Social participation in the media: The dialogue of digital journalists with audiences

Abstract

The emergence of social media altered the relation between journalism and the public in digital media and bequeathed the relationship a more active and collaborative role. As such, the general objective of this research is to characterise the dialogue between digital journalists and their audiences through social media and to describe how they perceive the consequences of this relationship. To this end, a survey was conducted with 73 digital journalists. The results display an ambivalent attitude on the part of the professionals regarding the use of social media as a tool for dialogue with their audiences. On one hand, they believe that using them is a priority need to maintain a fluid relationship with readers, although they mainly lean toward a majority one-way and limited use of them and believe that media managers have mainly perceived participation as a channel to garner audience loyalty and increase audiences.