Social Media Embeddedness in the Newsroom:

Institutional Arrangements and Gatekeeping Adjustments

Social media platforms are aggressively in pursuit of news delivery as a revenue source.

Facebook, for example, now offers to host content produced by news organizations, and while

that promises more eyeballs for news, some fear that it restricts clicks within Facebook instead of

referring readers to news websites (Marshall, 2015; Owen, 2015). Still, news organizations now

increasingly rely on such social media sites for some, if not the bulk, of their online traffic as

traditional news organizations in many parts of the world see a continuous decline in their

audience numbers. Thus, studies have focused on social media’s impact on journalism, and much

of this research revolves around news workers’ daily routines, their use of various social media

platforms in gathering and producing news, and the effects of such uses on the news values that

shape content (Hermida, 2012; Lysak, Cremedas, & Wolf, 2012; Tandoc & Vos, 2015). This

paper contributes to this growing area of work by examining the intersection between social

media, journalism, and institutional arrangements in the newsroom.

This research is driven by an interest in not only documenting the various ways through

which social media reliance among news outlets might affect how journalists and editors make

decisions about stories that are carried and how these are written, but also whether there are

factors within the institutional arrangements of different news outlets that influence the degree to

which social media changes the way news is produced. Institutional arrangements refer to the

manner in which news companies adapt to social media in promoting marketing news, where it is

placed in the organizational structure, what its role in editorial decision-making is, and the

presence or absence of feedback mechanisms between editorial teams and social media teams.
 Social Media in the Newsroom

This exploration is done within the framework of gatekeeping theory (Shoemaker & Vos,

2009) and extant research on social media in journalism, specifically in their examination of the

impact that similar technologies have had in how audience information influences journalists

(Bastos, 2015; Tandoc & Vos, 2015). Through in-depth interviews with high and mid-level

editors of news organizations, we gain a comprehensive picture of how companies adapted to the

disruption of social media and the arrangements that organically evolved within the newsrooms

as a consequence. Four news outfits were studied, capturing a variety of arrangements and types

of organizations, some heavily oriented toward mass-market audiences and others toward elite

audiences.

This research was conducted in a unique news market, the Philippines, where heavy

reliance on social media for audience traffic to online news websites started much earlier than it

did in the United States (Lucas, 2014; Revesencio, 2015). Filipinos spend a lot of time on their

smartphones and use such devices to access social media (Lucas, 2014; Revesencio, 2015), a

consequence of the country’s economic profile as a developing country with high poverty rates.

The increasing number of Filipinos working overseas also makes social media use a cheap and

easy alternative to maintain family ties. The aggressiveness of Filipinos in their use of social

media has caught worldwide attention, with Twitter hashtags around a noontime variety show,

for example, consistently showing up in the list of trending topics worldwide (Chen, 2015).

These are conditions unique within the Philippine news market. These are also

developments that evolved earlier in the Philippines than in highly developed countries where

much of journalism research into social media influence is situated. Thus, studying social media

use in newsrooms in the Philippines provides an interesting set of insights into the possible

trajectory of social media dominance in the online news market, and a contrasting case to much

2
 Social Media in the Newsroom

of the existing literature on social media which has so far focused almost exclusively on

journalism developments in North America and Europe.

Literature Review

Gatekeeping Theory

Gatekeeping describes “the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling,

repeating, and otherwise massaging information to become news” (Shoemaker, Vos, & Reese,

2008, p. 73). It explains how bits of information about issues and events pass through a series of

gates, defined as “decision or action points” and end up as news (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p.

15). These gates are supposedly manned by gatekeepers who “determine both which units get

into the channel and which pass from section to section” (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 15). These

gatekeepers, referring to journalists deployed at different action points, can close or open the

gates, thereby constraining or facilitating the flow of information. Gatekeepers operate under

several layers of influences that might affect their intention, capacity, or both, to either close or

open the gates. These influences are argued to operate in a hierarchy, from the micro to the

macro level, ranging from the individual, to the routine, organizational, extra-media, and social

system levels (Reese, 2001; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, 2014).

The audience is argued to be operating at the social-institutional level of analysis of

influences on news content (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009). An example of the audience’s direct

influence on news construction is what Herman and Chomsky (2002) referred to as “flak,” a

filter that shapes the news. Flak refers to negative feedback from the audience and other groups,

such as criticisms or threats of boycotts—a way of “disciplining” the media (Herman &

Chomsky, 2002). The audience can also decide which types of content to patronize, turning

television ratings and circulation rates as important currencies in journalism. Since audiences are

3
 Social Media in the Newsroom

not just consumers but also products that news organizations sell to advertisers (Loosen &

Schmidt, 2012; Webster & Phalen, 1994), their content preferences can influence editorial

decisions. Therefore, the audience can also have indirect influences on news content, as when

journalists become oriented to providing what they think the audience wants in order to attract

their eyeballs, even if this prediction does not match actual audience preferences. This

orientation to the audience is an example of an influence on news content occurring at the

routines level of analysis, affecting how journalists do their work (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).

