Journalism as Multichannel Communication A newsroom survey on the multiple uses of social media

Neuberger, Christoph; Nuernbergk, Christian und Langenohl, Susanne (2019): Journalism as Multichannel Communication A newsroom survey on the multiple uses of social media. In: Journalism Studies, Bd. 20, Nr. 9: S. 1260-1280

Abstract

The use of social media reinforces the change in journalism from a single-channel activity to multichannel communications. News organizations and journalists must learn to simultaneously operate several social media channels. Furthermore, social media is multi-functional and applicable in all phases of news production and distribution. Taken together, journalism is reaching a higher level of complexity. This study's main objective is to systematize the multiple uses of social media in journalism and explore related newsroom strategies. To this end, we surveyed editors-in-chief of German internet newsrooms (n = 105, response rate: 70 per cent) about social media use in their newsrooms. We systematically distinguished five general dimensions, with 24 specific uses of social media in journalism. The results show that Facebook and Twitter serve multiple journalistic purposes. In contrast, blogs and YouTube are more specialized tools. We conducted a cluster analysis to explore if and how these patterns vary by different strategic approaches in organizing social media use in newsrooms. While the overall pattern remains stable, more experienced and strategy-oriented newsrooms use Twitter notably more often for various tasks.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Kommunikationswissenschaft
• Themengebiete: 000 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke > 070 Publizistische Medien, Journalismus, Verlagswesen
• ISSN: 1461-670X
• Sprache: Englisch