Quality Journalism in Social Media – What We Know and Where We Need to Dig Deeper

ABSTRACT

While research on journalism in social media is extensive and approaches the topic from different perspectives, the consideration of what contributes to quality journalism in social media is underdeveloped. Our paper addresses this by providing a comprehensive literature review of journalism research relating to aspects of quality in social media. Based on a systematic Scopus search, 54 peer-reviewed, English-language papers published between 2015 and 2022 were selected for in-depth textual analysis using MAXQDA. Two important takeaways emerge from the analysis. First, the literature suggests that journalists and media organizations adapt work routines, norms, and values in a context-sensitive manner when producing content for social media. By enabling many-to-many communication, social media platforms force journalists and media outlets to reflect on audience demands and to develop audience engagement strategies. Second, the findings underscore that journalistic social media activities diverge depending on how individual journalists and organizations approach journalistic quality in social media. As these findings are only pieces to the puzzle of what quality journalism in social media entails, we hope to encourage further research in this area.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism quality
• digital quality journalism
• social media journalism
• social media literature review
• journalistic roles
• social media adaptation

Introduction

For two decades, journalism research has now examined how journalism is influenced by digitalization as well as technological and infrastructural innovations (Bowman and Willis 2003; Deuze 2003; Kopper, Kolthoff, and Czepek 2000). Early research focused on the design and impact of digital technologies and their effect on journalism (Klinenberg 2005; Schmitz Weiss and Higgins Joyce 2009; Singer 2005) while examining the evolution of online journalism, the adoption of the website format, and the mobile accessibility of media content (Rowe 2015; Ruiz et al. 2011). From the 2010s onward, the focus shifted toward journalism in social media (Humayun and Ferrucci 2022) and its boundaries (Banjac and Hanusch 2022; Maares and Hanusch 2020). Scholars are particularly interested in exploring how social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok impact journalism (Barnard 2016; Bruns 2009; Hanusch and Bruns 2017; Olausson 2017; Otto, Glogger, and Boukes 2017; Vazquez-Herrero, Negreira-Rey, and Lopez-Garcia 2020; Weaver, Willnat, and Wilhoit 2019).

Extant literature reviews reveal that research on digital journalism (Steensen et al. 2019) and the journalistic usage of social media (Humayun and Ferrucci 2022) has reached considerable size, with Facebook receiving a particularly large share of scholarly attention (Stoycheff et al. 2017). Within this literature, established criteria of journalistic quality such as norms, values, and professional practices have been repeatedly addressed (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Mellado and Hermida 2021; Tandoc and Vos 2016). However, Steensen et al. (2019) suggest that many of the findings are undertheorized, that is they are not being interpreted appropriately using core concepts and theories in the field of journalism. This can be considered a problematic development (Humayun and Ferrucci 2022; Steensen et al. 2019), as “there is a risk that theoretical explanations are rendered unnecessary, perhaps even unwanted” (Steensen et al. 2019, 339). What is needed, Humayun and Ferrucci (2022) argue, is scholarly work “delineating between social media uses that further an established journalistic practice and ones that disrupt the field” (16). Particularly, they call for studies questioning “how practices impact normative foundations of the field or the pursuit of journalism as an under-girder of democracy” (ibid.). From a theoretical vantage point, the concept of quality journalism (Arnold 2008; Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff 2022; Lacy and Rosenstiel 2015; McQuail 1992; Shapiro 2010) and its exploration in the context of social media (Welbers et al. 2016; Zaid, Ibarhine, and Fedtke 2022) can be considered such a foundation as it helps to identify both disruptive practices and those furthering the journalistic profession. Arnold’s (2008) integrated approach, which distinguishes between a professional, a content, and an audience-related dimension of quality, even offers a heuristic to meet Humayun and Ferrucci’s (2022) demand for normative assessments of journalists’ practices in social media.

This paper uses Arnold’s (2008) approach as a framework to fill the void of what to our knowledge is the lack of a literature review examining what is known about quality journalism in social media. This approach allows us to discern if and to what extent the notion of quality journalism changes in social media contexts or whether journalists and media outlets adhere to a new form of quality journalism in the digital era. We conduct a comprehensive literature review by analyzing relevant studies through a systematic Scopus search of all peer-reviewed, English-language research articles since 2015 that broadly touch upon aspects of journalistic quality in social media. Our contribution to the literature is twofold: First, we present a structured overview of the literature on the journalistic adoption of social media, in which aspects of quality journalism based on the three dimensions advanced by Arnold (2008), namely norms and values, content creation by journalistic actors, and interactions between journalists and audiences play a role. In doing so, we provide journalism scholars with a conceptual tool to distinguish between what Humayun and Ferrucci (2022) call disruptive practices in social media journalism and those furthering established professional standards. Second, we pinpoint where social media journalism research and the discourse on quality journalism intersect and how that affects the latter. Our findings derived from the literature suggest that the notion of what constitutes quality journalism, which was initially developed during the mass media era, undergoes gradual changes in the social media age. Journalists and media organizations rethink what they conceive as quality journalism as they adapt news values and renegotiate norms and established practices while increasingly paying attention to the audience dimension. Yet, we posit that this does not constitute a paradigm shift in what is understood as quality journalism but more of an effort to refine the established concept in accordance with contemporary demands and modes of communication.

Including this introduction, the paper comprises six sections. The second section outlines the theoretical basis of the literature review. The third section explains the method of data collection and analysis. The fourth section presents the empirical results before they are discussed in the fifth section. Finally, the conclusion offers a short summary as well as limitations and avenues for further research.