Innovations in information and communication technology are argued to be increasing

the influence of the audience on the gatekeeping process. For example, the use of web analytics

in newsrooms now provide journalists access to immediate feedback from the audience in terms

of what articles they are clicking on, plausibly putting more pressures on journalists to provide

what audiences want (Tandoc, 2014a). Social media also provide spaces for audiences not just to

comment on news stories and events, but also to share news stories as well as updates about

events they witness firsthand, jumping the gates to some extent (Bruns, 2005; Hermida, 2011).

Thus, as more and more members of the audience share news items and first-hand information

online about events they encounter, audiences also become gatekeepers. “Therefore, we must

conceptualize readers as having their own gate, and they send news items to others in the

audience when the interaction between newsworthiness and personal relevance is strong enough”

(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, p. 124).

Social Media in Journalism

Social media sites have become important gateways for news as more and more users get

their news from sites such as Facebook. In the United States, some 30% of American adults

reported getting news from Facebook (Anderson & Caumont, 2014). While some of this news

4
 Social Media in the Newsroom

consumption might be considered as incidental (Tewksbury, 2003), such changing news

consumption habits are giving traditional news organizations reasons to worry. Social media are

functioning not only as alternative distribution channels for news, but they are also providing

spaces for audiences to take part in the news construction process—consuming and producing

messages at the same time (Bruns, 2005; Napoli, 2011).

In response, journalists have adopted social media (Ju, Jeong, & Chyi, 2013; Lariscy,

Avery, Sweetser, & Howes, 2009; Lasorsa, Lewis, & Holton, 2011). Many journalists now turn

to social media to promote their news content (Gulyas, 2013; Lariscy et al., 2009; Tandoc &

Vos, 2015). Such content promotion is believed to help generate traffic to their news websites

(Hong, 2012; Lasorsa et al., 2011). Some journalists also use social media as sources of

information for story leads (Paulussen & Harder, 2014). Finally, journalists also use social media

to monitor audience feedback, paying attention to trending topics or what readers are posting on

social media about their news organizations (Tandoc & Vos, 2015).

The adoption of social media in journalism has instituted new roles in the newsroom

(Powers, 2015). More and more news organizations are designating engagement or social media

editors or managers (Powers, 2015; Tandoc & Vos, 2015). This requires some adjustment in the

gatekeeping process. However, technology alone does not transform news organizations and

their practices. Organizational structures and influences, among others, can mediate the extent to

which new technologies, such as social media, disrupt and transform news operations

(Boczkowski, 2004, 2005). Thus, this study seeks to answer the following research questions:

RQ1. How are social media editors institutionally embedded in the gatekeeping process?

RQ2. What factors shape these institutional arrangements in terms of how social media

editors are embedded in the gatekeeping process?

5
 Social Media in the Newsroom

Audiences and Journalists

Earlier work on gatekeeping assumed that audiences exerted a relatively weaker

influence on news content compared with other forces such as politicians or individual

journalists themselves (Gans, 1979; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; White, 1950). This is largely

because journalists used to ignore feedback from their audiences (Gans, 1979; Schlesinger,

1978). Instead of relying on audience preferences for their news judgment, journalists relied on

their own preferences, as well as those of their peers and superiors (Gans, 1979). Indeed, studies

have found a divergence in the news preferences of audiences and journalists (Shoemaker &

Cohen, 2006; Tai & Chang, 2002; Wulfemeyer, 1984). Studies of online news found that while

journalists preferred public affairs stories, audiences viewed and shared sports and entertainment

stories the most (Boczkowski, 2010; Boczkowski, Mitchelstein, & Walter, 2011; Thorson, 2008).

This almost institutional rejection of audience feedback in the past is attributed to the

dominant norm privileging editorial autonomy in journalism (Gans, 1979). For instance, many

journalists had feared that incorporating results of readership surveys in editorial operations

might erode journalistic quality (Beam, 1995). Gans (1979, p. 233) argued: “The conflict

between researchers and journalists is over the priority of commercial versus professional

considerations in story selection.” By not paying much attention to audience feedback,

journalists felt they were shielding their editorial judgment from any interference from their

audiences.

This does not mean, however, that journalists never considered the audience. But when

they invoked the audience, journalists relied on their known audience, composed of their family

and friends (Gans, 1979). They also relied on an imagined audience, partly based on limited

feedback they got from members of the audiences who volunteered their feedback through

6
 Social Media in the Newsroom

surveys or ratings (Sumpter, 2000), and partly based on their own construction of who they

thought their audiences were (Turow, 2005). Therefore, what mattered in the past was the

institutionally constructed audience (Turow, 2005). How journalists measured and

conceptualized their known audience was what influenced their work, rather than their actual

audience (de Sola Pool & Shulman, 1959).

But while such rejection of feedback from the actual audience might have worked in the

past, when feedback to the newsroom meant phone calls, letters, or survey results from a subset

of the actual audience (Schlesinger, 1978), the changing dynamics between journalists and their

audiences now make it harder for journalists to ignore the audience (Tandoc & Vos, 2015).

