Social media-first and social media-only news production in Australia: an investigation
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2020
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This thesis examines emerging production and dissemination processes behind what is the first source of news for an increasing number of Australians - their social media feeds (Fisher et al. 2019). The focus is on stories socially distributed by three of Australia’s most established and successful multi-platform newsrooms, ABC News, Nine and news.com.au, with the intention of identifying any commonalities in story appearance, editorial drivers and delivery mechanisms. It recognises that social media news production is a relative newcomer to organisational workflows, and it looks to the journalists tasked with tailoring content for these third-party platforms to determine what has influenced the way they have curated, assembled and delivered the examples studied in this research. ‘Workflow’ is a term used often throughout this paper and, in the context of a newsroom, refers to the dynamics of media production from story assignment to distribution (Hjarvard 1995; Zavoina & Reichert 2000; cited in Aviles & Carvajal 2008)
It is a qualitative study from both an emic and etic perspective (Pike 1967) and uses inductive reasoning (Macnamara 2005; Brette 2003) to identify the affordances and production tools influencing a story’s appearance. ‘Affordances’ in the context of human-computer interaction, were described by Don Norman (1988, p.9) as ‘the perceived and actual properties of a thing [where] the user knows what to do just by looking.’ For instance, recognising an affordance is like knowing that the play icon on a video or audio story is to be clicked.
Social media producers at each of the above news organisations were asked to complete real-time surveys during the course of their working day. They were particularly asked why the story they were working on was chosen for social distribution; how and why they were making it look a particular way; and whether they were producing it just for their organisation’s social media accounts or with the intention of re-directing off-site audiences to on-site programs and websites.
The theory of the Hierarchy of Influences (Reese & Shoemaker 2016) and media content analysis (Macnamara 2005) inform the subsequent examination of each socially distributed story. The objective is two-fold; to fill a gap in the academic study of social news production by documenting emerging workflow norms in Australian newsrooms, and to establish whether an outcomes framework can be developed to streamline these workflows and thereby provide a basis for future business modelling and organisational innovation. Simultaneously, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the direct line managers of the survey respondents. It is rare to have such extensive operational insight from the leaders of competing media teams, more so because the teams in question are relatively new. Their responses illuminate current practices, without compromising any commercial in-confidence processes.
While acknowledging the limitations that come with conducting a study in a small media market, and the rapid but unsurprising growth in social news output during the time this research was in progress, this thesis concludes that all three digital news leaders distribute content to social media-first and to social media-only. It identifies that social media-first distribution is effectively a marketing tool that best serves commercial media’s financial imperatives, while social media-only distribution is favoured by the publicly funded broadcaster, the ABC, because it allows for experimentation while simultaneously raising brand awareness.
However, it will be argued that a blended approach is a valuable extension, rather than a replacement of traditional journalistic practice and as a result, questions the ongoing use of these terms as workflow descriptors. Instead, two distinct social media news production workflows are identified: these being linear and circular; with the circular workflow likely to yield greater results for both commercial and public media. Simple graphics are used to document each process and to lay the foundation for future development of an ‘outcomes framework’.
This thesis is about the business of news, and thus includes a significant number of media reports - by journalists and about journalism. Examining these in concert with previous research and communication theory, means current upheavals in the media industry can be viewed through the lens of hindsight.
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