Burning out and turning off: Journalists’ disconnection strategies on social media

Abstract

This study explores forms of social media fatigue described by professional journalists, including frustration with the perception of their increased affective labor, dissatisfaction with communication environments on particular social media platforms, and increased anxiety about the possible impact of social media use on both their professional reputations and personal well-being. We argue that these forms of social media fatigue have influenced new professional practices on social media practice that include strategies of disconnecting from, but not necessarily terminating, social media use. Using a comparative analysis of semistructured interviews with Australian and American professional journalists, this study illustrates that experiences of social media fatigue over time have resulted in a careful renegotiation of professional and personal boundaries around journalists’ social media use, influenced by the technological, social, and cultural affordances of specific media platforms, organizational and institutional constraints, as well as the online literacies and behaviors of journalists themselves.

Communicating across the borders: managing work-life boundaries through communication in various domains

“…In certain situations, especially outside the workplace, refraining from ATB communication helped journalists to find a balance between work and life. Journalistic work has characteristics that easily blur the boundaries between different domains of life (Bossio & Holton, 2019;Robinson, 2011;Snyder et al, 2019). In order to find a balance, journalists set boundaries explicitly, for example, by saying 'I don't want to hear about possible mistakes in a news story before I'm at work'.…”

Showing off Your Social Capital: Homophily of Professional Reputation and Gender in Journalistic Networks on Twitter

“…This is noteworthy, as previous research suggested that men journalists are ascribed higher social capital and engaging with them could strengthen women's social capital (Prandner 2013). In general, women journalists' tweeting behaviour could be explained with the risk of being exposed to hostility and harassment associated with increased visibility in the network (Lewis and Molyneux 2018), or with a strategic professional use of social media through disconnection (Bossio and Holton 2019).…”

Return of the regulatory state: A stakeholder analysis of Australia’s Digital Platforms Inquiry and online news policy

“…Platforms have for the most part been unwilling to pay for the news they host, have not returned significant revenues to the news media via referred traffic or advertising deals, and have changed content curation algorithms without warning, reducing traffic to news websites, as occurred with Facebook in 2017 and 2018 (Flew 2019). Social media news sharing has also radically re-shaped how journalism is selected, distributed, discussed, and valued, with reporters often conflicted about the attention given to social media metrics and the demands of social media interaction (Bossio and Holton 2019). Even as there is "a rapid and ongoing merging in the functions of publishers and platforms, and an often surprisingly high level of involvement from platform companies in influencing news production" (Tow Center 2018, 3), socially shared disinformation is also contributing to a decline in trust in journalism (Park et al 2020).…”