Social media, specifically, is altering power relations between journalists and audiences

(Hermida, 2011). Social media users now break newsworthy events themselves using their phone

cameras and personal accounts on Facebook or Twitter (Hermida, 2011; Jewitt, 2009). Social

media sites such as Facebook and Twitter also provide platforms for readers to comment on the

news, a form of media critique (Craft, Vos, & Wolfgang, 2015).

Such restructuring of relations between journalists and their audiences might also affect

how journalists now institutionally construct or imagine the actual audience (Tandoc, 2014a,

2014b). Since how journalists imagine the audience affects how they do their work (de Sola Pool

& Shulman, 1959), re-imaginations of the audience by social media editors might facilitate or

constrain the degree to which audiences influence the gatekeeping process. Therefore, this study

also explores the following question:

RQ3. How do the conceptually distinct ways in which social media editors are embedded

in the news construction process enhance or constrain the influence of the audience on

the gatekeeping process?

7
 Social Media in the Newsroom

The Philippine Context

The Philippine news market, although commercially patterned after the American model

in its reliance on advertising for revenue, is different from Western news markets (Maslog, 1994;

Tandoc & Skoric, 2010). The country has a high poverty rate of 20-25% (living below $1.50 a

day) with low levels of high school completion. The population does not read newspapers

regularly, in part because of the daily cost it entails. Broadsheets are written mostly in English,

which is widely understood, but reading comprehension of the language is concentrated among

the political and business elites and the small, albeit growing, middle class. The majority of news

consumers rely on free network television, mostly through its primetime news programs. A

survey of Filipinos living in urban areas found that 14% reported reading newspapers while 95%

reported watching television (Rappler, 2014).

Given the socio-economic backgrounds that divide the news market into the “elite”

newspaper readers and the “mass market” television news viewers, along with the reliance on

advertising for revenue, content is vastly different between these two groups of news media. This

is also reflected in their corresponding websites. Broadsheets are written in English and are

comprised mostly of political stories, business and economics, and opinion editorials. Television

news is written in Filipino and contains a large number of crime stories, road accident stories,

and entertainment peppered throughout the newscast sandwiching all traditional news stories

(Elumbre & Carreon, 2007). These market divisions are consequential to the way online versions

of broadsheets and television news programs are produced. However, even though television

networks broadcast news in Filipino language, their news websites feature content mostly in

English to appeal to Filipinos living overseas.

8
 Social Media in the Newsroom

Some 47 million Filipinos have internet access, which accounts for about 43% of the

population ("Internet Usage in Asia," 2015). Filipino internet users are also active on social

media, with an estimated 40 million active social media users, making the Philippines among the

countries with the highest Facebook penetration rates in the world (Revesencio, 2015). These

online activities occur mostly on mobile phones, as 20% of a typical Filipino’s waking hours is

spent staring at her mobile device (Lucas, 2014). A television event in the Philippines also now

holds the record for the most number of tweets, drawing 41 million tweets in one day, displacing

the previous Twitter record that was set when Germany defeated Brazil in the 2014 Fifa World

Cup (Chen, 2015).

The context of online news consumption in the Philippines is in some ways in an

advanced state of “social media reliance” compared with many other larger news markets. The

social media-reliant news market already heavily influences news workers’ work and decision-

making. There are diverse institutional arrangements across the cases included in this study in

terms of the manner in which social media workers are included in news production processes

and in the roles they are given in the strategic use of social media for reaching out to new

audiences. What is common across all cases is the use of a “social media manager” who may

have a small team tasked with, at the minimum, managing social media accounts.

Synthesis

By providing platforms for audiences to take part in the news construction process

through their comments, their participation in news distribution, and their engagement in news

production (Hermida, 2011; Napoli, 2011), social media are restructuring the power dynamics

between journalists and their audiences (Tandoc & Vos, 2015). This changing relationship

occurs against the backdrop of an increasingly competitive news industry marked by a shrinking

9
 Social Media in the Newsroom

audience base for traditional news organizations around the world (Tandoc, 2014a). It becomes

important, therefore, to investigate how social media are being embedded in newsrooms and how

they are influencing the process of gatekeeping.

This paper will particularly examine institutional arrangements that have arisen

organically in newsrooms in the Philippines, where social media have become socially and

culturally embedded. Social media have become increasingly powerful as access points to

audiences and news organizations have adjusted their strategies and work environments in a

variety of ways. This study argues that the variety of manners by which social media is

incorporated in the newsroom will shape the degree to which audiences exert influence on the

gatekeeping process.

Method

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted among 16 top editors, middle-level

editors, social media managers, and reporters working in four of the most popular online news

sites based in the Philippines (at the time of fieldwork, according to the website Alexa). Some of

the news workers interviewed had worked for traditional media companies on television and

broadsheet news outlets. Interviews were conducted under condition of anonymity, audio

recorded with consent of the interviewees, and were done between February and April 2015.

Recordings were transcribed, processed, and analyzed using the qualitative data analytic

software Dedoose by employing a constant comparative approach (Glaser, 1965; Glaser &

Strauss, 1967).

