Logan Molyneux
Biographic Data
| ID | 4266364 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Logan Molyneux |
| GIVEN NAMES | Logan |
| FAMILY NAME | Molyneux |
| SIGNATURE | MOLYNEUX L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Temple University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7382-3065 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 621 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Alternative Epistemologies as Distinguishing Features of Right-Wing and Left-Wing Media in the United States
This study builds on efforts to understand what alternative media are becoming by examining differences in epistemology among them and as compared with mainstream media. We find that alternative media present fewer sources on average and rely more often on unattributed assertions. The source count is particularly low in right-wing alternative media. Furthermore, alternative media outlets are more distant from the sources they do provide than main…
What I miss most: Journalists’ rationalization of relational social media use
Journalists’ social media use is a recent example of long-standing gaps between journalistic discourse and journalistic practice. This manuscript applies the sociological concept of rationalization to explain the persistence of this gap, theorizing that the need for rational explanations of one’s work is so powerful for journalists that they offer one description publicly, or to their bosses, while practicing something different. We apply rationa…
Thriving in Journalism: A Survey of Support Systems’ Impact on Job Satisfaction and Well-Being
Journalists rely on a patchwork of support from organizational, institutional, and interpersonal sources, about which the academic literature has growing evidence. Building on this literature, this study seeks to provide such an overview, while also asking how well these patchwork supports function. A nationally representative survey of 633 U.S. reporters finds that trust in management and a supportive workplace culture are most important for jou…
From Individual Disconnection to Collective Practices for Journalists’ Wellbeing
Journalists are increasingly experiencing the negative consequences of online news transformations, such as trolling and harassment, as well as audience distrust. Despite acute need, intra-organisational efforts to support journalists’ online wellbeing have so far been limited. More recently, research has explored how journalists have turned to individual practices of disconnection, such as blocking, muting, or small breaks from online media to m…
Let’s Not Tank the Reputation of This Organization.” How Newsroom Social Media Policies Exacerbate Journalism’s Labor Crisis
This study explores the tension between journalists’ personal social media accounts and newsroom social media policies to understand how newsroom managers exacerbate journalism’s labor crisis by de-professionalizing the field through restrictive policies. To analyze this tension, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of (1) managerial discourses collected from newsroom social media policies and scholarly literature and (2) journalistic discour…
When Sources Contradict: The Epistemological Functions of Contradiction in News Texts
Contradiction is a defining characteristic of contemporary journalism, despite the risks it carries of raising uncertainty among audiences. Scholars and observers alike have called for journalists to embrace an epistemological stance rooted in adjudication of competing claims, but studies suggest journalists can only rarely perform this service. What, then, is the epistemological role of contradictions in journalism? This study employs quantitati…
Disconnection: How Measured Separations From Journalistic Norms and Labor Can Help Sustain Journalism
This commentary considers the concept of 'disconnection' as a way to understand practices of contemporary digital journalism while advocating for consideration of disconnection as a necessary component of sustainable journalism
Not Their Fault, but Their Problem”: Organizational Responses to the Online Harassment of Journalists
Journalists are increasingly reporting that online harassment has become a common feature of their working lives, contributing to experiences of fatigue, anxiety and disconnection from social media as well as their profession. Drawing on interviews with American newsworkers, this study finds at least three distinct forms of harassment: acute harassment such as generalized verbal abuse, chronic harassment occurring over time and often from the sam…
Legitimating a platform: Evidence of journalists’ role in transferring authority to Twitter
Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduit…
Making Sources Visible: Representation of Evidence in News Texts, 2007–2019
Journalistic work is shifting toward more aggregative and intertextual forms, using published sources more often within their news routines and stories. This study examines that shift through the lens of evidence. It applies the concepts of evidentiary distance and ancillary evidence — that is, evidence about evidence — to news texts to explore their originality and transparency, and it approaches those texts as central sites in which journalists…
Tweeting Outside the Lines: Normalization and Fragmentation as Political Reporters Break from the Mainstream