Theoretical Approach

To review the recent literature on quality journalism in social media, we first define what we mean by quality journalism. Table 1 helps to visualize the discourse surrounding the concept of quality journalism by delineating existing research.

Table 1. Cursory overview on quality journalism discourse.

Approach	Key elements	Authors
Theories of QJ
Abstract conceptualizations (media system-level)	Quality based on the function journalism serves within states and media systems	Allern and Pollack (2019); Arnold (2016); Costera Meijer 2003; Costera Meijer (2020); Strömbäck (2005); Trappel and Tomaz (2021)
Operationalized, indicator-based approaches	Professional dimension (quality based on role perceptions, norms, and values)	Arnold (2008); Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff (2022); Galtung and Ruge (1965); Harcup and O'Neill (2017); Lacy and Rosenstiel (2015); McQuail (1992); Shapiro (2010)
	Content dimension (quality based on production practices and outputs)	Arnold (2008); Galtung and Ruge (1965); Harcup and O'Neill (2017); Lacy and Rosenstiel (2015); McQuail (1992); Shapiro (2010)
	Audience dimension (quality based on engagement and user expectations)	Arnold (2008); Shin and Ognyanova (2022); Welbers et al. (2016); Xia et al. (2020)
Application of QJ across Media Contexts
QJ in mass media	Print & broadcast journalism rely on traditional news values, established norms and practices	Arnold (2008); Arnold (2016); Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff (2022); Costera Meijer (2003); Harcup and O'Neill (2017)
	Independence is a precondition of quality journalism especially for public-service media	Gladney (1996); McQuail (2003); Trappel and Tomaz (2021)
QJ in social media	Emergence of new news values e.g., entertainment, shareability, appealing audio-visuals	Harcup and O'Neill (2017); Ramirez de la Piscina et al. (2016)
	Not all traditional quality indicators resonate with audiences	Allern and Pollack (2019); Costera Meijer (2020); Shin and Ognyanova (2022); Zaid, Ibarhine, and Fedtke (2022)

Source: Own Depiction.

The discourse on quality journalism emerged with the rise of private media companies, the expansion of media markets, and the diversification of media products. These developments, scholars feared, would undermine journalism’s function within democratic societies, namely providing information and enabling opinion formation (Lacy and Rosenstiel 2015). In response, standards of media performance and quality journalism received attention (Arnold 2008; McQuail 1992) and abstract, conceptual studies on the meaning of quality journalism in different media-systems (Strömbäck 2005) and media contexts (Costera Meijer 2003; McQuail 2003; Shapiro 2010) These studies emphasize quality as a relational concept which can be evaluated in different ways. Correspondingly, scholars developed a variety of different indicator-based approaches to measure quality journalism. Examples include McQuail’s (1992) media performance criteria, Harcup and O'Neill’s (2017) updated catalogue of Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) news values, Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff’s (2022) model for deliberative democracies, and Arnold’s (2008) dimensions of quality journalism. These approaches employ criteria based on journalistic norms and practices.

Our literature review relies on Arnold’s (2008) approach which defines quality as the degree to which a journalistic product meets the requirements it is asked to fulfill (cf. 491). He distinguishes between a professional, a content, and an audience-related dimension of quality. The professional dimension assesses journalistic norms and roles, such as gatekeeping and independence from political and economic actors. The content dimension focuses on content production practices, that is efforts to ensure objectivity, transparency, and news selection based on relevance. The audience dimension monitors journalists’ efforts to engage users, user expectations and metrics of content performance. He argues that the professional and content dimensions carry more weight than the audience dimension in the context of mass media. We find Arnold’s (2008) approach to be instructive for our literature review because it concisely conceptualizes quality journalism based on the three dimensions which are most frequently referred to in the literature (Lacy and Rosenstiel 2015). Whereas most studies only pick and choose individual aspects of quality journalism such as norms and roles (Welbers et al. 2016), news values (Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff 2022; Harcup and O'Neill 2017; McQuail 1992), and audience-related aspects (Shin and Ognyanova 2022; Xia et al. 2020) without putting them in perspective with one another, Arnold’s (2008) approach helps to illuminate the interplay between these aspects. Additionally, his assessment of the comparative weight of the dimensions serves as a marker against which we can compare the emerging dynamics in social media journalism identified in this literature review. Thus, we use Arnold’s (2008) framework to structure our analysis.

Drawing from conceptual discourse, various publications address quality journalism across media contexts. Studies focused on the assessment of quality journalism in mass media, especially print and broadcast, suggest that journalists and media outlets strongly adhere to established news values while emphasizing their organizational independence from state and corporate institutions (Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff 2022; Gladney 1996; McQuail 2003). In contrast, publications examining quality journalism in the internet age find that traditional news values play a reduced role on social media as they do not resonate with digital audiences (Shin and Ognyanova 2022; Zaid, Ibarhine, and Fedtke 2022). Instead, journalists reassess which news values contribute to quality journalism in social media, leading to new news values, including shareability, entertainment, and appealing audio-visuals (Harcup and O'Neill 2017; Ramirez de la Piscina et al. 2016). While research on quality journalism in social media is only emerging, these early findings indicate that the understanding of what constitutes quality journalism in mass media and in social media diverges to some degree.

