Business as Usual: How Journalism’s Professional Logics Continue to Shape News Organization Policies Around Social Media Audiences

Abstract

This study explores the prevailing institutional logics within Western news outlets to examine the prevalent values and concerns around the social media news audience amid a time of great upheaval in the news industry. Through a qualitative content analysis of social media guidelines from mainstream news outlets the study finds that professional logics continue to dominate news organization goals with the journalists positioned as the professionals in charge of the news and their audiences still limited to largely passive consumer roles at best allowed to comment, like and share only after publication. While the findings show that the news organizations view their audiences as a consumer rather than collaborator, the study notes the emergence of two audience-oriented values which suggest that news organizations have already begun to respond to the ways in which their audiences are being reshaped by digital and social media even if those new technologies have not—yet—reshaped the organization’s relationship with the audience. Overall, the study shows that professional logics continue to inform news organization attitudes in relation to their audiences as organizations continue to privilege the role of the news organization as the professional in charge of the content.