The field of journalism is experiencing intense diversification in form and message while trying to overcome widespread public disaffection by reinforcing professional norms. This study focuses on two forces—normalization and fragmentation—by observing them at work on social media. We analyzed content and interactions from mainstream and non-mainstream political journalists covering a 2016 U.S. presidential debate. Forces of normalization would d…
Surveying journalists in the “New Normal: Considerations and recommendations
As journalism undergoes widespread changes, it finds itself in a ‘new normal’. Research seeking to understand these changes by surveying journalists faces new methodological hurdles that span different stages of the survey process. This article identifies the key contemporary challenges when it comes to sampling, instrument design, and distribution. Best research practices in identifying a target population, sampling, selecting or developing meas…
Aggregation, Clickbait and Their Effect on Perceptions of Journalistic Credibility and Quality
Many journalists and industry observers lament that aggregating news underneath sensational headlines will erode credibility and turn off readers. While some scholarly work has studied journalists’ perspectives of this practice, little has been done to understand what audiences think of aggregation and clickbait. This study uses published original and aggregated news articles as stimuli in two online experiments to test readers’ perceptions of ne…
A Personalized Self-image: Gender and Branding Practices Among Journalists
As the field of journalism becomes increasingly unrecognizable, the messages that identify the journalist, their work, and their affiliations are of increasing importance. This study envisions journalism and social media both as gendered spaces and examines their intersection as the setting of much of journalists' branding work. In this setting, gender's influence on the extent, style, and target of journalists' branding efforts is examined using…
Mobile News Consumption: A habit of snacking
This study investigates news consumption on mobile devices with the goal of identifying where mobile devices fit into people’s media repertoires and how consumption patterns on them are different from those on other platforms. Results suggest that mobile devices are almost always used along with other platforms for getting news, that news sessions on smartphones are shorter than on other platforms, and mobile news consumption happens more times p…
A Decade of Research on Social Media and Journalism: Assumptions, Blind Spots, and a Way Forward
Amid a broader reckoning about the role of social media in public life, this article argues that the same scrutiny can be applied to the journalism studies field and its approaches to examining social media. A decade later, what hath such research wrought? In the broad study of news and its digital transformation, few topics have captivated researchers quite like social media, with hundreds of studies on everything from how journalists use Twitte…
Media work, identity, and the motivations that shape branding practices among journalists: An explanatory framework
This study offers a new way of understanding the motivations that influence media workers’ impression management (or branding) in the social media era. Amid the growing insecurity of media work generally and the particular pressures of branding oneself and promoting one’s employer online, our research introduces a framework through which to interpret the forces and factors—internal (social–psychological) and external (environmental)—that shape ho…
Twitter’s influence on news judgment: An experiment among journalists
The literature suggests that journalists give a substantial amount of attention to Twitter and use the platform widely, but the impact of that use on news judgment has not been assessed. We hypothesize that Twitter affects journalists’ news judgment, impacting coverage decisions. To test this, we conducted an online survey experiment on working US journalists ( N = 212). We find that journalists who use Twitter less in their work discount news th…
Twitter as a tool for and object of political and electoral activity: Considering electoral context and variance among actors
In recent years, journalists, political elites, and the public have used Twitter as an indicator of political trends. Given this usage, what effect do campaign activities have on Twitter discourse? What effect does that discourse have on electoral outcomes? We posit that Twitter can be understood as a tool for and an object of political communication, especially during elections. This study positions Twitter volume as an outcome of other electora…
Political Journalists’ Normalization of Twitter: Interaction and new affordances
Journalists are frequently doing some of their daily work on social media, spaces they did not create but have appropriated for journalistic purposes. Building on previous studies of how political journalists use social media, this study examines how news professionals and organizations are employing new affordances of the platform as they engage their audiences on Twitter. We expand on previously established narratives of normalization and negot…
How journalists engage in branding on Twitter: Individual, Organizational, and Institutional Levels
In a social media age, branding is an increasingly visible aspect of identity construction online. For media professionals generally and journalists especially, branding on spaces such as Twitter reveals the complicated set of forces confronting such public-facing actors as they navigate tensions between personal disclosure for authenticity and professional decorum for credibility, and between establishing one’s own distinctiveness and promoting …