Methodology and Sample Selection

In a first step, we defined three search terms for this literature review. Based on the existing quality discourse and the first three levels of the hierarchy of influences model (Reese and Shoemaker 2016; Shoemaker and Reese 2014), we selected “journalism”, “social media”, and “actor role”. These three terms cover different aspects of quality journalism in social media. The terms “journalism” and “social media” give a wide frame to the search process, since they do not discriminate between genres of journalism and different forms of media, respectively. Throughout the paper, we understand journalism as any form of professional journalism within institutionalized settings, irrespective of journalistic beat (Mellado et al. 2021) and employment type, including freelance journalists (Salamon 2020). This understanding includes mass-media-based forms of journalism as well as purely digital forms. Regarding the term “social media”, we opt against a broad definition (Stoycheff et al. 2017), instead placing an emphasis on many-to-many social media platforms, namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok as these platforms enable the creation of user-generated content as well as public interactions between users (Ellison and Boyd 2013). The third search term, “actor role”, focuses on the three inner circles of the hierarchy of influences model (Shoemaker and Reese 2014), and captures a variety of implicit references to journalistic quality. The sub-term “actor” acknowledges how vital different actors such as journalists, editors, and media organizations are in journalism research. In a narrow sense, it applies to journalists at the individual level, capturing their behavior and social media use. In its extended form, the term can also include media companies (Badham and Mykkänen 2022; Ferrucci 2018). The sub-term “role”, meanwhile, is informed by Arnold’s (2008) concept of journalistic quality. It reflects the professional dimension of quality indicators, which highlights the importance of role conceptions and work routines in journalistic work and can be analyzed in relation to journalistic work in social media as well. As a composite term “actor role” thus broadly covers research in which the social media use of journalists and their media organizations is examined. With this choice we can assume that all relevant studies addressing journalistic self-conceptions, routines, and organizational influences are sampled for this literature review.

Data collection took place between 29 March and 29 April 2022. The multidisciplinary database Scopus was selected based on its large coverage of scientific literature in the field of social sciences (Norris and Oppenheim 2007). It therefore lends itself to the systematic identification of publications and is particularly notable for its consistent curation of new articles. The search was limited to peer-reviewed papers on journalism in social media published between 2015 and 2022. As social media are rapidly evolving, earlier studies were not considered since much of these initial findings might no longer be fully accurate. Instead, we focused on more recent findings to incorporate newer platforms such as Instagram and TikTok on top of the already established ones (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube). Only papers published in English were retained.

The search process comprised three steps. First, upon analyzing selected core contributions on the research topic, matching synonyms, generic terms, and terms related to the search terms were identified (Table 2). Second, a search covering all three search terms was conducted, yielding 21 hits. Subsequently, additional searches were run with two of the search terms, including a variety of synonyms for the respective term. Focusing on fewer search conditions and an expanded range of search term variations significantly increased the number of hits.

Table 2. Overview of search terms and synonyms used.

Key concepts	Social media	Actor role	Journalism
Synonyms	Social media platform(s) Social network(s) Social networking site(s) New social media Facebook Twitter TikTok Instagram Snapchat	Role perception(s) Role adoption Role adaptation Content production Quality control	Public-service journalism Political journalism Quality journalism
Generic synonyms	Social media platforms New social media	Role performance Role adoption
Associated search terms	Digital media Online media platforms Social web Platform communication	Social media behavio(u)r Technology use Online practice(s) Online performance

Source: Own depiction.

We decided to retain the combinations of “journalism” and “social media” (240 hits) and “actor role” and “social media” (270 hits) but discarded the combination of “journalism” and “actor role” since it lacked reference to social media. We then created lists based on title, author, publication information, and the abstract of each publication and subsequently reviewed each list to select relevant hits. Furthermore, we undertook forward–backward searches based on central publications and their authors (254 hits). These lists (785 hits total) were screened and only studies matching the selected time frame were retained. Studies were excluded if the analytical perspective did not focus on professional journalism or journalistic work. This procedure yielded 59 thematically appropriate and relevant studies. MAXQDA software was used to analyze the retained body of literature, which informs the discourse on journalistic quality. We relied on a deductively developed coding scheme that draws from established quality characteristics (Arnold 2008; Shapiro 2010) and allows for the identification of level-specific findings following Shoemaker and Reese’s (2014) hierarchy of influences model. During the MAXQDA-assisted coding process, the body of relevant studies was adjusted progressively. In view of the literature review’s topic choice, we excluded all studies not explicitly mentioning social media from the full-text sample. The application of this criterion resulted in a final sample of 54 studies.

Results

A metadata analysis of the sampled studies precedes the presentation of content-related findings. Regarding the sample’s distribution over time, 26 studies were published between 2015 and 2019. More than half of these studies were published between 2016 and 2018. Meanwhile, social media journalism research appears to have spiked since 2020. Twenty-eight studies fall in the latter part of the sampling period, despite the end of data collection on 29 April 2022. The year with the highest number of publications (15) was 2021. Most studies were published in four renowned journals (Figure 1). Journalism Practice published eleven studies followed by Journalism and Digital Journalism with eight studies each and Journalism Studies with six studies. No other journal features more than three publications.

Figure 1. Distribution of publications over time. Source: Own depiction.

While all 54 publications address journalism in social media, not all examine the same platforms. Twitter (23) is common, followed by Facebook with eight studies and Instagram with five. YouTube and Tik Tok, with one paper each, have hardly been associated with quality journalism so far. Some publications examine social media in general or across multiple platforms (22 studies) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Examination frequency of social media platforms across publications. Source: Own depiction.

In terms of the country contexts depicted, the US is the most represented single country in the sample (15 studies). Germany is second (four studies) when authors opt for a single-country design with Chile being third (three studies). All other countries serve as the sole frame of reference in two or fewer studies each. Single-country designs are often used in quality-related research on social media journalism. With a total of 41 such studies compared to only twelve comparative research designs this dynamic is pronounced. Concerning single-country approaches, research on countries other than the US is scare. Asian and African countries are hardly represented in the present sample.