The four news websites have diverse backgrounds. News Organization 1 is a news

website that does not have an offline presence. News Organizations 2 and 3 are legacy media

companies that represent the most popular television news sources in the Philippines, while.

10
 Social Media in the Newsroom

News Organization 4 is a legacy newspaper with a readership among the political and business

elites. The interviewees also have diverse histories in their journalism careers: most hail from

traditional news backgrounds while others started their work in the online space. No specific

figures are provided to shield the identity of the news organizations included in the study. We

asked permission to name the websites in this paper, but one of the outfits refused to be named,

and thus we chose to keep all of the cases anonymous.

The sites included in this study all have active social media presence with multiple

Facebook and Twitter accounts. Some have active Instagram, Vine, Whatsapp, and other social

media application accounts. For three of the four websites, Facebook has been driving more than

50% of traffic since mid-2014. This was a change that happened quickly after the drop in prices

of smartphones and mobile data plans. The editors also noted that the mobile platform started

taking over, with close to 60% of views done through smartphones. Twitter, however, is not a

significant source of traffic for any of the news sites included here.

Results

Social Media Editors in Gatekeeping

The first research question explored the distinct ways in which social media editors are

embedded in the gatekeeping process. Newsroom operations adapted to social media in various

ways. Thus, newsrooms can be conceptually placed on a continuum from social media editors

being completely embedded in the gatekeeping process to being completely separated. For

example, News Organizations 2 and 4 opted to create a social media team that functions

separately from journalists and editors. Members of the team are not regularly included in “story

conferences” (editorial meetings) and their roles are clearly delineated as only taking the

contents of the news website and “promoting” or “pushing” them on social media.

11
 Social Media in the Newsroom

In contrast, for News Organization 1 that is more agile and purely digital, the social

media team is more organic to the workflow of news production. The social media team is part

of everything, and is in every stage of gatekeeping. The social media team is embedded in the

daily decision-making of what to cover and how to cover stories. It is part of story conferences

where social media editors give feedback on what is likely to garner hits, alert reporters about

stories that are trending online and should be covered, and make decisions about which stories to

post. Some members of the social media team also write stories that are gathered online.

These institutionalized arrangements are materially manifested in newsroom layouts. In

two of the four newsrooms, the social media editors are physically located within talking

distance of the rest of the news team. This physical accessibility allows them greater influence

over decisions made by news editors, some of whom would routinely seek out their knowledge

of the audience. In contrast, in News Organizations 2 and 4, social media teams are physically

separated from editorial and interact with the news teams only on a scheduled basis.

Factors Shaping Institutional Arrangements

The second research question explored the factors that affect the degree to which social

media editors were embedded in newsroom processes. Two main patterns emerged based on the

analysis of how the four news organizations differed in terms of the institutional arrangements in

their respective newsrooms.

The first pattern is based on legacy media background or the lack thereof. For example,

News Organization 1, which has the highest level of social media team embeddedness in the

newsroom, is an online-only outlet and has no legacy media background. By sharp contrast,

News Organization 4 is a legacy elite institution with a low level of social media team

embeddedness.

12
 Social Media in the Newsroom

The second pattern refers to the imagined, or targeted, audience: whether the news

organization is oriented to a mass market or an elite audience. News Organizations 1 and 4 are

both elite-oriented in their target audience. But News Organizations 2 and 3 are both targeting a

mass market and they both display a higher level of social media embeddedness than News

Organization 4, which targets elite readers.

An interesting theme that emerged from the interviews is how the need to protect, if not

preserve, the identity of the institution also shapes how embedded social media editors were in

the newsroom. For example, a senior reporter for News Organization 4, describing how they

write headlines, said:

[The headline] has to be interesting enough for the people to click on your story. But
definitely, we avoid clickbaits. We also protect the reputation of [our newspapers]. It has
to be news, not clickbaits.

The mass-market news organizations charge their social media teams with the marketing of hard

news and then put the onus on the entertainment, sports, and lifestyle people for bringing in the

traffic. This institutional arrangement insulates the "real" journalists from the numbers game.

Traditional journalists are perceived as key to keeping the balance of news values closer to the

old model than the new. Since they occupy the higher editorial offices in these organizations, the

filtering process is guided by old-style news values.

Audience Influence on Gatekeeping

The third research question asked how the conceptually distinct ways in which social

media editors were embedded in the news construction process enhanced or constrained the

influence of the audience. The social media team’s embeddedness in the newsroom makes a

difference in its impact on news production. When social media teams are separated from the

reporters and editors, stories are not re-packaged for Facebook and they are not re-headlined.

13
 Social Media in the Newsroom

Social media feedback, in this institutional arrangement, exerts a limited influence on story

selection. However in newsrooms where social media teams are more embedded, they are able to

closely influence decisions, the language, and the “pushing” of stories, thereby facilitating a

stronger influence from the audience.

In news organizations where social media teams are deeply embedded, social media team

members perceive great agency in their work. When they are given an active role in the

newsroom as a core part of the editorial team, they take their gatekeeping role very seriously.