A Clearer Picture: Journalistic identity practices in words and images on Twitter
As journalists continue integrating social media into their professional work, they wrestle with ways to best represent themselves, their organizations, and their profession. Several recent studies have examined this trend in terms of branding, raising important questions about the changing ways in which journalists present themselves and how these changes may indicate shifts in their personal and professional identities. This study combines a vi…
Multiplatform news consumption and its connections to civic engagement
Studies of informational media use have focused on individual platforms or pitted platforms against each other when investigating their connections to civic engagement. This study offers evidence, collected in a 2016 survey of US adults, of how civically engaged individuals consume various types of news content across multiple platforms. Results suggest that the best condition is the most varied one, wherein consumers get news on all six platform…
Gaming Social Capital: Exploring Civic Value in Multiplayer Video Games
Recent research suggests that social interactions in video games may lead to the development of community bonding and prosocial attitudes. Building on this line of research, a national survey of U.S. adults finds that gamers who develop ties with a community of fellow gamers possess gaming social capital, a new gaming-related community construct that is shown to be a positive antecedent in predicting both face-to-face social capital and civic par…
Identity lost? The personal impact of brand journalism
Researchers have explored the role of organizational and personal branding in journalism, paying particular attention to digital media and social network sites. While these studies have observed a rise in the incorporation of branding practices among journalists, they have largely avoided questions about the implications such shifts in practice may have on the personal identities of journalists. This study addresses that gap, drawing on interview…
What journalists retweet: Opinion, humor, and brand development on Twitter
Using Twitter, journalists may pass along comment from other users without, at least ostensibly, taking accountability for that message. Minimizing responsibility and editorial oversight, as is the case with retweets, allows a different view of individual journalists as gatekeepers. Through a qualitative textual analysis, this study finds that journalists are challenging norms of objectivity and independence on Twitter. Journalists frequently pas…
Branding (Health) Journalism: Perceptions, practices, and emerging norms
Observational studies of journalists on social media platforms suggest that journalists are beginning to develop personal brands using social media. Similar studies suggest that journalists covering specialty areas such as health are more likely to experiment with and adopt new forms of practice that break with the traditional tenets of journalism. Through interviews with such journalists, this study explores the perceptions, practices, and drive…
Twitter’s influence on news judgment: An experiment among journalists
The literature suggests that journalists give a substantial amount of attention to Twitter and use the platform widely, but the impact of that use on news judgment has not been assessed. We hypothesize that Twitter affects journalists’ news judgment, impacting coverage decisions. To test this, we conducted an online survey experiment on working US journalists ( N = 212). We find that journalists who use Twitter less in their work discount news th…
How journalists engage in branding on Twitter: Individual, Organizational, and Institutional Levels
In a social media age, branding is an increasingly visible aspect of identity construction online. For media professionals generally and journalists especially, branding on spaces such as Twitter reveals the complicated set of forces confronting such public-facing actors as they navigate tensions between personal disclosure for authenticity and professional decorum for credibility, and between establishing one’s own distinctiveness and promoting …
Identity lost? The personal impact of brand journalism
Researchers have explored the role of organizational and personal branding in journalism, paying particular attention to digital media and social network sites. While these studies have observed a rise in the incorporation of branding practices among journalists, they have largely avoided questions about the implications such shifts in practice may have on the personal identities of journalists. This study addresses that gap, drawing on interview…
Legitimating a platform: Evidence of journalists’ role in transferring authority to Twitter
Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduit…
Tweeting Conventions: Political journalists' use of Twitter to cover the 2012 presidential campaign
This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators—an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalism—covering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the “affordances” of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of US campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whe…
Media work, identity, and the motivations that shape branding practices among journalists: An explanatory framework