The sample consists of diverse studies. Qualitative approaches are employed in 17 studies, quantitative designs in 19. In 15 cases, researchers utilize mixed-method approaches. Three studies rely on purely theoretical or illustrative approaches. Methodologically, content analyses (21) are to be distinguished from interviews (21 studies) and surveys. Mixed-method studies usually combine two of these features. A look at the theoretical frameworks employed reveals that 31 studies only have a loose theoretical foundation. They superficially contextualize their research by referencing common concepts in journalism research. Nine studies offer no theoretical background altogether. The 14 studies with a deeper theoretical foundation draw on quite different theoretical references. Three studies (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Mourao, Diehl, and Vasudevan 2016; Mourao and Molyneux 2020), rely on Singer’s (2005) normalization theory, two (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Ferrucci 2018) on Shoemaker and Reese’s (2014) hierarchy of influences model, and two (Barnard 2016; Powers and Vera-Zambrano 2018) on different concepts of Bourdieu. Other theoretical concepts appear only once in the sample presenting new theoretical approaches (Ashuri and Frenkel 2017; Hermida and Mellado 2020; Mellado and Hermida 2021; Mellado and Hermida 2022).

The presentation of content-related findings is based on Arnold’s (2008) dimensions of quality journalism. The first dimension addresses journalistic roles, values, and norms in social media. The second explores journalistic social media content and production practices. Findings on audience engagement and economic considerations conclude the analysis. It must be noted that these dimensions can be overlapping, illuminating intersections within existing research.

Role Perceptions, Norms, and Values

An important research subfield addresses role perceptions in social media journalism and journalists’ understandings of norms and values (Banjac and Hanusch 2022; Bossio 2021; Tandoc, Cabañes, and Cayabyab 2018; Schmitz Weiss 2015; Xia et al. 2020). Gatekeeping receives attention as the journalistic core task of information selection changed with the establishment of social media (Walters 2021). Professional journalists can no longer exclusively decide which news items reach the networked sphere. Walters (2021) acknowledges “a shift in the balance of power as platforms became influential gatekeepers themselves” (13). Without decision-making authority over the news, journalists can only attempt to curate the abundance of news in a fast-moving digital world and thus offer social media users points of orientation (McGregor and Molyneux 2020). They perform this activity carefully, aggregating “content produced by other journalists and/or media outlets, rather than … content produced by anyone outside of the traditional news world” (Bentivegna and Marchetti 2018, 286). Mainstream journalists are eager to promote only established media outlets and actors from the journalistic bubble when they distribute information on social networks, whereas non-mainstream journalists engage in dialogue with actors who do not qualify as journalists and whose content does not withstand rigorous verification (Mourao and Molyneux 2020). McGregor and Molyneux (2020) appreciate journalists’ altered gatekeeping capacity in social media arguing that social media users “construc[t] … own newsfeeds by combining traditional media, social media and algorithmic recommendations” (607), resulting in a redistribution of power from journalists to news recipients. The sourcing of information also changes dramatically. This may represent an opportunity for journalists to overcome the bias regarding the predominant reliance on official and elite sources, as social networks empower different sources and open a new sourcing practice. The finding that alternative voices compete with traditional sources on equal footing in the sourcing practices of those journalists who actively use Twitter suggests the potential for more balanced journalism (McGregor and Molyneux 2020).

Research on roles and norms also addresses the growing influence of information intermediaries in the digital news sector, especially Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most recently TikTok. Their market power and opaque algorithms challenge traditional journalistic role conceptions (Lischka 2021; Papanagnou 2021; Tandoc, Cabañes, and Cayabyab 2018). Interviews with Israeli social media editors document that media providers dislike working on and with Facebook and perceive it as curtailing journalistic independence (Tsuriel et al. 2021). Responsible for this dynamic is the combination of Facebook’s algorithm, which artificially restricts the reach of posts linking to websites outside Facebook, and the platform’s peculiar monetization concept, which prevents media providers’ content from being displayed to a broad audience unless they pay for sponsored posts (cf. 1993). Accordingly, it is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to uphold their own principle of independence in platform journalism. Banjac and Hanusch (2022), Liechtenstein, Herbers, and Bause (2021), and Papanagnou (2021) state that journalists still view independence from financial, economic, or political influences as crucial in their digital work, but this self-assessment can only be confirmed empirically to a limited extent. Schmitz Weiss (2015), for example, demonstrates that, depending on the nature of national media markets, journalists sometimes fill a role that can be described as “populist mobilizer” (94). Journalists performing this role seek to influence the media agenda and spark social discourse on pressing issues. This finding counters the expectation of independent, fact-based and, above all, objective reporting. It also underscores that journalists are quite willing to utilize the social media toolkit to expand traditional communicator roles and adopt new ones. Whether this practice is influenced by national media systems (cf. Schmitz Weiss 2015, 95) or must be attributed to different journalists’ attitudes toward established norms and social media (Grubenmann and Meckel 2017; Mellado and Alfaro 2020) remains debatable.

The influence of platforms on journalism is further reflected in the fact that journalists and media companies are developing concepts for the platform-specific adaptation of content which Papanagnou (2021) describes as “a new logic of evaluation according to which journalists vie for networked popularity” (14). Media providers and journalists tailor content to the logic of the respective platform to achieve widespread distribution. However, adapting content to the logic of social media does not mean that journalists abandon established quality standards and guiding principles (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Mellado and Hermida 2021). Instead, Tandoc and Vos (2016) call it a “process of journalistic negotiation” (962), characterized by the blending of existing standards and new requirements. US journalists, for example, predominantly use social media for fact-checking and opinion dissemination, and somewhat less as journalism promoters (Xia et al. 2020). Hence, Tsuriel et al.’s (2021) conception of media organizations as hybrid entities “where neither social media logic nor mass media logic is perceived as an absolute” (1997) is more instructive. Journalists cannot ignore metrics and user preferences, but they also cannot bypass quality characteristics, particularly objectivity (Walters 2021). How journalists eventually interpret professional norms varies depending on journalistic beats and genres and national media systems (Mellado and Hermida 2021).

