Cover not available
Part of
Participation, Engagement and Collaboration in Newsmaking: A postfoundational perspective
Edited by Jana Declercq, Geert Jacobs, Felicitas Macgilchrist and Astrid Vandendaele
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 94] 2021
► pp. 151–174

Chapter 7
Journalists’ use of social media

A paradigmatic shift towards restoring audience trust through wide-ranging engagement

This paper shows that journalists are gradually taking greater advantage of social media and the interactional affordances it offers. This means, firstly, that journalists can benefit from social media not only by monitoring conversations, but also by participating in and initiating them. Secondly, journalists can not only collect information and identify sources, but also actively ask for them. Thirdly, journalists can not only distribute their work, but also market it and brand themselves. As these interactional extensions enable journalists to already engage with their audience during the newswriting, the paper concludes by discussing the potential of social media for improving the transparency of journalistic work and, therefore, for restoring a trusting relationship between the news media and their audience.

Keywords: social media, journalistic work, newswriting, paradigmatic shift, engagement, transparency, trust in journalism
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Social media: Scalable sociality of media
  • Literature review: A patchy picture of journalists’ social media use
  • Data and methods: Theoretical sampling of Finnish journalists’ practices
  • Results: Towards a paradigmatic shift in newswriting
  • Discussion: Restoring trust through transparency of practices
  • Conclusion: Social media is (becoming) an integral part of today’s journalism
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.94.c7
References
Barnard, Stephen R
2016 “’Tweet or Be Sacked’: Twitter and the New Elements of Journalistic Practice.” Journalism 17 (2): 190–207. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Binns, Amy
2012 “Don’t Feel the Trolls! Managing Troublemakers in Magazines’ Online Communities.” Journalism Practice 6 (4): 547–562. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Danah, and Nicole B. Ellison
2007 “Social Network Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (1): 210–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Sociality through Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” In The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies, ed. by William, H. Dutton. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bowman, Shayne, and Chris Willis
2005 “The Future Is Here, but Do News Media Companies See It?” Nieman Reports 59 (4), 6−10.Google Scholar
Brandtzaeg, Petter Bae, and María Ángeles Chaparro Domínguez
2018 “A Gap in Networked Publics? A Comparison of Younger and Older Journalists’ Newsgathering Practices on Social Media.” Nordicom Review 39 (1): 95–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brems, Cara, Martina Temmerman, Todd Graham, and Marcel Broersma
2017 “Personal Branding on Twitter: How Employed and Freelance Journalists Stage Themselves on Social Media.” Digital Journalism 5 (4): 443–459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bucy, Erik P., and Maria Elizabeth Grabe
2007 “Taking Television Seriously: A Sound and Image Bite Analysis of Presidential Campaign Coverage, 1992–2004.” Journal of Communication 57 (4): 652–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Canter, Lily
2015 “Personalised Tweeting: The Emerging Practices of Journalists on Twitter.” Digital Journalism 3 (6): 888–907. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chadha, Kalyani, and Rob Wells
2016 “Journalistic Responses to Technological Innovation in Newsrooms.” Digital Journalism 4 (8): 1020–1035. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, Gina Masullo, and Paromita Pain
2017 “Normalizing Online Comments.” Journalism Practice 11 (7): 876–892. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coe, Kevin, Kate Kenski, and Stephen A. Rains
2014 “Online and Uncivil? Patterns and Determinants of Incivility in Newspaper Website Comments.” Journal of Communication 64 (4): 658–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cui, Di, and Trisha T. C. Lin
2015 “Professional Intervention and Organizational Incorporation: Examining Journalistic Use of Microblogs in Two Chinese Newsrooms.” Asian Journal of Communication 25 (4): 351–370. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Daniels, Glenda
2014 “How Far Does Twitter Deepen Democracy Through Public Engagement?: An Analysis of Journalists’ Use of Twitter in the Johannesburg Newsroom.” Journal of African Media Studies 6 (3): 299–311. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doval, Montserrat
2014 “Spanish and Portuguese Journalists on Twitter: Best Practices, Interactions and Most Frequent Behaviors.” Observatorio OBS* 8 (3): 169–182. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Durham, Meenakshi G
1998 “On the Relevance of Standpoint Epistemology to the Practice of Journalism: The Case for ‘Strong Objectivity’.” Communication Theory 8 (2): 117–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edelman
(2019) “2019 Edelman Trust barometer: Global report.” Accessed March 31, 2020. [URL].Google Scholar
Ekström, Mats
2006 “Interviewing, Quoting, and the Development of Modern News Journalism. A Study of the Swedish Press 1915–1995.” In News from the Interview Society, ed. by Mats Ekström, Åsa Kroon, and Mats Nylund. Göteborg: Nordicom.Google Scholar
