Social media platforms have become a natural part of gathering information and news consumption by the audience. Using social media as a journalistic tool is therefore valuable to reach target audiences, and through this, create a relationship with future subscribers. Social media has also been established by previous research to be the most central platform of consuming news among teenagers and younger adults. This suggests a further reason for social media to be of interest in journalistic research but also motivates the selection of a younger target audience as the chosen subject of inspection. In addition, previous research reveals that with the immense amount of information circling on social media and the commercialisation of media, the trust in journalism is decreasing which can be considered as a threat to democracy. Researching journalists perspective on the interaction with a young audience was found relevant since previous research shows studies of either trust in media through the eyes of young audiences or the journalistic work methods for creating content on social media but never combined to investigate how these two correlate. This qualitative study conducted in depth interviews with six social media editors at six different newspapers within the media organization Gota Media. Through a thematic analysis scheme, codes and themes were identified and further analyzed using Habermas theories concerning mass media and the public sphere and Dahl’s theory of democracy. The study found a common ambition of reaching the young target audience through social media, however the strategy of doing so differed. While one group of the interviewees believed in extending the dialog with the audience and increasing their vocal intervention in the comment section, the other part of the interviewees believed in improvement of the brand and increasing the material published to reach the target audience through a heightened visibility on social media. In addition, the study also found that the democratic role of journalism was deprioritized in the process of making content for social media as well as comforting to the social media platforms media logic.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-118495 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Lindström, Malvina, Lundberg, Emma |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för medier och journalistik (MJ) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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