Business as Usual? A Social Capital Approach to Understanding Interactions with Journalists on Twitter

ABSTRACT

On the surface, it seems that journalists are more publicly accessible than ever before, largely thanks to the popular microblogging website/ app, Twitter. But determining who is interacting with journalists on Twitter is important in order to understand who benefits from these interactions. We argue that social capital provides a useful framework for understanding this phenomenon because it sheds light on the ways in which journalists are embedded in structures of formal and informal social connection, and it highlights social inclusion and exclusion in these processes. Relying on a two-wave, online survey collected before and after the 2018 Midterm Elections, we examine the relationship between social capital and interactions with journalists on Twitter. Results show that people with higher levels of social capital are more likely to interact with journalists, which can be interpreted as a form of social exclusion. Results are discussed in light of the role of journalism in fostering social connectivity and civic engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalist interactions
• social capital
• social media
• digital democracy
• journalism studies
• political communication

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Matthew Barnidge http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0683-3850

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided by the Department of Journalism & Creative Media at The University of Alabama, the Institute for Communication and Information Research at The University of Alabama, and the Research Grants Committee at The University of Alabama.