English, Peter
2016 “Twitter’s Diffusion in Sports Journalism: Role Models, Laggards and Followers of the Social Media Innovation.” New Media & Society 18 (3): 484–501. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fengler, Susanne, and Dominik Speck
2019 “Journalism and Transparency: A Mass Communications Perspective.” In Contested Transparencies, Social Movements and the Public Sphere, ed. by Stefan Berger, and Dimitrij, Owetschkin. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Christian
2017 Social Media: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.Google Scholar
Gauthier, Gilles
1993 “In Defence of a Supposedly Outdated Notion: The Range of Application of Journalistic Objectivity.” Canadian Journal of Communication 18 (4): 497–505. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glaser, Barney, and Anselm Strauss
1967 The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
(1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Graham, Todd, and Scott Wright
2015 “A Tale of Two Stories from ‘Below the Line’: Comment Fields at the Guardian.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 20 (3): 317–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gulyas, Agnes
2013 “The Influence of Professional Variables on Journalists' Uses and Views of Social Media.” Digital Journalism 1 (2): 270-285. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haasio, Ari, Anu Ojaranta, and Markku Mattila
2017 ”Valheen lähteillä – Valemedian lähteistö ja sen luotettavuus [The Sources of Lie – The Sources of Fake Media and their Credibility].” Media & Viestintä 40 (3–4): 100–121. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Haapanen, Lauri
2017 Quoting Practices in Written Journalism. PhD diss. Helsinki: Unigrafia. [URL].Google Scholar
2020a “Modelling Quoting in Newswriting: A Framework for Studies on the Production of News”. Journalism Practice” 14 (3): 374–394.
https://doi.org/
.Google Scholar
2020b “Problematising the Restoration of Trust Through Transparency: Focusing on Quoting”. Journalism. Published Online Before Print: June 18, 2020. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haapanen, Lauri, and Ville Manninen
2019 “Etic and emic data production methods in the study of journalistic work practices: A systematic literature review.” Journalism.. Published Online Before Print:May172021 
https://doi.org/
Google Scholar
Haapanen, Lauri, and Mats Nylund
2019 “Interviewing and Reporting.” In The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, ed. by Tim, P. Vos, Folker Hanusch, Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh, Annika Sehl, and Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou. Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harju, Auli
2018 ”Suomi24-keskustelut kohtaamisten ja törmäysten tilana [Online Discussion as a Contact Zone].” Media & Viestintä 41 (1): 51–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herrera-Damas, Susana
2013 “Indicaciones recurrentes en las normativas para el uso periodístico de las redes sociales [Recurrent Topics in Guidelines for the Use of Social Networks by Journalists].” El profesional de la información 22 (1): 46–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hess, Kristy, and Kathryn Bowd
2015 “Friend or Foe? Regional Newspapers and the Power of Facebook.” Media International Australia 156 (1): 19–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Higgins, Andrew
2018 “Three Internet Trolls Convicted of Systematic Defamation Against Journalist in Finland.” New York Times. [URL].Google Scholar
Holton, Avery E
2016 “Intrapreneurial Informants: An Emergent Role of Freelance Journalists.” Journalism Practice 10 (7): 917–927. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huuskonen, Laura Maria
2018 ”Ensi tiedot Twitteristä? Sosiaalisen median lähteet reaaliaikaisessa verkkouutisoinnissa [Sosiaalisen median lähteet reaaliaikaisessa verkkouutisoinnissa].” In Twitter viestintänä. Ilmiöt ja verkostot, ed. by Pekka Isotalus, Jari Jussila, and Janne Matikainen. Vastapaino: Tampere 2018Google Scholar
Hänska Ahy, Maximillian
2016 “Networked Communication and the Arab Spring: Linking Broadcast and Social Media.” New Media & Society 18 (1): 99–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ihlebæk, Karoline Andrea, and Anders Olof Larsson
2018 “Learning by Doing: Perspectives on Social Media Regulations in Norwegian News Organizations.” Journalism Studies 19 (6): 905-920. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaarakainen, Suvi-Sadetta, and Meri-Tuulia Kaarakainen
2018 ”Tulevaisuuden toivot – Digitaalisten medioiden käyttö nuorten osallisuuden ja osaamisen lähteenä [Tomorrow's Brightest Stars: Young People's Digital Media Usage as a Source of Participation and Competence].” Media & Viestintä 41 (4): 235–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karlsson, Michael
2010 “Rituals of Transparency. Evaluating Online News Outlets’ Uses of Transparency Rituals in the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden.” Journalism Studies 11 (4): 535–545. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroon Lundell, Åsa, and Mats Ekström
2010 “Interview Bites” in Television News Production and Presentation. Journalism Practice 4 (4): 476–491. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Angela M
2015 “Social Media and Speed-Driven Journalism: Expectations and Practices.” International Journal on Media Management 17 (4): 217–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jantunen, Jarmo H