Beyond the challenge of reconciling mass media logic with platform logic, journalistic actors must overcome the attention threshold that arises in social media due to the ubiquity of influential actors from all walks of life and their ability to capture audiences. Journalists address this through self-promotion and organizational branding (Chacon, Giasson, and Brin 2018; Hanusch 2018) and efforts to expand audiences (Negreira-Rey, Vasquez-Herrero, and Lopez-Garcia 2022; Powers and Vera-Zambrano 2018; Weaver and Willnat 2016). Walters (2021) emphasizes that journalists must strike a balance between established news values and organizational expectations regarding branding activities. The challenge consists of having to fulfill the role of an objective news provider while simultaneously generating audience attention at the organizational or individual level. Journalists and media outlets meet this challenge by incorporating elements of self-promotion and media outlet advertising (Bossio 2021; Mourao and Molyneux 2020; Tandoc and Vos 2016) into their journalistic outputs. Depending on the form of these promotional efforts, the informational and self-promotional levels coincide, which social media-skeptical journalists see as detrimental (Hedman 2016; Mellado and Alfaro 2020). In contrast, younger journalists and platform enthusiasts reject this concern (McGregor and Molyneux 2020). It should be noted that journalists on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram no longer act as detached observers only (Ferrucci 2018; Jahng, Eckert, and Metzger-Riftkin 2021). Negreira-Rey, Vasquez-Herrero, and Lopez-Garcia (2022) even identify the strengthening of one’s brand as a central incentive for journalists to explore new platforms, namely TikTok.

Content Production Practices and Outputs in Social Media

Another subfield focuses on content and usage practices in social media. Studies focused on journalistic post design (Badham and Mykkänen 2022; Lamot 2022; Larsson and Ihlebaek 2017; Molyneux and McGregor 2021) suggest that social media journalism faces a dilemma. Professionals must strike a balance between objective and factual content dissemination and information transmission (Degen and Olgemöller 2021) and the dynamics of social media and audience demands (Colussi and Rocha 2020; Hagvar 2019). Garcia-Perdomo (2021) finds that TV narrative structures do not translate to social media as they fail to generate audience engagement. Meanwhile, Colussi and Rocha (2020) attribute the interactive design of Brazilian and Colombian newspapers’ Facebook Live videos to the extensive social media usage of the Latin American population. This indicates that content reception by audiences plays a crucial role in social media journalism. Social media users no longer simply read or watch content. Instead, social media allows for the “noisy” reception of content since recipients can comment and share journalistic social media posts and amplify the journalistic message (Walters 2021). In turn, journalists and media organizations can evaluate audience engagement using a comprehensive range of interaction indicators to optimize future content. Lamot (2022) underscores the impact of content monitoring regarding news softening. Based on the evaluation of popularity indicators, the study suggests that soft news content generates more interactions by Facebook users than hard news. News softening, characterized by the reduction of political, business, and foreign affairs content on Facebook (cf. 530), fits the picture of journalists seeking to conflate content quality standards and the attention-driven platform logic. Hence, a new quality consideration for journalistic social media content emerges. Journalistic social media posts can only be considered successful if they achieve visibility (Chacon, Giasson, and Brin 2018), are engaging (Colussi and Rocha 2020), and shared by as many users as possible (Garcia-Perdomo 2021), while simultaneously retaining information value (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Jahng, Eckert, and Metzger-Riftkin 2021).

Various studies indicate, however, that not all journalistic actors adhere to this consideration (Badham and Mykkänen 2022; Heravi and Harrower 2016), as age and professional standing affect journalistic content production for social media. Renowned Australian, US, and UK-based newspapers do not particularly emphasize audience engagement and user-centric content optimization (Badham and Mykkänen 2022). They consider their reluctance to incorporate Facebook and Twitter interaction tools and lack of community management as a conscious managerial choice and an indication of organizational stubbornness. Meanwhile, younger journalists use social media extensively for various aspects of their daily work (Heravi and Harrower 2016; Larsson and Ihlebaek 2017). More generally, two developments become visible. First, social media journalists increasingly respond to specific platform logics. For content production, they no longer concentrate on traditional journalistic quality standards alone, instead catering to the need for audience engagement and attention. Second, evidence suggests that organizational hierarchies (Badham and Mykkänen 2022) and the age structure within managerial elites impede this process (Larsson and Ihlebaek 2017). Attitudes change gradually as old management elites of media companies are replaced by new ones.

Quality journalism in social media also has a practical dimension which involves the question of how journalists acquire digital and sometimes platform-specific skills, and how they use them to increase the quality of their social media outputs (Barnard 2016; Burgess and Hurcombe 2019; Schmitz Weiss 2015). As journalism always depends on the technological affordances available, the popular use of social media necessarily affects journalists’ skillsets and approaches to social media work. Barnard (2016) identifies symbioses between traditional journalistic tasks and platform-specific tools such as the casual incorporation of hashtag searches to enhance information retrieval. This is just one instance where the expert use of platform specific toolkits boosts efficiency in performing routine tasks. Burgess and Hurcombe (2019) identify numerous other symbiotic processes between task accomplishment and technology use on Twitter. These include the use of Twitter’s own inbox feature to source and collect quotable statements and the incorporation of social listening methods that engage users to help journalists identify newsworthy material. The process of acquiring social media competences starts with the individual journalist and involves the deliberate and incremental acquisition of specific skills (Mellado et al. 2021; Schmitz Weiss 2015).

