Open AccessThe Double‐Edged Sword: The Effects of Journalists' Social Media Activities on Audience Perceptions of Journalists and Their News Products
Author(s) -
Lee Jayeon
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of computer‐mediated communication
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.15
H-Index - 119
ISSN - 1083-6101
DOI - 10.1111/jcc4.12113
Subject(s) - perception , sword , normative , audience participation , social media , dimension (graph theory) , media relations , news media , advertising , political science , public relations , sociology , psychology , business , media studies , engineering , mechanical engineering , mathematics , pure mathematics , law , neuroscience
As social media become popular news platforms, journalists and news organizations have been keen to capitalize on their potential to build and maintain audiences. However, little is known about the extent to which these efforts may have adverse implications. Based on normative theories, the present study investigates the influence of journalists' social media activities (specifically, self‐disclosure and interaction with other users) on audience perceptions of journalists. An experiment ( N = 267) revealed that: Although both journalists' self‐disclosure and interaction positively influenced audience perceptions of the journalists in the personal dimension, interaction negatively influenced audience perceptions in the professional dimension; and the perceptions transferred to perceptions of news products, thereby mediating the relationship between journalists' social media activities and audience news perceptions.