Professional intervention and organizational incorporation: examining journalistic use of microblogs in two Chinese newsrooms

Abstract

Existing research has widely accounted the influence of microblogs on traditional news production, but less attention has been paid to how microblogs are socially constructed in newsrooms. Taking the social constructivist approach, this study explored the professional and organizational construction of journalistic use of microblogs. We conducted 33 in-depth interviews with news workers at two local newspapers in China and a textual analysis of their microblog posts. We found that Chinese news workers heavily stressed professional values and journalistic authority, which set limits to information appropriation and self-expression on microblogs. Production culture, organization policy, and organization culture were also found to shape journalistic use of microblogs. The highly censored press environment restricted both organizational and individual use of microblogs, but sometimes motivated news workers to seek extra value on microblogs.

Keywords:

• microblog
• social media
• newspaper
• newsroom
• news production
• Chinese press
• social construction

Note on contributors

Di Cui is a doctoral student at School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests focus on journalism, knowledge gain and science communication in the context of digital transformation.

Trisha T.C. Lin (PhD, University of Hawaii, Manoa) is an assistant professor at Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests include digital journalism, mobile media and communication, and new media convergence, adoption and impact.

Notes

1. Sina Weibo claimed its registered users had reached 500 millions. But this number greatly exceeds the official statistics announced by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which reported the overall number of microblog users was 331 million at the end of 2013. The discrepancy might be because that CNNIC data reflect the size of actual microblog users, whereas Sina Weibo’s data considered all the accounts ever registered, both active and abandoned ones included.