Although social media have become an integral part of contemporary journalism, they are not prioritized equally across newsrooms (Bossio and Bebawi 2016). This may reflect a lack of will at the organizational level to expand the skillset of individual journalists by systematically developing social media competences (Degen and Olgemöller 2021). Further, Sehl et al. (2019) uncover that a lack of cost pressure combined with media systemic path dependencies shape newsroom reorganization efforts of public service media providers. When newsrooms employ their own social media editors, they do not prioritize platform communication over more traditional journalistic outputs but carefully aim for balance between them (Tsuriel et al. 2021). A trend reversal seems viable, however, as Garcia-Perdomo (2021), McGregor and Molyneux (2020), and Ruotsalainen et al. (2021) identify a growing social media acceptance at organizational and individual levels.

Beyond content creation and skill acquisition, the literature explores the specific practices journalists use when publishing content on social media. Journalists seek to juxtapose traditional quality markers and social media strategies (Hagvar 2019; Mourao, Diehl, and Vasudevan 2016). Some practices, including the use of humor (Mourao, Diehl, and Vasudevan 2016) and rhetorical devices (Hagvar 2019), illustrate how journalism addresses social media logic. Journalists seek to adapt their language, sentence structure, and post design to the communication style on the respective network: “Rhetorical strategies on Twitter implicitly acknowledge that texts are a work-in-progress, to some degree replicating an oral, conversational form of rhetoric” (Hermida and Mellado 2020, 875). By replicating the respective network’s communication style—on Twitter, for example, a concise and sometimes erratic recollection of thought with a certain wit—journalists cater to communication flows. In turn, audiences perceive journalistic posts as authentic while journalists increase their reach (Negreira-Rey, Vasquez-Herrero, and Lopez-Garcia 2022). There are, however, limitations to the use of these tools. Hagvar (2019) argues that the scope for rhetorical devices is greater in the context of less controversial topics than in particularly hard-fought debates. Regarding humor, Mourao, Diehl, and Vasudevan (2016) state that journalists refrain from satirical content and biting comments toward politicians.

Audience Engagement, User Expectations, and Economic Considerations

With the platformization of media, the constellation of actors influencing journalism has changed. Audiences directly influence journalistic content by commenting, sharing posts, and creating content themselves. Journalists must therefore engage with an interactive platform economy at individual and institutional levels (Ruotsalainen et al. 2021). When using social media, journalists need to reflect on the extent to which they want to interact with their audience, serve user expectations (Bruns and Nuernbergk 2019; Coddington 2018), and develop community management strategies (Walters 2021). They must also consider the economic viability of digital products (Salamon 2020). Of these two aspects, the studies in our sample predominantly address the relationship between journalists and audiences in social media (Badham and Mykkänen 2022; Banjac and Hanusch 2022; Bossio and Bebawi 2016; Gil de Zuniga, Diehl, and Ardevol-Abreu 2018; Hansen 2020; Larsson 2017; Usher and Ng 2020; Walters 2021).

In deciphering journalists’ social media connections, network analyses provide insights into the relationship between journalists and ordinary social media users (Bruns and Nuernbergk 2019; Nuernbergk 2016; Schumacher, Maurer, and Nuernbergk 2021; Usher and Ng 2020). Regarding the fabric of German political journalists’ Twitter communication, Nuernbergk (2016) reveals that journalists almost never interact with ordinary users. Instead, they communicate with fellow journalists and political high-profile actors. He further identifies a self-referential practice of retweeting and using @mentions within an elitist “journalism-centered bubble” (877). While communicative links between journalists and ordinary social media users do exist, they emanate primarily from the user side. The lack of reciprocity in audience interaction is noteworthy, because it indicates that journalists share fewer and less direct ties with audiences compared to actors whom they consider important for their work (Schumacher, Maurer, and Nuernbergk 2021). Whereas journalists interact directly with politicians, are well-connected, and increasingly share posts reflecting their own opinions and political attitudes, they mostly avoid such interactions with ordinary users (Bruns and Nuernbergk 2019). Bruns and Nuernbergk (2019), however, indicate that the image of an elitist journalistic Twittersphere in Germany may result from a media system in which journalistic actors experience relatively low market pressure and are therefore able to forgo audience interactions. Meanwhile, the interaction networks of Australian political journalists show that ordinary social media users are indeed noticed by political journalists, provided that these users are particularly active on Twitter. Here, reciprocal interactions take place between ordinary users and political journalists.

The reluctance towards close relationships between journalists and audiences is confirmed in various studies. Badham and Mykkänen (2022) suggest that Australian, US and UK newspapers place little emphasis on audience interaction, instead preferring a one-way model of communication. Although newspapers occasionally ask readers to share pictures or join discussions, they refrain from active community management and do not use the audience engagement functions provided by Facebook and Twitter strategically. In a long-term survey of Swedish newspapers’ Facebook interaction patterns, Larsson (2017) discovers that increased engagement efforts of audience members are not reciprocated from organizational side, encouraging “increased disengagement from both groups” (451). Walters (2021) argues that the more the relationship between journalists and audiences normalizes, the more selectively journalists and media companies engage with users, but rejects the idea that audiences and journalism face a disconnect. His interviews with US newspaper journalists instead underscore that audience engagement has become an organizational requirement. Rules of conduct and presentation, including the adherence to objectivity and fairness, were introduced for this purpose. Moreover, Walters (2021) claims that the decision of media organizations to emphasize engagement on social media was shaped by economic pressures in the US media market. They seek to improve visibility for their own coverage through the use of advanced metrics, while restricting active audience interaction to save time and financial resources. Interactions between journalists and social media users are considered desirable by media organizations whenever they serve the media brand and increase readership.