The reporters and news editors may produce a certain number of stories, but the social media

team which promotes them will not treat all stories equally. Deeply embedded social media

teams make their own decisions on strategy, on which stories will be pushed during primetime,

and which stories will be posted once then never again. In extreme cases, they would write

stories garnered from Twitter and Facebook, or suggest stories that should be addressed. They

are the “ears on the ground” of the editorial team and are relied upon to inform the rest of the

newsroom about what is being discussed by the public on social media. Since Facebook is the

primary driver of traffic, the social media team has a great influence on what audiences will see

and which stories will get greater readership.

Traditional editors and reporters are also more flexible in their perception of the role that

the audience plays in determining what is and is not newsworthy when social media teams are

deeply embedded. The more closely social media teams work with the core editorial teams, the

more likely the whole outfit is to adopt a liberal interpretation of that which constitutes news,

and adopt the language and presentation of stories that are perceived as “fit” for social media.

Stories become news because they are trending topics, presented in forms such as listicles and

photo slideshows. Stories about lifestyle and entertainment are more frequent and prominent.

14
 Social Media in the Newsroom

This setup represents an accommodation and redefinition of news in the current environment,

even among traditional journalists. News is becoming less what journalists think is news, and

more what audiences think is news. A reporter from News Organization 1 said:

News is now conversation. It’s no longer just you broadcasting, the news organizations
broadcasting to people, it’s also people talking back to us, telling us ‘you should write
about this is because it matters.’ In a way the reason why we look for trending topics is
because of that, that’s an indication of things that matter to them, that somehow touch their
lives.

This increasing influence of the audience is also seen in how news workers adjust the way

they write headlines and present stories as they try to anticipate the way readers will treat the

story. Titles and photos have to be strategically selected to convey the spirit of the body of the

story, anticipating widespread social media sharing without reading or even clicking on the

article. “How will the audience react to a story?” is now a real part of a reporter and editor’s

decision-making process as to whether, and how, a story must be covered. It represents a direct

effect on news workers through routine exposure to comments, analytics, and intimate

knowledge of audience behaviors through social media. For example, a midlevel editor from

News Organization 3 said:

The social media team, part of their job is to look at comments and see what people are
saying about us, so it does factor [in our decision-making]. If we feel that, for instance,
this story is getting a bad reaction or sometimes something is incorrect, we do correct if
there is an error. If a story is getting bad play—it depends—sometimes we just alert
upper management “look, this is what [audiences] think.

A striking example: One of the news websites carried a story that a current Senator, who

was also a potential candidate for the Presidency or Vice Presidency, had lied about his

educational background. Readers’ comments included accusations that the company was under

the payroll of a competing candidate. In deciding follow-up stories, editors asked themselves

what they should do, whether they should do follow-ups, and whether they should address

15
 Social Media in the Newsroom

comments that directly attacked their credibility. This conversation would not have happened in

a print newsroom, and even in an online non-social-media-centric newsroom, where the only

source of audience feedback are comments, since reactions would not have been posted so

quickly. Editors and reporters brace themselves emotionally for the impact of audience reactions

to stories and have become more introspective about their relationship with readers. This is even

more pronounced for the social media team whose job includes reading all the readers’ feedback.

A midlevel editor from News Organization 1 said:

Social media is a different unit and they are the front lines. We in the investigative (unit)
just write the pieces—we are kind of isolated because the social media are the frontliners.
They know they will absorb the anger or whatever violent reaction. We tell them “hey, we
will release something” and they will anticipate, “OK, we will get ready psychologically,”
then they absorb the violent reactions.

In contrast, in newsrooms where social media have a thin relationship with editorial, even

physically separated from the newsroom, the editors just send stories to social media. The social

media team is perceived as a path toward the audience, not part of the core group that sets the

direction for the website. Legacy institutions are more likely to have this arrangement, and there

is a conscious effort to protect reporters from the daily pressures of watching over metrics. This,

however, also seems to be fast-changing.

Figure 1a shows the gatekeeping role of social media teams when they are separate from

the newsroom environment. First, (a) editors send content to social media, and then these are

posted on social media accounts where (b) social media teams have limited decision-making

powers. The gatekeeping that happens here is limited to deciding when to post certain stories,

selecting photos, selecting pull-quotes, and sometimes revising story titles. Social media teams

then post the stories which result in (d) engagement with social media publics where people read,

share, comment as loyal followers of news, and this might also include (e) incidental exposure to

16
 Social Media in the Newsroom

general publics who browse, see it, possibly read stories, but do not actively seek out news. In

this scenario the social media team is not incentivized based on traffic to the site. They are not

under the same pressure as content producers.

