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Julian Maitra
Former Member
Last Name
Maitra
First name
Julian
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https://twitter.com/Jules_a_Berlin
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PublicationNews organizations’ use of Native Videos on Facebook: Tweaking the journalistic field one algorithm change at a timeThis article explores the influence of social media giant Facebook on the journalistic field by examining how news organizations responded to Facebook’s algorithm tweak,announced in June 2014, that prioritized videos directly uploaded to the social media platform. In announcing the tweak, Facebook, an agent external to the journalistic field, did not just change its own internal rules but also imposed them on users, including news organizations traditionally governed by the journalistic field’s own set of rules. Based on large-scale posting activity data collected from 232 Facebook Pages operated by major news organizations in the United States, this study found that most news organizations complied with Facebook’s updated rules on Native Videos by significantly increasing their social video production, opening up the journalistic field to the influence of an agent external to journalism. But while digital-native and broadcast news publishers were more responsive in adapting to the tweak, print brands were slower to respond.Type: journal articleJournal: New Media & SocietyVolume: 20Issue: 5
Scopus© Citations 56 -
PublicationNews Organizations’ Use of Native Videos on Facebook: Tweaking the Journalistic Field One Algorithm Change at a Time
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationVisible beyond bylines: How social media has reengineered journalistic authorship( 2018-05-24)This paper analyzes how social media platforms affect journalistic authorship. It conducts two case studies of how Facebook’s and Twitter’s “verified profile” features have impacted the status of journalists on their platforms. Through the lens of authorship theory, this study advances the understanding of power dynamics between social media platforms, journalists and news organizations. In journalism, authorship refers to the attribution of news stories to the journalists who crafted them. This is usually achieved by including journalists’ names in bylines (Reich, 2010). Such crediting not only makes visible the human subjects behind the headlines, but holds them accountable, for example, for the authenticity of reported facts. Visibility and exposure are also key elements of journalistic authority. Authority – which is closely related to authorship – has been operationalized as journalist’s “right to be listened to” as legitimate and “credible spokespersons” of news events (Carlson, 2017; Zelizer & Allan, 2010). Likewise, on attention-driven social media, visibility is critical for news organizations. However, unlike traditional media, social media are proprietary, rule-driven platforms. For example, the working logic of the algorithms that govern the visibility of content is strictly controlled by tech firms (Bucher, 2012). Similarly, platforms determine the design and features of the interfaces where audiences encounter news. Such configurations exemplify the intricate relationship social media platforms maintain with news organizations; cooperation and competition occur simultaneously (Bell, 2015; Kleis Nielsen & Ganter, 2017). This paper focuses on the profile verification feature of Facebook and Twitter as a proxy to research how social media technologies affect journalistic authorship. On both platforms, journalists can apply to have their profiles verified and get publicly visible “badges” besides their user names. Designed to be an indicator of authenticity, verified profiles are reserved for “public figures”, including journalists and news organizations. That is, verified profiles are exclusive and create a hierarchy in the discourse between their bearers and ordinary users. The research gap addressed in this study concerns the consequences of such deliberately engineered social media instruments on journalistic authorship. The two research questions are: - RQ1: What are Twitter and Facebook’s rationale of providing journalistic authors with publicly visible verified profiles? - RQ2: How does social media profile verification, from the point of view of authorship theory, reconfigure power dynamics between journalists and news organizations? The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual model based on journalistic authorship that explains the ongoing power shifts between social media platforms, journalists and news organizations. In the first part, two case studies of Twitter and Facebook were conducted. They include a qualitative content analysis of profile verification instructions and an evaluation of the software features. In the second, theoretical part, the case study results are discussed and contrasted with findings from authorship theory. The results suggest that social media platforms have deliberately enhanced journalists’ status as authors. The acquired social media visibility of some journalists has created a situation where they compete for attention against their employers, the news organizations. These findings therefore draw a more nuanced view on the power relationship between social media and journalism.
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PublicationMapping social media news in Europe: A comparative actor-network investigation of authors, articles, publishers and platforms in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK( 2018-11-01)
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationType: conference paper
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PublicationAudience Measurement(John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2019-04-29)
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PublicationJournalistic authorship from the print to the digital era: How patterns of authorial agency, authority, and signature survive and thrive in the era of social media, analytics, and news automationThis dissertation develops a media sociological concept of journalistic authorship. The rise of digital media technologies, such as search engines, social media, analytics, and natural language generation algorithms have fundamentally reshaped the relationships between journalisms actors, media products, and audiences. The digital revolution has also challenged established forms of journalistic authority and associated agency of journalistic actors. A mixed-methods approach, this thesis approaches these developments by applying a theoretical lens grounded in authorship theory. The concept of authorship exhibits a long history of explanatory power in the humanities, law, and studies of film, media, art, and science. In each of those fields, authorship has served as a powerful conceptual lens to capture the relationships and processes of meaning generated between authors, text (or other media), and readers (or audiences). Yet, journalistic authorship, particularly in the context of digital media technologies, has so far not been comprehensively theorized. Therefore, this thesis seeks to address this gap by better understanding what journalistic authorship is and how it works, particularly in the context of digital journalism. Through an explorative critical analysis that is grounded in media theory, the thesis assesses the historical co-evolution between journalistic authorship and media technologies. It analyzes the trajectory of journalistic authorships evolution through the print, broadcasting, and digital era. Throughout this extensive period, journalistic authorship has significantly evolved, notably at the socio-material level. Nonetheless, several patterns have also remained remarkably stable. These and further insights are used to formulate a theoretical framework of journalistic authorship that is based on three determinants: agency, authority, and signature. This thesis argues that irrespective of the historical period or media type, the manifestation of journalistic authorship can be explained by specifying those three determinants. To validate the explanatory power of this framework, the thesis also presents two empirical case studies that concern the relationship between journalistic authorship and social media. In a field theoretical analysis of U.S. news publishers reaction to a tweak of the Facebook News Feed, it is shown that such external structural interventions reconfigure authorial agency and, eventually, authority. Also, it is shown that social media platforms, through the feature of verified accounts, endow journalistic actors with an enhanced signature, through which they achieve a higher level of authority.Type: doctoral thesis
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PublicationType: forthcomingJournal: Kodex : Jahrbuch der Internationalen Buchwissenschaftlichen GesellschaftVolume: 10