Edinburgh Napier University

  Journalists in Western liberal democracies face similar challenges in melding existing, hierarchical models of media production with emerging communications technologies where knowledge, expertise and authority are networked and distributed. This paper examines the attitudes and approaches of a select group of digital journalists in Canada to the impact of social media on journalism and professional constructs of the journalist. It is based on expert interviews with nine leading senior online news managers and journalists from Canada’s principal news organisations, with a focus on the growing influence of social media, and the professionals’ subjective, experience-based understandings of the current changes in journalism. The interviewees demonstrated a tacit understanding of a shift away from the traditional role of gatekeeper towards a shared ecosystem of news and information. While journalism was conceived as more of a collaborative enterprise, with interviewees seeking to adapt and benefit from a more participatory media environment, the journalists also expressed the occupational boundaries of the profession as a way of rearticulating their authority. While immediacy was mentioned as one of the main new factors in news media reporting, concerns about the impact of immediacy on the quality of news reporting were largely absent from the discourse of the interviewees. The increased velocity of information due to social media was thus framed as a positive development that could enable journalists and newsrooms to be more responsive and relevant to audiences. It was also seen as providing the increased opportunities for interaction with audiences. The study contributes to the body of work on how digital news leaders are negotiating the meaning and value of journalism. As such, our sample is not broadly representative of the attitudes of most journalists, either in Canada or elsewhere. Rather, it represents a select group at the vanguard of digital journalism within mainstream media in a Western liberal democratic system.