Figure 1b shows the process for more embedded social media teams, where they are

considered part of content production and are reviewed based on social metrics. Such

arrangement creates additional feedback loops and greater gatekeeping roles for the social media

team. Arrow (e) is the relationship of social media team with the rest of the editorial team as

sources of information about audience reaction and sources of story ideas based on what is being

discussed in social media. Being part of story conferences and being exposed to the daily

operations of the newsroom, the (b) gatekeeping role of the social media team is enhanced. They

are not only pushing stories, they strategize what is promoted, how often, when, and in which

17
 Social Media in the Newsroom

channels. They also take an active role in “repackaging” stories for the Facebook audience, in

deciding what the story title should be and what angle of the story would be highlighted. They

watch over the balance of how much hard news vs. soft news is promoted in a day. Since they

are expected to provide feedback on audience to editors, their (d) role with engaged social media

publics and (e) the general public is also enhanced. They take an active role in reviewing

comments, answering them, giving advice to editors about comments that must be addressed or

hidden, and in some cases warning reporters of the possible negative comments they will get

from a story.

Discussion

The news media market is rapidly adjusting to the integration of news content delivery

and social media. Facebook, for example, just became the leading news delivery mechanism

online in the United States. This happened in the Philippines a year earlier. Social media have

18
 Social Media in the Newsroom

become deeply embedded in the Philippine culture, facilitated by structural and social contexts,

such as the high penetration rate of mobile phones and the geographical dispersion of Filipinos

who have found social media as efficient and cheap avenues to keep in touch (Lucas, 2014;

Revesencio, 2015). Thus, it is not surprising to see that social media’s embeddedness in

Philippine society has also spread to news production and consumption. Through interviews with

high level editors and some reporters, this study examined the institutional arrangements in four

newsrooms in the Philippines in terms of how such arrangements shape the kind of gatekeeping

that occurs.

The study found that the news organizations consider audience preferences in their

editorial decisions, but the extent to which they do so depends on the institutional arrangements

surrounding how embedded their social media teams were. Though all four news organizations

had social media teams, they differed in how involved these teams were in their gatekeeping

processes. In one organization, the social media team was physically separated from the

newsroom. In another organization, the social media team was involved at each stage of news

production. These institutional arrangements—shaped by a news organization’s background as

legacy media or not as well as an organization’s target market as being elite or mass—

subsequently affected the extent to which audiences exerted influence on the gatekeeping

process. This is consistent with what Boczkowski (2004, 2005) argued, that organizational

structures mediate the impact of new technologies on newsroom practices.

Figure 2 depicts the institutional arrangements of each news outfit studied, and the degree

to which the news values of workers adapt to the audience agenda. The numbers are broadly

indicative based on our interpretation of the interviews. For example, News Organization 1 is an

elite (not mass market) news content producer and has no legacy media background. It is highly

19
 Social Media in the Newsroom

adaptive to the audience agenda and has a high individual exposure to audience metrics. It

pursues interests of social media publics aggressively to generate traffic and increase

engagement. By sharp contrast, News Organization 4 is an elite institution but with a legacy

media background. It is marked by a low level of social media team embeddedness and low

individual exposure to audience metrics. Their orientation to audiences is low in practice, with

little interest in engaging publics, writing stories out of trending topics, and responding to

criticism. News Organizations 2 and 3, both mass market news organizations that cater to large,

non-elite readers, are more tuned into audience agendas. The main difference, based on the

analysis, is in the embeddedness of social media teams and the nature of incentives structures as

they relate to social media metrics.

Adaptations made by newsroom operations to social media’s rapidly increasing presence

in the news delivery business are varied and have impacts on the degree to which social media

will affect the audience orientation of the organization. These adaptations are institutional

arrangements, some of which are in turn determined by the political and economic history of the

organization, whether they are legacy elite ones or mass market ones. The degree of influence

social media teams or editors might have within newsrooms as an additional gate in the selection

and framing of news content depends on several factors, including: the incentive systems in

place for journalists and how much their performance is judged through social media analytics;

the physical proximity of social media people to editorial; and the relative decision-making

power that the social media teams are given regarding story selection and promotion.

The prevalence of Facebook in delivering traffic also changed the definition of whether a

story did well or not. Whereas with web analytics programs, such as the free Google Analytics,

journalists and section editors were watching over simple traffic or number of hits (Tandoc,

20
 Social Media in the Newsroom

2014a), in social media they were looking at higher involvement metrics such as number of

“likes,” comments, and shares. The demand for journalists is to create engagement, not just

knowledge and interest. Therefore, social media teams function as the “audience intelligence”

arm, or the experts on the audience of any given news outfit. Harking back to the notion of “flak”

(Herman & Chomsky, 2002), social media’s growing presence in news created stronger and

more direct audience influence on news construction. Unlike in the time of print news

dominance however, flak is no longer only about the negative feedback providing a correcting

mechanism for news workers, it is also about the positive feedback that encourages types of

coverage that attract and engage citizens.

Figure 2
Relationships between institutional arrangements and audience orientation

21
 Social Media in the Newsroom

This study was constrained by several limitations that should inform how we understand

our findings. First, only four news organizations were studied, and it is possible that other news

organization types in the Philippines have peculiar institutional arrangements not explored here.

