Political journalists’ corporate and personal identities on Twitter profile pages: A comparative analysis in four Westminster democracies

Abstract

The practice for journalists to present an identity and brand the self on social media has become common across many newsrooms, yet its practice is still poorly understood. Focusing on journalists’ self-representations on the social network site Twitter, this study aims to address the lack of empirical understanding through an analysis of the identities which political journalists present on their Twitter profile pages. A total of 679 accounts of parliamentary press gallery journalists in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were analyzed, with a focus on various textual and visual pieces of professional and personal information. The article develops scales of corporate and personal identity, finding that UK and Canadian journalists most strongly differentiate between personal and corporate identities. Differences across countries are linked to political and economic aspects of the respective media systems.

Keywords

Brand comparative corporate journalist personal social media Twitter

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agarwal

(2012) Because you have more to show. Twitter, 18 September. Available at: https://blog.twitter.com/2012/because-you-have-more-to-show (accessed 5 September 2016).

Albæk

Van Dalen

Jebril

, et al. (2014) Political Journalism in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Barnard

(2016) “Tweet or be sacked”: Twitter and the new elements of journalistic practice. Journalism 17(2): 190–207.

Bellanta

(2012) Larrikins: A History. St Lucia, QLD, Australia: University of Queensland Press.

Brems

Temmerman

Graham

, et al. (2017) Personal branding on Twitter: how employed and freelance journalists stage themselves on social media. Digital Journalism 5(4): 443–459.

Broersma

Graham

(2016) Tipping the balance of power. In: Bruns

Enli

Skogerbø

, et al (eds) The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. London: Routledge, pp. 89–103.

Brüggemann

Engesser

Büchel

, et al. (2014) Hallin and Mancini revisited: four empirical types of western media systems. Journal of Communication 64(6): 1037–1065.

Canter

(2013) The interactive spectrum, the use of social media in UK regional newspapers. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 19(4): 472–495.

Canter

(2015) Personalised Tweeting. Digital Journalism 3(6): 888–907.

10.

Cision (2015) Social Journalism Study 2015 United Kingdom. London: Cision and Canterbury Christ Church University.

11.

Dailey

Demo

Spillman

(2005) The convergence continuum, a model for studying collaboration between media newsrooms. Atlantic Journal of Communication 13(3): 150–168.

12.

Davis

(2009) Journalist-source relations, mediated reflexivity and the politics of politics. Journalism Studies 10(2): 204–219.

13.

Davis

(2014) The impact of market forces, new technologies, and political PR on UK journalism. In: Kuhn

Nielsen

(eds) Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective. London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 111–128.

14.

Deprez

Mechant

Hoebeke

(2013) Social media and Flemish sports reporters: a multimethod analysis of Twitter use as journalistic tool. International Journal of Sport Communication 6: 107–119.

15.

Donsbach

Klett

(1993) Subjective objectivity: How journalists in four countries define a key term of their profession. International Communication Gazette 51(1): 53–83.

16.

Emmons

Mocarski

(2014) She poses, he performs: a visual content analysis of male and female professional athlete Facebook profile photos. Visual Communication Quarterly 21(3): 125–137.

17.

Farhi

(2014) CNN’s Diana Magnay is latest reminder that Twitter can be a journalist’s worst enemy. Washington Post, 24 July. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cnns-diana-magnay-is-latest-reminder-that-twitter-can-be-a-journalists-worst-enemy/2014/07/24/c1729b70-12a9-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed_story.html (accessed 5 September 2016).

18.

Ford

(2011) Reconceptualizing the public/private distinction in the age of information technology. Information, Communication & Society 14(4): 550–567.

19.

Gandini

(2016) Digital work: self-branding and social capital in the freelance knowledge economy. Marketing Theory 16: 123–141.

20.

Goffman

(1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

21.

Gulyas

(2013) The influences of professional variables on journalists’ uses and views of social media: a comparative study of Finland, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Digital Journalism 1(2): 270–285.

22.

Hampton

(2008) The “objectivity” ideal and its limitations in 20th-century British journalism. Journalism Studies 9(4): 477–493.

23.

Hancock

Toma

(2009) Putting your best face forward: the accuracy of online dating photographs. Journal of Communication 59(2): 367–386.

24.

Hanitzsch

Hanusch

Mellado

, et al. (2011) Mapping journalism cultures across nations: a comparative study of 18 countries. Journalism Studies 12(3): 273–293.

25.

Hanusch

(2015) Transformative times: Australian journalists’ perceptions of changes in their work. Media International Australia 155: 38–53.

26.

Hanusch

Bruns

(2017) Journalistic branding on Twitter: a representative study of Australian journalists’ profile descriptions. Digital Journalism 5(1): 26–43.

