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How Engagement with Journalists on Twitter Reduces Public Perceptions of Media Bias
In traditional news media, professional journalists are expected to follow the norms and practices created and perpetuated in the field to maintain autonomy and authority. Social media spaces lay outside these institutional boundaries, serving as public, semi-public, and private spaces for connection, interaction, publication, and amplification, as well as the commodification of the personal for users, including news professionals. This has given rise to tensions in journalism over the boundaries between the personal and the professional, and the public and the private, vis-à-vis the erosion of separation between editorial and commercial functions in journalism. This article proposes an analytical model to theorize journalistic identities in social media and how they interact with internal and external forces in digital spaces. Specifically, we address the identity (de)construction of journalists along a spectrum from professional to personal as it intersects with elements that impact identity, from publisher to product. This study expands the scope of journalism research to analyse the blurring of editorial and commercial decisions at the individual level, accounting for a break in the established relationship between publisher and product that has formed the basis of the news business for more than a century.
There is little doubt that increasing polarization over the last decade has transformed the American political landscape. In The Other Divide, Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan challenge the nature and extent of that polarization. They find that more than party, Americans are divided by involvement in politics. On one side is a group of Americans who are deeply involved in politics and very expressive about their political views; on the other side is a group much less involved in day-to-day political outcomes. While scholars and journalists have assumed that those who are most vocal about their political views are representative of America at large, they are in fact a relatively small group whose voices are amplified by the media. By considering the political differences between the deeply involved and the rest of the American public, Krupnikov and Ryan present a broader picture of the American electorate than the one that often appears in the news.
As news organizations continue to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by engagement with audiences across digital and social media platforms in the creation and sharing of news and in the development of news-oriented products, they also offer up uniquely personal investment pathways and emotional ties for their audiences. This commentary considers conceptualizations of emotion and individual agency in engagement with journalists, news organizations, and the process of newsmaking. We suggest that exploring more forms of engagement and accepting them as part of the news process can encourage the sharing of emotion and the development of positive emotional connections to journalists and news content and products. This is important to consider as audiences move from influencing the profession of journalism to becoming one of its indispensable creators.
Diffusion of innovations theory typically has been applied to the spread of a particular technology or practice rather than the interplay of a cluster of innovations. This case study of a news company undergoing significant change seeks to offer a deeper understanding of multi-faceted industry upheaval by considering the diffusion of three interdependent yet distinct changes. Findings suggest technological change faces the fewest hurdles, as journalists recognize the need to adapt their practices to newer capabilities. Changes to audience relationships face greater resistance, while responses to changes to the professional culture of journalism remain the most tepid.