The Journalist on Social Media: Mapping the Promoter, Celebrity and Joker Roles on Twitter and Instagram

Abstract

This study takes an empirical approach to analyze how journalists perform the roles of promoter, celebrity, and joker on social media. These roles already play out in print and broadcast, but much less is known about how they are performed outside of traditional media contexts. This study addresses this gap in the literature through a content analysis of 4,100 posts by 23 Chilean journalists in 2020 on Twitter and Instagram. The analysis draws on key variables derived from the literature, including frontstage and backstage performance, personal context, platform, follower count, gender, and type of parent media organization. Results suggest that Twitter tends to serve as a space for professional performance bounded by established norms and practices, while Instagram tends to offer a space for a more fluid performance beyond the institutional boundaries of the news media. Findings indicate that professional social media contexts are more suited spaces to perform the promoter role, while personal or backstage contexts are more suited for the celebrity and joker roles. Results indicate how journalists take on specific roles on Twitter and Instagram, considering the affordances of these platforms.

Keywords:

• Chile
• Instagram
• journalistic roles
• role performance
• social media
• Twitter

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A total of 859 journalists from 39 national media outlets were registered in our census.

2 Previous to our main analyses, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFAs), based on the operationalization proposed by Mellado and Hermida (2021) (χ² = 1075.068, p < .001; RMSEA = .035 (90% confidence interval [CI] = .032, .038); CFI = .916; TLI = .907; SRMR = .069). Roles showed a satisfactory fit with the data. The standardized factor loadings for each model were high, and indicator reliabilities (squared multiple correlations) were satisfactory for each individual dimension.

3 Although we did not find significant differences at the journalist level for both the promoter and the celebrity role, we still included journalist-level predictors in the models to compare these results with the joker role.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Chile’s National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT no. 1180443).