ECREA16-Abstract

568

Friday, November 11

1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0

RAR PS

Poster session

PS 087

Between Corporate Communication and Journalism? Social Media Communication of Media Organizations Exemplified by German

Public Service Broadcasters

N. Enke

University of Leipzig, Departement for communication and media studies, Leipzig, Germany

Social Media Communication (SMC) of media organizations has developed to a major topic of journalism & media research within the last years. Media

organizations’SMC is often introduced as a new form of journalism. In accordance journalistic approaches use empirical research for arguing new theoretical

models and phenomena (e.g. Neuberger et.al, 2014). However, taking product promotion and stakeholder management into account, SMC can also be con‑

ceptualized as a part of corporate communication (Zerfaß, 2010). Consequently, the present study tends to challenge the missing differentiation of media

organizations’SMC and journalism on a theoretical and empirical base. Following this idea, a theoretical model of SMC in media organizations was devel‑

oped, which combines main ideas of the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1988) with basic principles of corporate communication (Zerfaß, 2010) and media

management (e.g. Gläser, 2014; Sjurts, 2011;Wirtz, 2006).The model describes social media channels as a possible medium for media content (journalisms

& entertainment) and corporate communication content (PR & advertising/marketing), and it differentiates both content types by their communication

actions’objectives, communication objects and potentially addressed stakeholders. Regarding to this model, SMC is not a new type of public communica‑

tion. It rather focuses on new communication platforms or technical opportunities. Additionally, based on the theoretical model the study presents and

empirical analysis of German public service broadcasters’SMC on Facebook and Twitter. The main objective of the research was to answer the questions (1)

how do German public service broadcasters communicate on Facebook and Twitter and (2) how does the communication of media content and corporate

communication content differs on both channels? Using the content analysis method (Früh, 2011), 2000 posts were analyzed on the broadcasters’100 most

liked Facebook and Twitter channels (20 posts per channel) in September 2015. The results show that the broadcasters use their social media channels

primarily for corporate communication (80,7 percent) rather than media content (19,3 percent). The largest part of the posts was classified as marketing

communication. Furthermore, the organizations most often adress a broad audience and no specific stakeholder group. Therefore, it can be asummed that

media organizations transfer the logic of mass communication into the social web without utilizing other communicative opportunities or content types

such as media content or PR. Looking at the formal aspects of the analyzed posts – they mostly consist of a combination of texts, links and preview pictures

– which leads to the second conclusion. The broadcasters do not transfer their competencies in producing multimedia content into the social web. All in all

our findings show that SMC of media organizations can not only be seen as a type of journalism but istead is strongly related to corporate communication.

At the conference we are going to present further results and discuss the implications for the development of SMC and media management theory as well

as for professional praxis.

PS 088

Professional Inbreeding in the Field of Spanish Political Journalism on Twitter: The Coverage of the 20 D Election Day

S. González-Molina

, F. Ramos del Cano

Jaume I University, Communication Science, Castellon, Spain

Social networks are already fully integrated into the journalistic work. Twitter, in particular, is one of the most preferred tools by these professionals for

looking for ideas, find sources or create a personal brand (Canter, 2015; Noguero-Vivo, 2013; Dickinson, 2011). The elite European media employ their social

profiles, as a priority, to disseminate information (González-Molina and Ramos del Cano, 2014). But while journalists turn to strategies oriented towards

providing a context for their contents, offering more personal-type information or exchanging opinions with their followers (Noguera-Vivo, 2012).The main

aim of this investigation is precisely to analyze the use the Spanish political journalists make of the microblogging social network Twitter. The research

starts form a revision of existing literature in regard to the use of this social platform which covers from the first investigations of Singer (2004) of j-blogger

journalists to the most recent contributions about how professional news media useTwitter (Messner et al. 2011), its normalization processes (Lasorsa et al.,

2012; Newman, 2009) or the emergent practices of the everyday life of journalism (Canter, 2015). The methodology is based on content analysis of the of‑

ficial Twitter accounts of 16 Spanish journalists on press, radio, television and pure players which usually cover political issues. To select the sample, In order

to select the sample, it has been followed quantitative criteria (number of followers) and qualitative criteria (most ranked media or programs) in a way that

it has been selected just one journalist for each one media. The monitored accounts are those of Ignacio Escolar, Jesús Maraña and Pedro J. Ramírez (pure

players); Fernando Garea, David Jimenez, Francisco Marhuenda and Bieto Rubido (press); Pepa Bueno, Julia Otero, Juan Pablo Colmenarejo and Alfredo

Menéndez (radio), and finally Jordi Évole, Marta Nebot, Sergio Martin and Vicente Vallés (television). The field work has been developed at the same time

the general election for president was taking place in Spain on December 20

of 2015. The data collection was delimited to three days: the election day,

the day before and the day after. The sample ascends to a total of 639 tweets which were codified in relation to four dimensions: functions (information,

opinion, sourcing or advertising), gatekeeping (retweets and their authorship), contents (work, self-promotion, dialogue and personal life) and transpar‑

ency (number and typology of links). The outcome suggests that there is a clear tendency towards endogamy in regard to the use Spanish journalists make

of Twitter. The main function is to promote their own work as well as the content spread by the media they work for. By the same token, the rediffusion

practices employed show also that they preferentially retweet messages from other media or journalists. The same pattern is identified in regard to the use

of links and the main content of their posts, which most of them are self-promotional. Finally, the journalists in charge of their own journalistic project

(the pure players in this case) are the most active and the most likely to engage in dialogue with other Twitter users.