This study offers a new way of understanding the motivations that influence media workers’ impression management (or branding) in the social media era. Amid the growing insecurity of media work generally and the particular pressures of branding oneself and promoting one’s employer online, our research introduces a framework through which to interpret the forces and factors—internal (social–psychological) and external (environmental)—that shape ho…
Political Journalists’ Normalization of Twitter: Interaction and new affordances
Journalists are frequently doing some of their daily work on social media, spaces they did not create but have appropriated for journalistic purposes. Building on previous studies of how political journalists use social media, this study examines how news professionals and organizations are employing new affordances of the platform as they engage their audiences on Twitter. We expand on previously established narratives of normalization and negot…
A Personalized Self-image: Gender and Branding Practices Among Journalists
As the field of journalism becomes increasingly unrecognizable, the messages that identify the journalist, their work, and their affiliations are of increasing importance. This study envisions journalism and social media both as gendered spaces and examines their intersection as the setting of much of journalists' branding work. In this setting, gender's influence on the extent, style, and target of journalists' branding efforts is examined using…
Disconnection: How Measured Separations From Journalistic Norms and Labor Can Help Sustain Journalism
This commentary considers the concept of 'disconnection' as a way to understand practices of contemporary digital journalism while advocating for consideration of disconnection as a necessary component of sustainable journalism
Surveying journalists in the “New Normal: Considerations and recommendations
As journalism undergoes widespread changes, it finds itself in a ‘new normal’. Research seeking to understand these changes by surveying journalists faces new methodological hurdles that span different stages of the survey process. This article identifies the key contemporary challenges when it comes to sampling, instrument design, and distribution. Best research practices in identifying a target population, sampling, selecting or developing meas…
Not Their Fault, but Their Problem”: Organizational Responses to the Online Harassment of Journalists
Journalists are increasingly reporting that online harassment has become a common feature of their working lives, contributing to experiences of fatigue, anxiety and disconnection from social media as well as their profession. Drawing on interviews with American newsworkers, this study finds at least three distinct forms of harassment: acute harassment such as generalized verbal abuse, chronic harassment occurring over time and often from the sam…
Gaming Social Capital: Exploring Civic Value in Multiplayer Video Games
Recent research suggests that social interactions in video games may lead to the development of community bonding and prosocial attitudes. Building on this line of research, a national survey of U.S. adults finds that gamers who develop ties with a community of fellow gamers possess gaming social capital, a new gaming-related community construct that is shown to be a positive antecedent in predicting both face-to-face social capital and civic par…
Fact Checking the Campaign: How Political Reporters Use Twitter to Set the Record Straight (or Not)
In a multichannel era of fragmented and contested political communication, both misinformation and fact checking have taken on new significance. The rise of Twitter as a key venue for political journalists would seem to support their fact-checking activities. Through a content analysis of political journalists’ Twitter discourse surrounding the 2012 presidential debates, this study examines the degree to which fact-checking techniques were used o…
A Clearer Picture: Journalistic identity practices in words and images on Twitter
As journalists continue integrating social media into their professional work, they wrestle with ways to best represent themselves, their organizations, and their profession. Several recent studies have examined this trend in terms of branding, raising important questions about the changing ways in which journalists present themselves and how these changes may indicate shifts in their personal and professional identities. This study combines a vi…
Twitter as a tool for and object of political and electoral activity: Considering electoral context and variance among actors
In recent years, journalists, political elites, and the public have used Twitter as an indicator of political trends. Given this usage, what effect do campaign activities have on Twitter discourse? What effect does that discourse have on electoral outcomes? We posit that Twitter can be understood as a tool for and an object of political communication, especially during elections. This study positions Twitter volume as an outcome of other electora…
Making Sources Visible: Representation of Evidence in News Texts, 2007–2019
Journalistic work is shifting toward more aggregative and intertextual forms, using published sources more often within their news routines and stories. This study examines that shift through the lens of evidence. It applies the concepts of evidentiary distance and ancillary evidence — that is, evidence about evidence — to news texts to explore their originality and transparency, and it approaches those texts as central sites in which journalists…
