[ecrea] CFP Special Issue: "Journalists on Social Media: Politics, Privacy, Personal Branding"

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Popular Communication: The 
International Journal of Media and Culture: "Journalists on Social 
Media: Politics, Privacy, Personal Branding"

Guest edited by Prof. Christian Christensen, University of Stockholm

In late 2017, both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal issued 
guidelines to their staff on the use of social media. In both cases, 
journalists were reminded that, as employees, their use of social media 
- whether work-related or private - could have a detrimental effect upon 
the organizations within which they work. As the New York Times put it 
in their guidelines: “In social media posts, our journalists must not 
express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, 
make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts The Times’ 
journalistic reputation.” Technology writer and media observer Matthew 
Ingram, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, quickly criticized 
the harsh policies implemented by both newspapers, noting that such 
restrictions are ultimately counter-productive for large media outlets. 
News consumers, he wrote, are no longer under the impression that 
journalists are objective, unbiased reporters of fact. In addition, 
Ingram noted that cracking down on the use of social media by 
journalists is to undercut the one thing that makes platforms such as 
Twitter special: sociality. Allowing readers and journalists to 
interact, and for journalists to express opinions, is to bring readers 
closer to journalists, to humanize them.

In line with the goals of Popular Communication, this special issue is 
not intended as a collection of work on “journalists on Twitter as 
popular culture,” but, rather, to identify the use of social media by 
journalists as one component of the ensemble of media platforms upon 
which, “power and resistance, labor and capital, information flows and 
blockages, and identity become visible and describable in communicative 
practices and expressive cultures responding to geopolitical changes” 
(Burkart & Christensen, 2013, p. 4). The ways in which journalists 
utilize social media, and the ways in which news organizations both 
surveil and regulate such use, are directly related to issues of labor, 
professional practice, technological affordances, political economy, the 
personal/private divide, free expression and the control and 
commodification of public discourse. With this in mind, a number of key 
tensions in the use of social media by journalists and news workers 
drive this special issue. In this Call for Papers we ask for research 
investigating the use of social media by journalists from a wide variety 
of perspectives.

Such investigations can take a number of forms and directions, such as:

* organizational/newsroom policies in relation to social media use
* journalists and the expression of political opinion via social media
* the journalist as social media celebrity
* cross-national comparisons in journalistic social media use
* organizational or corporate censure of news workers as a result of 
social media posts
* social media use as journalistic labor
* the use of social media by journalists for personal/professional branding
* social media use and the line between public and private, citizen and 
employee

Please send paper proposals in the form of extended abstracts (as a Word 
document and not in the body of the email) to Christian Christensen 
((Christian.christensen /at/ ims.su.se)). In the subject line of the email, 
please write: “PopComm Submission (Last Name).” Please make sure to 
include the following information at the top of the Word page: (1) Name, 
(2) University/Affiliation, (3) E-mail Address, (4) Paper Title.

Deadlines:
Extended abstract (500-1000 words) submission: January 15, 2018
Notification of acceptance: February 1, 2018
Submission of completed article: April 15, 2018


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