27.

Hedman

(2015) J-Tweeters. Digital Journalism 3(2): 279–297.

28.

Hedman

Djerf-Pierre

(2013) The social journalist: embracing the social media life or creating a new digital divide? Digital Journalism 1(3): 368–385.

29.

Hermida

(2010) Twittering the news: the emergence of ambient journalism. Journalism Practice 4(3): 297–308.

30.

Hermida

(2013) #Journalism. Digital Journalism 1(3): 295–313.

31.

Hermida

(2015) Nothing but the truth: redrafting the journalistic boundary of verification. In: Carlson

Lewis

(eds) Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices and Participation. London: Routledge, pp. 21–36.

32.

Holton

Lewis

(2011) Journalists, social media, and the use of humor on Twitter. Electronic Journal of Communication 21: 1–2.

33.

Holton

Molyneux

(2017) Identity lost? The personal impact of brand journalism. Journalism 18: 195–210.

34.

Hum

Chamberlin

Hambright

, et al. (2011) A picture is worth a thousand words: a content analysis of Facebook profile photographs. Computers in Human Behavior 27(5): 1828–1833.

35.

Kessler

(2011) Here’s how people look at your Facebook profile—literally. Mashable, 30 November. Available at: http://mashable.com/2011/11/30/social-profile-eye-tracking/#P1ZWTL52DSq2 (accessed 15 September 2016).

36.

Kuhn

Nielsen

(eds) (2014) Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective. London: I.B. Tauris.

37.

Lasorsa

Lewis

Holton

(2012) Normalizing Twitter: journalism practice in an emerging communication space. Journalism Studies 13(1): 19–36.

38.

Lawrence

Molyneux

Coddington

, et al. (2014) Tweeting Conventions: political journalists’ use of Twitter to cover the 2012 presidential campaign. Journalism Studies 15(6): 789–806.

39.

Marwick

boyd

(2011) I Tweet honestly, I Tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1): 114–133.

40.

Mendelson

Papacharissi

(2010) Look at us: collective narcissism in college student Facebook photo galleries. In: Papacharissi

(ed.) The Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge, pp. 251–273.

41.

Michaels-Ober

(2014) A command-line power tool for Twitter. Github.io. Available at: http://sferik.github.io/t/ (accessed 15 September 2016).

42.

Molyneux

(2015) What journalists retweet: opinion, humor, and brand development on Twitter. Journalism 16(7): 920–935.

43.

Molyneux

Holton

(2015) Branding (health) journalism. Digital Journalism 3(2): 225–242.

44.

Nuernbergk

(2016) Political journalists’ interaction networks: the German federal press conference on Twitter. Journalism Practice 10(7): 868–879.

45.

O’Donnell

McKnight

Este

(2012) Journalism at the Speed of Bytes: Australian Newspapers in the 21st Century. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Walkley Foundation.

46.

Opgenhaffen

Scheerlinck

(2014) Social media guidelines for journalists. Journalism Practice 8(6): 726–741.

47.

Ottovordemgentschenfelde

(2017) Organizational, professional, personal”: an exploratory study of political journalists and their hybrid brand on Twitter. Journalism 18: 64–80.

48.

Page

(2012) The linguistics of self-branding and micro-celebrity in Twitter: the role of hashtags. Discourse & Communication 6(2): 181–201.

49.

Patterson

Donsbach

(1996) News decisions: journalists as partisan actors. Political Communication 13(4): 455–468.

50.

Przeworski

Teune

(1970) The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

51.

Singer

(2015) Out of bounds: professional norms as boundary markers. In: Carlson

Lewis

(eds) Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices and Participation. London: Routledge, pp. 37–50.

52.

Stutzman

Hartzog

(2012) Boundary regulation in social media. In: Proceedings of the ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work, Seattle, WA, 11–15 February. New York: ACM Press.

53.

Van Zoonen

(1998) A professional, unreliable, heroic marionette (M/F Structure, agency and subjectivity in contemporary journalisms. European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1): 123–143.

54.

Weaver

(ed) (1998) The Global Journalist: News People Around the World. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

55.

Weaver

Willnat

(eds) (2012) The Global Journalist in the 21st Century. New York: Routledge.

56.

Wiik

Hedman

(2015) Journalistic Twitter branding in the neoliberal labour market. In: Paper presented at the future of journalism conference. Cardiff, 10–11 September.

57.

Willnat

Weaver

(2014) The American Journalist in the Digital Age: Key Findings. Bloomington, IN: School of Journalism, Indiana University.

58.

Young

(2010) The journalism “crisis”: is Australia immune or just ahead of its time? Journalism Studies 11(4): 610–624.