Aggregation, Clickbait and Their Effect on Perceptions of Journalistic Credibility and Quality
Many journalists and industry observers lament that aggregating news underneath sensational headlines will erode credibility and turn off readers. While some scholarly work has studied journalists’ perspectives of this practice, little has been done to understand what audiences think of aggregation and clickbait. This study uses published original and aggregated news articles as stimuli in two online experiments to test readers’ perceptions of ne…
Multiplatform news consumption and its connections to civic engagement
Studies of informational media use have focused on individual platforms or pitted platforms against each other when investigating their connections to civic engagement. This study offers evidence, collected in a 2016 survey of US adults, of how civically engaged individuals consume various types of news content across multiple platforms. Results suggest that the best condition is the most varied one, wherein consumers get news on all six platform…
Reporters' Smartphone Use Improves Quality of Work
A survey of U.S. newspaper reporters and editors found that journalists with smartphones are more likely to produce multimedia, including audio, video and photo content; however, many complain that smartphones keep them tethered to their work seven days a week
From Individual Disconnection to Collective Practices for Journalists’ Wellbeing
Journalists are increasingly experiencing the negative consequences of online news transformations, such as trolling and harassment, as well as audience distrust. Despite acute need, intra-organisational efforts to support journalists’ online wellbeing have so far been limited. More recently, research has explored how journalists have turned to individual practices of disconnection, such as blocking, muting, or small breaks from online media to m…
Let’s Not Tank the Reputation of This Organization.” How Newsroom Social Media Policies Exacerbate Journalism’s Labor Crisis
This study explores the tension between journalists’ personal social media accounts and newsroom social media policies to understand how newsroom managers exacerbate journalism’s labor crisis by de-professionalizing the field through restrictive policies. To analyze this tension, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of (1) managerial discourses collected from newsroom social media policies and scholarly literature and (2) journalistic discour…
Tweeting Outside the Lines: Normalization and Fragmentation as Political Reporters Break from the Mainstream
The field of journalism is experiencing intense diversification in form and message while trying to overcome widespread public disaffection by reinforcing professional norms. This study focuses on two forces—normalization and fragmentation—by observing them at work on social media. We analyzed content and interactions from mainstream and non-mainstream political journalists covering a 2016 U.S. presidential debate. Forces of normalization would d…
What I miss most: Journalists’ rationalization of relational social media use
Journalists’ social media use is a recent example of long-standing gaps between journalistic discourse and journalistic practice. This manuscript applies the sociological concept of rationalization to explain the persistence of this gap, theorizing that the need for rational explanations of one’s work is so powerful for journalists that they offer one description publicly, or to their bosses, while practicing something different. We apply rationa…
Tweeting Conventions: Political journalists' use of Twitter to cover the 2012 presidential campaign
This study explores the use of Twitter by political reporters and commentators—an understudied population within the rapidly growing literature on digital journalism—covering the 2012 Republican and Democratic conventions. In particular, we want to know if and how the “affordances” of Twitter are shaping the traditional norms and routines of US campaign reporting surrounding objectivity, transparency, gatekeeping, and horse race coverage, and whe…
Social Media, Political Expression, and Political Participation: Panel Analysis of Lagged and Concurrent Relationships
This article relies on U.S. 2-wave panel data to examine the role of social media as a sphere for political expression and its effects on political participation. Informational uses of social media are expected to explain political expression on social media and to promote political participation. This study clarifies the effect of using social media for social interaction in fostering political expression and participation processes. Results ind…
Fact Checking the Campaign: How Political Reporters Use Twitter to Set the Record Straight (or Not)
In a multichannel era of fragmented and contested political communication, both misinformation and fact checking have taken on new significance. The rise of Twitter as a key venue for political journalists would seem to support their fact-checking activities. Through a content analysis of political journalists’ Twitter discourse surrounding the 2012 presidential debates, this study examines the degree to which fact-checking techniques were used o…
Reporters' Smartphone Use Improves Quality of Work