Still, the news organizations studied here represented a range of organizations based on legacy

background and target market. Second, our analysis relied on interviews with journalists, and

while the participants represented a range of positions, their recollection and interpretation of the

practices in their newsrooms might not have exactly and adequately represented their actual

operations. However, we argue that by interviewing multiple journalists from each newsroom,

we were able to bring together multiple perspectives in understanding and depicting gatekeeping

processes in each of the news organizations we studied.

In conclusion, we argue that social media teams and editors represent a new layer of

gatekeeping—they man additional gates—whose role is to anticipate audience preferences and

reactions. In the past audiences were institutionally constructed (Turow, 2005) and mostly

imagined by news producers (de Sola Pool & Shulman, 1959), but social media now provide

detailed and intimate information on audience preferences, reactions, and opinions of news

products in real-time. The social nature of news and the audiences’ power in shaping news will

evolve rapidly as social media sites, particularly Facebook, continue to assert their place in news

distribution. Different institutional arrangements will likely merge into a small handful of

approaches that work well in integrating the audience systematically as an institutionalized

gatekeeper in the production of news through their consumption and curation of it. Looking

forward, substantive research on the audience-side becomes a more urgent need because the

audience has already become a core part of the news production process.

22
 Social Media in the Newsroom

References

Anderson, M., & Caumont, A. (2014). How social media is reshaping news. Retrieved October
1, 2014, from Pew Research Center http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/
Bastos, M. T. (2015). Shares, pins, and tweets: News readership from daily papers to social
media. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 305-325. doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2014.891857
Beam, R. A. (1995). How newspapers use readership research. Newspaper Research Journal,
16(2), 28-38.
Boczkowski, P. J. (2004). The processes of adopting multimedia and interactivity in three online
newsrooms. Journal of Communication, 54(2), 197-213. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-
2466.2004.tb02624.x
Boczkowski, P. J. (2005). Digitizing the news: Innovation in online newspapers. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Boczkowski, P. J. (2010). The divergent online news preferences of journalists and readers.
Communications of the ACM, 53(11), 24-26. doi: 10.1145/1839676.1839685
Boczkowski, P. J., Mitchelstein, E., & Walter, M. (2011). Convergence across divergence:
Understanding the gap in the online news choices of journalists and consumers in
Western Europe and Latin America. Communication Research, 38(3), 376-396. doi:
10.1177/0093650210384989
Bruns, A. (2005). Gatewatching: Collaborative online news production. New York, NY: Peter
Lang Publishing, Inc.
Chen, H. (2015). 'AlDub': A social media phenomenon about love and lip-synching.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34645078
Craft, S., Vos, T. P., & Wolfgang, D. J. (2015). Reader comments as press criticism:
Implications for the journalistic field. Journalism. doi: doi:10.1177/1464884915579332
de Sola Pool, I., & Shulman, I. (1959). Newsmen's fantasies, audiences, and newswriting. The
Public Opinion Quarterly, 23(2), 145-158.
Elumbre, V., & Carreon, D. G. (2007). The Missing Beats. Philippine Journalism Review.
http://www.cmfr-phil.org/_pjrreports/2007/february/0207_story01.html
Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what's news (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Glaser, B. G. (1965). The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis. Social Problems,
12(4), 436-445.
Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative
research. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Gulyas, A. (2013). The influence of professional variables on journalists’ uses and views of
social media. Digital Journalism, 1(2), 270-285. doi: 10.1080/21670811.2012.744559
Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the
mass media. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Hermida, A. (2011). Fluid spaces, fluid journalism: The role of the "active recipient" in
participatory journalism. In J. Singer, A. Hermida, D. Domingo, A. Heinonen, S.
Paulussen, T. Quandt, Z. Reich & M. Vujnovic (Eds.), Participatory journalism:
Guarding open gates at online newspapers (pp. 177-191). Malden, MA: John Wiley &
Sons.