2018 ”Korpusavusteinen diskurssintutkimus (CADS): analyysiesimerkki homouden ja heterouden digitaalisista diskursseista [Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS): Example Analysis of Digital Discourses of Homosexuality and Heterosexuality.].” AFinLA-E: Soveltavan Kielitieteen Tutkimuksia 11: 20–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jensen, Mads
2016 “The Emergence of Second-Screen Gatekeeping.” Digital Journalism 4 (3): 321–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Michiel, Steve Paulussen, and Peter Van Aelst
2018 “Much Ado About Nothing? The Low Importance of Twitter as a Sourcing Tool for Economic Journalists.” Digital Journalism 6 (7): 869–888. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jung, Joo-Young, and Mikko Villi
2018 “Newspapers and Cross-level Communications on Social Media: A Comparative Study of Japan, Korea, and Finland.” Digital Journalism 6 (1): 58–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Juntunen, Laura
2017 ”Kulttuurien törmäys? Journalismin etiikka sosiaalisen median aikakaudella [Collision of Cultures? The Ethics of Journalism in the Era of Social Media].” Viestinnän tutkimusraportteja 1. Helsingin yliopisto: Viestinnän tutkimuskeskus CRC.Google Scholar
Manninen, Ville. J. E
2017 “Sourcing Practices in Online Journalism: An Ethnographic Study of the Formation of Trust in and the Use of Journalistic Sources.” Journal of Media Practice 18 (2–3): 212–228. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Manninen, Ville
2019 Trust and Trustworthy Sourcing in Finnish Online Journalism. Divergences in Audience Expectations and Journalists' Practices. PhD diss. Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä. [URL].Google Scholar
Matikainen, Janne
2010 ”Perinteinen ja sosiaalinen media – käyttö ja luottamus [Legacy and Social Media  – Usage and Trust ].” Media & Viestintä 33 (2): 55–70.Google Scholar
Matikainen, Janne, and Mikko Villi
2015 ”Aktiivinen yleisö? Tutkimus yleisön asenteista sisällön tuottamista ja jakelua sekä verkossa osallistumista kohtaan [Active Audience? Attitudes of the Finnish Audience Toward Content Production and Distribution and Participation Online].” Media & Viestintä 38 (3): 147–164. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsushita, Kayo
2019 When News Travels East: Translation Practices by Japanese Newspapers. Translation, Interpreting and Transfer 1. Leuven: Leuven University Press.Google Scholar
McGregor, Shannon C
2019 “Social Media as Public Opinion: How Journalists Use Social Media to Represent Public Opinion.” Journalism 20 (8): 1070–1086. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Daniel, Elisabetta Costa, Nell Haynes, Tom McDonald, Razvan Nicolescu, Jolynna Sinanan, Juliano Spyer, Shriram Venkatraman, and Xinyuan Wang
2016 How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Molyneux, Logan, Avery Holton, and Seth C. Lewis
2018 “How Journalists Engage in Branding on Twitter: Individual, Organizational, and Institutional Levels, Information.” Communication & Society 21 (10): 1386–1401. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Muindi, Benjamin
2018 “Negotiating the Balance between Speed and Credibility in Deploying Twitter as Journalistic Tool at the Daily Nation Newspaper in Kenya.” African Journalism Studies 39 (1): 111–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
NT&T
2010 “Towards a Linguistics of News Production.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (7): 1843–1852. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Ojala, Markus, Mervi Pantti, and Jarkko Kangas
2018 ”Professional Role Enactment Amid Information Warfare: War Correspondents Tweeting on the Ukraine Conflict.” Journalism 19 (3): 297–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paaso, Marika
Forthcoming “Suomalaisten toimittajien yksityisyyden ja julkisuuden hallinta sosiaalisessa mediassa [Finnish Journalists' Privacy and Publicity Management in Social Media]. PhD diss. University of Jyväskylä, Department of Language and Communication Studies.Google Scholar
Pew Research Center
2015 “The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook.” [URL].Google Scholar
Philips, Angela
2010 “Transparency and the New Ethics of Journalism.” Journalism Practice 4 (3): 373–382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Puro, Jukka-Pekka
2018 "’Ei meidän tarvitse huutaa toisillemme päin naamaa’: Blokkaaminen poliittisen ja yhteiskunnallisen keskustelun jännitteenä [Blocking as a Barrier to Public Political Debate ].” Media & Viestintä 41 (2): 123–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rantasila, Anna
2018 ”Tahmaiset affektit: Fukushima Daiichin ydinonnettomuus YLE:n uutisoinnin verkkokommenteissa [Sticky Affects: The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident in Online Comments of YLE's News Coverage].” Lähikuva 31 (3): 30–45. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Revers, Matthias
2014 “The Twitterization of News Making: Transparency and Journalistic Professionalism.” Journal of Communication 64: 806–826. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salomaa, Elina
2019 “Television ja Twitterin risteyksessä. Sosiaalinen televisio vuorovaikutuksen ja mediatapahtumaan osallistumisen välineenä [In the Intersection of Television and Twitter. Social Television as a Tool for Interaction and Participation in a Media Event].” PhD diss. Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä. [URL].Google Scholar
Salonen, Margareta, Margarethe Olbertz-Siitonen, and Turo Uskali
. “’Conversational gatekeeping – Social Interactional Practices of Post-publication Gatekeeping on Newspapers’ Facebook Pages.” (Article manuscript).
