Abstract
Based on a combination of digital ethnography and content analysis of journalists’ tweets about Twitter (i.e., journalistic meta-discourse) from 2011, the chapter analyzes journalistic practices and reflections in order to examine their significance for the profession. Findings suggest that each of the “elements of practice” (i.e., capital, habitus, and doxa) is undergoing notable change as the field adapts to the networked era. Through examples from professional journalists, the chapter constructs a typology of Twitter journalism practices and demonstrates Twitter’s role in the transformation of journalistic norms, values, and means of distinction. These changes contribute to new opportunities for capital exchange and to the emergence of a hybrid, networked habitus that integrates traditional values and practices with those from digital and nonprofessional origins.
A previous version of this chapter was published as: Barnard, S. R. ‘Tweet or be sacked’: Twitter and the new elements of journalistic practice. Journalism, 17(2), 190–207, Copyright © 2016, SAGE Publications. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884914553079.
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Barnard, S.R. (2018). “Tweet or Be Sacked”: Hybridity and Shifts in (Professional) Journalistic Practice. In: Citizens at the Gates. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90446-7_4
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