A survey of U.S. newspaper reporters and editors found that journalists with smartphones are more likely to produce multimedia, including audio, video and photo content; however, many complain that smartphones keep them tethered to their work seven days a week
Branding (Health) Journalism: Perceptions, practices, and emerging norms
Observational studies of journalists on social media platforms suggest that journalists are beginning to develop personal brands using social media. Similar studies suggest that journalists covering specialty areas such as health are more likely to experiment with and adopt new forms of practice that break with the traditional tenets of journalism. Through interviews with such journalists, this study explores the perceptions, practices, and drive…
What journalists retweet: Opinion, humor, and brand development on Twitter
Using Twitter, journalists may pass along comment from other users without, at least ostensibly, taking accountability for that message. Minimizing responsibility and editorial oversight, as is the case with retweets, allows a different view of individual journalists as gatekeepers. Through a qualitative textual analysis, this study finds that journalists are challenging norms of objectivity and independence on Twitter. Journalists frequently pas…
Gaming Social Capital: Exploring Civic Value in Multiplayer Video Games
Recent research suggests that social interactions in video games may lead to the development of community bonding and prosocial attitudes. Building on this line of research, a national survey of U.S. adults finds that gamers who develop ties with a community of fellow gamers possess gaming social capital, a new gaming-related community construct that is shown to be a positive antecedent in predicting both face-to-face social capital and civic par…
Identity lost? The personal impact of brand journalism
Researchers have explored the role of organizational and personal branding in journalism, paying particular attention to digital media and social network sites. While these studies have observed a rise in the incorporation of branding practices among journalists, they have largely avoided questions about the implications such shifts in practice may have on the personal identities of journalists. This study addresses that gap, drawing on interview…
Twitter as a tool for and object of political and electoral activity: Considering electoral context and variance among actors
In recent years, journalists, political elites, and the public have used Twitter as an indicator of political trends. Given this usage, what effect do campaign activities have on Twitter discourse? What effect does that discourse have on electoral outcomes? We posit that Twitter can be understood as a tool for and an object of political communication, especially during elections. This study positions Twitter volume as an outcome of other electora…
Political Journalists’ Normalization of Twitter: Interaction and new affordances
Journalists are frequently doing some of their daily work on social media, spaces they did not create but have appropriated for journalistic purposes. Building on previous studies of how political journalists use social media, this study examines how news professionals and organizations are employing new affordances of the platform as they engage their audiences on Twitter. We expand on previously established narratives of normalization and negot…
How journalists engage in branding on Twitter: Individual, Organizational, and Institutional Levels
In a social media age, branding is an increasingly visible aspect of identity construction online. For media professionals generally and journalists especially, branding on spaces such as Twitter reveals the complicated set of forces confronting such public-facing actors as they navigate tensions between personal disclosure for authenticity and professional decorum for credibility, and between establishing one’s own distinctiveness and promoting …
A Clearer Picture: Journalistic identity practices in words and images on Twitter
As journalists continue integrating social media into their professional work, they wrestle with ways to best represent themselves, their organizations, and their profession. Several recent studies have examined this trend in terms of branding, raising important questions about the changing ways in which journalists present themselves and how these changes may indicate shifts in their personal and professional identities. This study combines a vi…
Multiplatform news consumption and its connections to civic engagement
Studies of informational media use have focused on individual platforms or pitted platforms against each other when investigating their connections to civic engagement. This study offers evidence, collected in a 2016 survey of US adults, of how civically engaged individuals consume various types of news content across multiple platforms. Results suggest that the best condition is the most varied one, wherein consumers get news on all six platform…
Mobile News Consumption: A habit of snacking
This study investigates news consumption on mobile devices with the goal of identifying where mobile devices fit into people’s media repertoires and how consumption patterns on them are different from those on other platforms. Results suggest that mobile devices are almost always used along with other platforms for getting news, that news sessions on smartphones are shorter than on other platforms, and mobile news consumption happens more times p…
A Decade of Research on Social Media and Journalism: Assumptions, Blind Spots, and a Way Forward
