business journalists’ use of social media
There are a lot of great surveys about journalists’ use of specific social media tools, and some of social media overall. To add to the demographic and trend use data out there, here are some recent numbers looking at business journalists’ use of all social media in their reporting collected using good ole academic rigor. It’s a descriptives piece so don’t expect too much, but we have more theoretical stuff coming out soon.
Ruthann Weaver Lariscy, Elizabeth Johnson Avery, Kaye D. Sweetser, & Pauline Howes (2009). An examination of the role of online social media in journalists’ source mix [pdf]. Public Relations Review, 35, 314-316.
Using telephone surveys of business/financial journalists in the United States (n=200), this research investigates the agenda-building role of social media content in journalists’ work. Understanding that more non-public relations content from user-generated and social network sites, like YouTube and Twitter, are fast becoming resources for journalists to get story ideas, break scandals, and find sources, we began this scholarly work to determine the frequency of such uses of social media. Overall, findings indicate very little use of social media by these business journalists. Results and implications for public relations practitioners are discussed in detail.
This work was funded by a grant from the Public Relations Society of America Foundation.
Kaye, it is wonderful that you are helping to bridge theory and practice by publishing your research widely.
Does the pdf you attached to your blog mean that it is acceptable for anyone to share journal articles published in Public Relations Review through a blog? Did you get blanket permission from Public Relations Review to republish all articles by you online, or was this a one-time approval?
I’d like to be able to share my work online too, and I’d also like to encourage other scholars to do so who have published in Public Relations Review if we have approval.
I think it would be a true public service for the academic community if someone
would write an article that will spell out, for each major PR/Comm journal, the conditions under which (and the process to follow in order to get permission) faculty members are allowed to publish their own work on their personal (or university-hosted) websites. Let me know if you need help with tracking down that info, I’ll be happy to help.
That would be a great idea, Constantin. I wrote a blog post earlier this year about sharing a study’s results online prior to the study being published.
I found that summarizing what a study says seems to be okay for the Journal of Public Relations Research, the International Journal of Strategic Communication, and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. For details, see my blog post here: http://tiny.cc/QCNWr
When I was conducting research for the blog post, I did not receive a response to my e-mail to Public Relations Review about its policies.
I imagine that these journals’ copyright policies would prevent people from republishing pdf copies of journal articles, which is why I was excited to see this blog post with Kaye’s article attached. Perhaps it is a sign of changing policies?
Of course PRSA’s PR Journal is open access (a great service). Also, the Journal of Electronic Communication permits authors to share copies of their studies after publication with acknowledgment “for non-profit personal and scholarly purposes,” which I would like to interpret as including free online distribution.