Schütz, Astrid
1998 “Assertive, Offensive, Protective, and Defensive Styles of Self-Presentation: A Taxonomy.” The Journal of Psychology 132 (6): 61–628. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
SEOPressor
2019 “The 6 Types of Social Media.” Accessed on September 3, 2019. [URL].Google Scholar
Srisaracam, Sakulsri
2018 “Crafting News Narratives on Social Media: A Study of Cross-Media Newsrooms in Thailand.” Journalism Practice 12 (8): 1081–1090. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin
1998 Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Stroud, Natalie Jomini, Joshua M. Scacco, Ashley Muddiman, and Alexander L. Curry
2015 “Changing Deliberative Norms on News Organizations' Facebook Sites.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 20 (2): 188–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simola, Katri
2019 “Instagram on Twitteriä suositumpi, ja Facebookissa ovat lähes kaikki – ‘Seuraamme tarkkaan, mikä lukijoihin puree’ [Instagram is More Popular than Twitter, and Facebook has Just about Everyone – ‘We Follow Closely What Readers are Interested In’].” Suomen Lehdistö. [URL].Google Scholar
Tandoc Jr., Edson, and Tim P. Vos
2016 “The Journalist is Marketing the News: Social Media in the Gatekeeping Process.” Journalism Practice 10 (8): 950–966. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tavory, Iddo, and Stefan Timmermans
2009 “Two Cases of Ethnography: Grounded Theory and the Extended Case Method.” Ethnography 10 (3): 243–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vainikka, Eliisa, and Auli Harju
2019 ”Anonyymien keskustelupalstojen julkisuus: Marginaaliin jääneiden vertaistukea ja yhteiskuntakritiikkiä [Anonymous Online Forums as Counterpublics Peer Support and Social Criticism of Marginalized Users].” Media & Viestintä 42 (2): 99–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Dijck, José, and Thomas Poell
2013 ”Understanding Social Media Logic.” Media and Communication 1 (1): 2–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vandendaele, Astrid
2017 “The Newsroom’s Last Line of Defence: A Linguistic Ethnographic Investigation into Newspaper Sub-Editing.” Ghent University. Faculty of Arts and Philosophy.Google Scholar
Villi, Mikko
2011 ”Sosiaalinen kuratointi verkossa: Mediasisältöjen sosiaalinen kulutus ja osallistava yleisöys [Social Curation Online: The Social Consumption of Media Content and the Participatory Audience].” Media & Viestintä 34 (4): 48–65. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Willnat, Lars, and David H. Weaver
2018 “Social Media and U.S. Journalists: Uses and Perceived Effects on Perceived Norms and Values.” Digital Journalism 6 (7): 889–909. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vitikka, Elina
2018 ”Hyperlinkkien funktiot ja kirjoittaja- ja lukijapositiot [Hyperlinks: Functions, Writers-in-the-Text and Readers-in-the-Text].” Virittäjä 122 (2): 161–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zamith, Rodrigo
2019 “Transparency, Interactivity, Diversity, and Information Provenance in Everyday Data Journalism.” Digital Journalism 7 (4): 470–489. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zeh, Reimar, and David N. Hopmann
2013 “Indicating Mediatization? Two Decades of Election Campaign Television Coverage.” European Journal of Communication 28 (3): 225–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Barbie
1993 “Journalists as Interpretive Communities.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10: 219–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar