Understanding Social Media in Journalism Practice: A Typology

Although the intersection of social media usage and journalism practice enjoys a prominent place in many scholarly inquiries throughout the field of journalism studies, a comprehensive understanding of this body of literature is lacking. This study attempts to alleviate this problem. Through a systematic analysis of more than 150 studies primarily focusing on how journalists utilize social media in newswork, this article first classifies social media usage into three broad categories: news construction, news dissemination, and branding. Next, this study introduces a typology that visualizes and explores three dimensions of social media use: motivation (self vs. organization), prevalence (sporadic vs. prevalent), and disruption (disruptive vs. normalization). Our findings illustrate potential future research areas.