Amid a broader reckoning about the role of social media in public life, this article argues that the same scrutiny can be applied to the journalism studies field and its approaches to examining social media. A decade later, what hath such research wrought? In the broad study of news and its digital transformation, few topics have captivated researchers quite like social media, with hundreds of studies on everything from how journalists use Twitte…
Media work, identity, and the motivations that shape branding practices among journalists: An explanatory framework
This study offers a new way of understanding the motivations that influence media workers’ impression management (or branding) in the social media era. Amid the growing insecurity of media work generally and the particular pressures of branding oneself and promoting one’s employer online, our research introduces a framework through which to interpret the forces and factors—internal (social–psychological) and external (environmental)—that shape ho…
Twitter’s influence on news judgment: An experiment among journalists
The literature suggests that journalists give a substantial amount of attention to Twitter and use the platform widely, but the impact of that use on news judgment has not been assessed. We hypothesize that Twitter affects journalists’ news judgment, impacting coverage decisions. To test this, we conducted an online survey experiment on working US journalists ( N = 212). We find that journalists who use Twitter less in their work discount news th…
Aggregation, Clickbait and Their Effect on Perceptions of Journalistic Credibility and Quality
Many journalists and industry observers lament that aggregating news underneath sensational headlines will erode credibility and turn off readers. While some scholarly work has studied journalists’ perspectives of this practice, little has been done to understand what audiences think of aggregation and clickbait. This study uses published original and aggregated news articles as stimuli in two online experiments to test readers’ perceptions of ne…
A Personalized Self-image: Gender and Branding Practices Among Journalists
As the field of journalism becomes increasingly unrecognizable, the messages that identify the journalist, their work, and their affiliations are of increasing importance. This study envisions journalism and social media both as gendered spaces and examines their intersection as the setting of much of journalists' branding work. In this setting, gender's influence on the extent, style, and target of journalists' branding efforts is examined using…
Tweeting Outside the Lines: Normalization and Fragmentation as Political Reporters Break from the Mainstream
The field of journalism is experiencing intense diversification in form and message while trying to overcome widespread public disaffection by reinforcing professional norms. This study focuses on two forces—normalization and fragmentation—by observing them at work on social media. We analyzed content and interactions from mainstream and non-mainstream political journalists covering a 2016 U.S. presidential debate. Forces of normalization would d…
Surveying journalists in the “New Normal: Considerations and recommendations
As journalism undergoes widespread changes, it finds itself in a ‘new normal’. Research seeking to understand these changes by surveying journalists faces new methodological hurdles that span different stages of the survey process. This article identifies the key contemporary challenges when it comes to sampling, instrument design, and distribution. Best research practices in identifying a target population, sampling, selecting or developing meas…
Not Their Fault, but Their Problem”: Organizational Responses to the Online Harassment of Journalists
Journalists are increasingly reporting that online harassment has become a common feature of their working lives, contributing to experiences of fatigue, anxiety and disconnection from social media as well as their profession. Drawing on interviews with American newsworkers, this study finds at least three distinct forms of harassment: acute harassment such as generalized verbal abuse, chronic harassment occurring over time and often from the sam…
Legitimating a platform: Evidence of journalists’ role in transferring authority to Twitter
Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduit…
Making Sources Visible: Representation of Evidence in News Texts, 2007–2019
Journalistic work is shifting toward more aggregative and intertextual forms, using published sources more often within their news routines and stories. This study examines that shift through the lens of evidence. It applies the concepts of evidentiary distance and ancillary evidence — that is, evidence about evidence — to news texts to explore their originality and transparency, and it approaches those texts as central sites in which journalists…
Disconnection: How Measured Separations From Journalistic Norms and Labor Can Help Sustain Journalism
This commentary considers the concept of 'disconnection' as a way to understand practices of contemporary digital journalism while advocating for consideration of disconnection as a necessary component of sustainable journalism
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Media Studies and Communication (25 works) · Social Media and Politics (24 works) · Public relations (23 works) · Media studies (20 works) · Journalism (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Social media (17 works) · Business (13 works)