Furthermore, individual journalists’ attitudes toward user engagement affect the journalist-audience relationship. Coddington (2018) finds that journalists perceive audiences as consumers and shy away from active community management. Xia et al. (2020) weigh in on social media prominence and the individual willingness to engage with followers. While prominent journalists rarely interact with social media audiences, possibly because their posts are often spammed with vitriolic comments, less renowned journalists interact with their audiences more frequently. The same study further distinguishes between engagement specialists and traditional journalists. Traditionalists value the additional media penetration they can unlock by publishing journalistic content on social networks but reject the idea that it is their responsibility to build lasting relationships with their followers and maintain civilized discourse. Engagement specialists, in contrast, cultivate their audience interactions, viewing themselves as “landscapers of public discourse, not merely witnesses” (Xia et al. 2020, 567). Through active audience management, they encourage users to interact in the hope of boosting website traffic, audience growth and the users’ propensity to consume news. In turn, “[t]his could lead to greater involvement in public life through social media, particularly for younger citizens” (Gil de Zuniga, Diehl, and Ardevol-Abreu 2018, 241). Simultaneously, journalists can strengthen recipients’ perceptions of high-quality social media journalism, provided they not only meet the audiences’ expectations of content quality, transparency, and authenticity, but also the expectation of community engagement (Banjac and Hanusch 2022).

Fewer studies consider the economic dimension of social media journalism. Mellado and Hermida (2022) develop a conceptual model visualizing the intersection of editorial and commercial decisions at the individual level. They propose that journalists can use social media to alter the established relationship between employee and media organization “by providing an alternative for brands that would usually advertise their products and services through a media organization. Instead, the journalist is able to leverage the name and brand of their employer to trade and exchange their services for individual gain” (Mellado and Hermida 2022, 293). The concept outlines the development of journalists increasingly acting as freelancers, perceiving themselves as journalist-influencers and monetizing their professional and digital reputation. Salamon (2020) even claims that freelance journalists who act as social media entrepreneurs develop a specific freelance class ideology. Ruotsalainen et al. (2021) suggest that by strengthening the relationship between journalists and audiences, social media’s economic potential can be unlocked. They caution, however, that entrepreneurial journalists perceive “audiences as customers with identity- or interest-based information needs” (Ruotsalainen et al. 2021, 14), which is at odds with the journalistic focus of providing credible information to a wider public.

Discussion

This literature review emerged from the observation that research on journalism in social media has yet to be connected with the quality journalism discourse (Arnold 2008; Lacy and Rosenstiel 2015; McQuail 1992). Based on Arnold’s (2008) three dimensions, our review outlines the findings from extant research. They are briefly recapitulated in the beginning of the discussion section before we turn to the contextual evaluation of the identified findings in relation to the debate on quality journalism and the assessment of the interplay between the three conceptual dimensions.

Studies relating to the first dimension of role perceptions, norms, and values illustrate that journalists face challenges regarding their established professional roles and principles when using social media (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Ferrucci 2018; Walters 2021). One central challenge emanates from the changing gatekeeper role forcing journalists and media outlets to curate what they consider relevant pieces of information from the abundance of content published on social media (McGregor and Molyneux 2020). While this new form of gatekeeping differs from the established role conception in mass media contexts, it corresponds with a practice of aggregating news from other journalistic sources instead of widely including non-journalistic content (Bentivegna and Marchetti 2018). Other challenges include threats to journalistic independence emanating from algorithms and commercial interests of platform intermediaries (Schmitz Weiss 2015; Tsuriel et al. 2021), the impact of social media logic (Xia et al. 2020) which forces journalists and their organizations to cater both content and presentation style to user demands and platform requirements, and the pressure to promote themselves and their media outlets (Bossio 2021; Mourao and Molyneux 2020). Journalists and media outlets respond by not strictly adhering to established roles and norms, but instead adapting some of them in a context-sensitive manner. Yet, our literature review indicates that independence and gatekeeping remain core tenets of professional journalism in social media.

However, it also emphasizes the emergence of a new evaluative practice in social media journalism where traditional norm conceptions are interpreted in light of the increasing importance of audience engagement, user expectations, and popularity metrics. This observation is mirrored by studies addressing the second dimension of journalistic content production practices and outputs. Journalists tailor social media posts to the respective platforms (Colussi and Rocha 2020; Garcia-Perdomo 2021; Negreira-Rey, Vasquez-Herrero, and Lopez-Garcia 2022) using their social media skills and platform-specific tools (Barnard 2016; Burgess and Hurcombe 2019). They also adapt communication styles such as humor, storytelling, rhetoric (Hagvar 2019; Mourao, Diehl, and Vasudevan 2016), and content strategies such as news softening (Lamot 2022) in the process. In doing so, they fuse established news values with social media news values (Harcup and O'Neill 2017), developing an integrated quality consideration along the way according to which journalistic content in social media needs to be visible, engaging, and shareable while retaining information value.

