Legitimating a Platform: Evidence of Journalists’ Role in Transferring Authority to Twitter

Social media platforms legitimate speech and shape journalism

Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times abetted. Instead, journalists rely on these platforms both for access to powerful users and as conduits to surface the words of ‘ordinary people.’ This practice treats tweets more like content, an interchangeable building block of news, than like sources, whose ideas and messages must be verified. Using a corpus of U.S. news stories with tweets in them, we provide empirical evidence for our argument of the power of platforms to legitimate speech and shape journalism. This study illuminates journalists’ role in transferring some of the press’s authority to Twitter, thereby shaping the participants in and content of public deliberation.

When covering elections at a time when their legitimacy is being undermined, journalists need to follow these crucial steps

As we count down to Election Day in the U.S., November 3, 2020, we find ourselves at a dangerous moment for democracy. As scholarly experts in politics and media, we draw on research from our field to offer practical, nonpartisan, evidence-based recommendations to journalists covering the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We hope these recommendations—based on decades of research into electoral processes, news coverage, and public opinion—support the important work journalists are doing to cover the election and safeguard democracy. We recommend journalists:

  • Deny a platform to anyone making unfounded claims
  • Put voters and election administrators at the center of elections
  • Balance WHO as well as what gets covered
  • Make quality coverage more widely accessible to expand publics for news
  • Publicize your plans to call the election and do not make premature declarations
  • Develop and use state- and local-level expertise to provide locally-relevant information
  • Distinguish between legitimate, evidence-based challenges to vote counts and illegitimate ones that are intended to delay or call into question accepted procedures
  • In the event of a contested or unclear outcome, don’t use social media to fill gaps in institutionally credible and reliable election information
  • Cover an uncertain or contested election through a “democracy-worthy” frame
  • Recognize that technology platforms have an important role to play
  • Embrace existing democratic institutions
  • Help Americans understand the roots of unrest
  • Uphold democratic norms
  • Use clear definitions for actions and actors and provide coverage appropriate to those definitions
  • Do not give a platform to individuals or groups who call for violence, spread disinformation, or foment racist ideas.

How we define social media engagement shapes relationships between journalists and audiences

Scholarly and pragmatic definitions of the term “engagement” vary drastically. This article attempts to capture the nuances of the term by exploring journalists’ roles on social media where “engagement” is supposed to be particularly prevalent. Using in-depth interviews, we gauge the attitudes of traditional political journalists as well as those who think of themselves as “engagement specialists” about their responsibilities in interactive spaces. In addition, we analyze what kinds of engagement are happening in these spaces, and how citizens’ expectations are being articulated, in terms of journalist-audience relationship—an organic resultant of engagement. We found that journalists are taking on new kinds of roles in social spaces—often in the name of “engagement”—but that work is not always particularly interactive with citizens; rather, content is engaged with. In contrast, citizens look to journalists to play a number of roles that range from civic guide to therapist. Thus, relationship building happens sporadically. Furthermore, engagement level is dependent on the platform and its affordances. This research offers a continuum of social media engagement conceived as relationship building that can reconcile the disparities in how we define engagement, and suggests newsrooms appreciate the nuances via a series of recommendations.