23
 Social Media in the Newsroom

Hermida, A. (2012). Social journalism: Exploring how social media is shaping journalism. In E.
Siapera & A. Veglis (Eds.), The handbook of global online journalism. Malden, MA:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hong, S. (2012). Online news on Twitter: Newspapers’ social media adoption and their online
readership. Information Economics and Policy, 24(1), 69-74. doi:
10.1016/j.infoecopol.2012.01.004
Internet Usage in Asia. (2015). Retrieved October 29
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm#asia
Jewitt, R. (2009). The trouble with twittering: Integrating social media into mainstream news.
International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 5(3), 233-246. doi:
10.1386/macp.5.3.233_3
Ju, A., Jeong, S. H., & Chyi, H. I. (2013). Will social media save newspapers? Journalism
Practice, 8(1), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2013.794022
Lariscy, R. W., Avery, E. J., Sweetser, K. D., & Howes, P. (2009). An examination of the role of
online social media in journalists’ source mix. Public Relations Review, 35(3), 314-316.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.05.008
Lasorsa, D. L., Lewis, S. C., & Holton, A. E. (2011). Normalizing Twitter: Journalism practice
in an emerging communication space. Journalism Studies, 13(1), 19-36. doi:
10.1080/1461670x.2011.571825
Loosen, W., & Schmidt, J.-H. (2012). (Re-) discovering the audience. Information,
Communication & Society, 15(6), 867-887. doi: 10.1080/1369118x.2012.665467
Lucas, D. (2014). Using smartphones among Filipinos’ top daily activities. Inquirer.
http://business.inquirer.net/183389/using-smartphones-among-filipinos-top-daily-
activities
Lysak, S., Cremedas, M., & Wolf, J. (2012). Facebook and Twitter in the newsroom: How and
why local television news is getting social with viewers? Electronic News, 6(4), 187-207.
doi: 10.1177/1931243112466095
Marshall, J. (2015). Facebook’s instant articles could mean less traffic for websites. Retrieved
from The Wall Street Journal website: http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-instant-
articles-could-mean-less-traffic-for-websites-1446028207
Maslog, C. (1994). The Metro Manila Press. Manila: Philippine Press Institute.
Napoli, P. (2011). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media
audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.
Owen, L. (2015). Instant Articles get shared more than old-fashioned links, plus more details
from Facebook’s news push. Retrieved from niemanlab.org website:
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/10/instant-articles-get-shared-more-than-old-fashioned-
links-plus-more-details-from-facebooks-news-push/
Paulussen, S., & Harder, R. A. (2014). Social media references in newspapers. Journalism
Practice, 8(5), 542-551. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2014.894327
Powers, E. (2015). The rise of the engagement editor and what it means. Mediashift. Retrieved
from Mediashift website: http://mediashift.org/2015/08/the-rise-of-the-engagement-
editor-and-what-it-means/
Rappler. (2014). 8 in 10 Filipinos consume media content through multiple screens.
Rappler.com. http://www.rappler.com/business/industries/215-tech-biz/78089-filipinos-
media-consumption-multiple-screens-nielsen

24
 Social Media in the Newsroom

Reese, S. D. (2001). Understanding the global journalist: A hierarchy-of-influences approach.

Journalism Studies, 2(2), 173-187. doi: 10.1080/14616700118394
Revesencio, J. (2015). Philippines: A Digital Lifestyle Capital in the Making? Huffington Post.
Retrieved from October 29, 2015 website:
Schlesinger, P. (1978). Putting 'reality' together. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Shoemaker, P. J., & Cohen, A. (2006). News around the world: Content, practitioners, and the
public. New York, NY: Routledge.
Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (1996). Mediating the message: Theories of influences on mass
media content (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Shoemaker, P. J., & Reese, S. D. (2014). Mediating the message in the 21st century: A media
sociology perspective (3rd ed.). New York: Routeledge.
Shoemaker, P. J., Vos, T., & Reese, S. D. (2008). Journalists as gatekeepers. In K. Wahl-
Jorgensen & T. Hanitzsch (Eds.), Handbook of journalism studies (pp. 73-87). New
York: Routledge.
Shoemaker, P. J., & Vos, T. P. (2009). Gatekeeping Theory. New York: Routledge.
Sumpter, R. S. (2000). Daily newspaper editors' audience construction routines: A case study.
Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17(3), 334-346. doi:
10.1080/15295030009388399
Tai, Z., & Chang, T.-K. (2002). The global news and the pictures in their heads: A comparative
analysis of audience interest, editor perceptions and newspaper coverage. International
Communication Gazette, 64(3), 251-265. doi: 10.1177/17480485020640030301
Tandoc, E. (2014a). Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of
gatekeeping. New Media & Society, 16(4), 559-575. doi: 10.1177/1461444814530541
Tandoc, E. (2014b). Why web analytics click: Factors affecting the ways journalists use audience
metrics. Journalism Studies, 1-18. doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2014.946309
Tandoc, E., & Skoric, M. (2010). The pseudo-events paradox: how pseudo-events flood the
Philippine press and why journalists don't recognize it. Asian Journal of Communication,
20(1), 33-50. doi: 10.1080/01292980903440830
Tandoc, E., & Vos, T. P. (2015). The journalist is marketing the news: Social media in the
gatekeeping process. Journalism Practice, 1-17. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2015.1087811
Tewksbury, D. (2003). What do Americans really want to know? Tracking the behavior of news
readers on the Internet. Journal of Communication, 53(4), 694-710. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-
2466.2003.tb02918.x
Thorson, E. (2008). Changing patterns of news consumption and participation. Information,
Communication and Society, 11(4), 473-489. doi: 10.1080/13691180801999027
Turow, J. (2005). Audience construction and culture production: Marketing surveillance in the
digital age. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 597, 103-
121.
Webster, J., & Phalen, P. (1994). Victim, consumer, or commodity? Audience models in
communication policy. In J. Ettema & D. C. Whitney (Eds.), Audiencemaking: How the
Media Create the Audience (pp. 19-37). New York: Sage.
White, D. M. (1950). The 'gatekeeper.' A case study in the selection of news. Journalism
Quarterly, 27, 383-390.
Wulfemeyer, K. T. (1984). Perceptions of viewer interests by local TV journalists. Journalism
Quarterly, 61(2), 432-435.

25