that without social media?"

However social media isn't perfect as there are still a lot of professionals in the industry who don't use it, according to Winstanley. "More experienced producers at a senior level may have a website or they may engage with LinkedIn because it's a little bit less personal than Facebook ".

This group are still very much in the loop in terms of jobs, "but they have their own network and have been around long enough if they need something or someone needs them they can just call them up" says Winstanley.