The discussion of the literature clusters relating to Arnold’s (2008) first and second dimensions already underscores the impact of audience considerations on the understanding of quality journalism in the context of social media. Studies addressing Arnold’s (2008) audience dimension help to provide a nuanced contextualization of the mentioned dynamics. Social media platforms, by way of enabling many-to-many communication, force journalists and media outlets to reflect on audience demands and to develop audience engagement strategies (Walters 2021; Xia et al. 2020). This process yields different outcomes. Experimental journalists actively engage with audiences and meet user expectations of journalistic quality (Banjac and Hanusch 2022; Gil de Zuniga, Diehl, and Ardevol-Abreu 2018) by stimulating and facilitating interactive discussions (Tsuriel et al. 2021; Xia et al. 2020). In some media systems, however, journalists reject the idea of actively engaging audiences in the process of content production for social media, especially at the organizational level (Badham and Mykkänen 2022; Bruns and Nuernbergk 2019; Larsson 2017).

Relating to the quality journalism discourse, the sampled literature offers some interesting takeaways despite no study explicitly mentioning the concept on quality journalism (Arnold 2008; Bachmann, Eisenegger, and Ingenhoff 2022; Shapiro 2010). What becomes visible, is that the ubiquity of social media and changes in the media structure alter the journalistic profession and profoundly impact production and distribution aspects of quality journalism. Journalists recognize that social media logic differs from mass media logic and make considerable efforts to use social media accordingly (Tsuriel et al. 2021; Walters 2021). Their understanding of quality journalism, however, does not seem to change fundamentally as they refrain from systematically overthrowing established norms, news values and role conceptions. Instead, professional journalists and media outlets renegotiate their guiding principles in what appears to be a conscious balancing effort of role-, norm-, and value-related principles and audience-focused considerations.

This observation leads us to believe that Arnold’s (2008) three dimensions, which were originally introduced to operationalize quality journalism in the mass media era, need to be viewed in a different light in today’s media environment. Whereas the first two dimensions relating to norms and values and content production practices and outcomes, respectively, carried more importance than the audience dimension in the original approach, the latter dimension commands significantly more attention in the context of social media. Our review suggests that the audience dimension is now just as vital to the understanding of quality journalism as the first two dimensions. Journalism in social media must pay attention to audience needs and cannot afford to entirely neglect the platforms’ branding and monetization potential. Simultaneously, we observe a limiting effect of established journalistic norms and practices on audience engagement. Journalists set boundaries as to how far they are willing to alter existing gatekeeping and sourcing practices and do not engage with audiences at all costs. We interpret this as a gradual reassessment by professional journalists and media outlets of what they consider quality journalism in social media. Studies finding that some journalists at the individual level remain skeptical of social media (Hedman 2016; Mellado and Alfaro 2020) and that some news organizations still make strategic and production decisions (Sehl et al. 2019; Walters 2021) which are detrimental to an effective use of social media underscore this interpretation. We thus assume that the individual journalist’s willingness to embrace social media is one aspect that affects how fast and how rigorously journalists and media outlets reevaluate their understanding of quality journalism with particularities of different media systems being another (Degen and Olgemöller 2021; Schmitz Weiss 2015).

Conclusion

Based on Arnold’s (2008) three dimensions, this literature review sought to provide a starting point for the assessment of quality journalism in social media. Our approach is not without limitations. While striving for the most diverse sample possible, we acknowledge that our selection reflects contemporary research foci in social media journalism, both in terms of geography and social media platforms studied. We thus caution that our literature review does not provide a fully generalizable picture of the journalistic adoption of social media around the world. It does, however, offer a concise overview of social media’s adoption and quality journalism’s evolution in the context of contemporary research preferences. Like any review, ours may have incurred some observational bias by only examining articles on journalism in social media, thus reflecting academic priorities which may diverge from what journalists experience in practice. We can only infer from the sampled literature how journalists and media outlets think about quality journalism as none of the studies under review directly used the concept of quality journalism. What we find, however, is that there is no indication of a paradigm shift where a new, disparate form of social media quality journalism replaces the traditional conception of quality journalism.

Instead, we suggest that the established notion of quality journalism evolves gradually in social media as journalists and media organizations renegotiate news values, norms and established practices. Updating quality markers from the mass media era (Arnold 2008; Lacy and Rosenstiel 2015) systematically might thus be a starting point to reflect how journalists work with social media. This involves the discussion of quality standards, functional logics, and normative intentions of traditional journalism, alongside efforts to examine whether these still apply to journalists’ activities in social networks. From a more theoretical perspective, future research should address normative-democratic considerations of quality journalism to accommodate research on fake news and political disinformation (Jahng, Eckert, and Metzger-Riftkin 2021) and findings on the tabloidization of journalistic content (Lischka 2021; Lamot 2022). It would be interesting to ascertain whether and how quality journalism in social media safeguards democracy and public opinion formation, or whether democracy-related orientations take a back seat to other requirements on social media.

Similarly, the consideration of economic parameters (Ruotsalainen et al. 2021; Salamon 2020) of quality journalism is essential as the commercialization of social networks continues. By emphasizing this perspective, future research can complement existing quality indicators to better reflect the contemporary reality of journalism in social media. Likewise, it can shed light on newer forms of journalism, such as freelance journalists who solely produce content for social media, as well as the interference and potential conflation of journalistic and influencer identities (Maares and Hanusch 2020). As can be seen in influencer marketing (Zabel 2024), the strengths but also the limitations of a personalized media brand venture are important here, as is a strong linkage to personal identity development (Horst, Järventie-Theslaff, and Perez-Latre 2020). In the future, it is unlikely that quality journalism can be guaranteed without a profound understanding of the prevailing mechanisms of social media’s attention economy and corresponding marketing and monetization opportunities.

Disclosure Statement

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