JOURNALISM, MEDIA, AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS 2022
New rules for social media: Polarised debates in social media are also making publishers rethink the ways in which journalists should engage in networks like Facebook and Twitter. After concerns about reputational damage, many news organisations have been tightening their social media rules. The BBC’s new guidelines, for example, include a ban on ‘virtue signalling’, with staff warned that adding emojis to social media posts can be enough to count as sharing a personal opinion on an issue. Other news organisations are encouraging journalists to avoid getting sucked into time-consuming arguments on Twitter. In our survey we find most senior managers (57%) feel that journalists should stick to reporting the news when using social networks like Twitter and Facebook but almost four in ten (38%) feel that they should be able to express their personal opinions openly. To some extent these scores reflect the different traditions in journalism, with public broadcasters concerned that the informal nature of social media communication is undermining trust, while publications with a ‘point of view’ are keen to encourage commentators to express their opinions freely. How should journalists use social media? They should stick to reporting the news
57%
They should be able to express their personal opinions alongside reporting the news Don't know
38%
5%
Q10. Which of the following comes closest to how you think journalists should use social media like Twitter and Facebook? N=234.
The social media presence of journalists is increasingly difficult to navigate. On the one hand, publishers profit from the strong personal brands of some of their correspondents; on the other, many require news staff to be neutral or objective, especially on political and controversial topics. This balance is increasingly hard to achieve in politically and culturally charged settings like social media.
3.4 The Challenge of Reporting Climate Change Building on the experience of reporting on COVID, the news industry will turn its attention to the complexities of covering climate change this year. Despite mounting scientific evidence that the world is close to a tipping point from which it may never recover, publishers say it is hard to engage audience interest – and this in turn makes it difficult to make the case for further investment. The World Health Organisation says that climate change is the ‘single biggest health threat facing humanity’27 but only around a third (34%) of publishers think that news coverage is good enough, with a further third (29%) saying it is poor. News organisations have a higher opinion of their own reporting (65%) but this gap suggests that there is more collective work to be done both to raise awareness in general and to make the story relevant to all audiences. 27
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-health-threat-who/
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