Social media news editors as journalists or marketeers: Who are they and how do they identify themselves?

Abstract

Social media editors (SMEs) have become fixtures in contemporary newsrooms as part of designated social media teams. A growing body of scholarship has explored their daily work routines and how they try to ‘sell’ online news on platforms such as Facebook while caught in the middle between mass media and social media logics. Thus far, there is little clarity on how SMEs can be classified as newsroom workers, and even less so on how they classify and identify themselves. Through 22 expert interviews with Belgian and Dutch SMEs and a proposed expansion of Bourdieu’s field theory, this paper shines light on the role and identity of SMEs as the latest addition to the growing body of diverse newsroom workers. We argue that SMEs see themselves as journalists due to the nature of the job itself as well as their experience and other tasks in the news organization. Without seeing themselves as marketeers, they try to sell the news as best they can through social media. We conclude by making a case for seeing SMEs as an important group of news actors who can identify and signal early developments in the context of social media news.