Organizational adaptations to social media: How social media news workers in the Philippines are embedded in newsrooms and influences on editorial practices

Abstract

Through interviews with journalists from four top online newsrooms in the Philippines, this study examined the organizational arrangements surrounding social media teams and how these influence social media being incorporated into journalism decisions. Organizations considered audience preferences in their editorial decisions, but they depended on arrangements surrounding social media teams. Some organizational arrangements included inclusion of social media editors in story conferences and meetings, collaboration between reporters and social media teams, and direct exposure of top editors to engagement analytics. Drivers of news organizations incorporating social media into newsmaking processes include mass-market orientation, primacy of digital over print/television news formats, and history of a legacy brand.

Keywords

organizational arrangements social media facebook Philippines news

In recent years, news organizations worldwide have grown increasingly reliant on social media sites for the bulk of their online traffic as traditional news organizations in many parts of the world see a continuous decline in their audience numbers (Anderson & Caumont, 2014; Shearer & Gottfried, 2017). Scholars, therefore, have focused on social media’s impact on journalism, studying how social media are changing journalistic routines and how such changes affect news content and delivery (Hermida, 2012; Lysak, Cremedas, & Wolf, 2012; Tandoc & Vos, 2016). But while social media have become embedded in news routines, the extent to which journalists use them in their day-to-day work varies across organizations and media contexts (M. Powers & Vera-Zambrano, 2017). As Boczkowski (2004) argued, the impact of new technologies on news work also depends on organizational factors. Therefore, this study seeks to contribute to this growing area of work by examining not only how social media are embedded in news organizations in the Philippines, a unique media context, and how different patterns of embeddedness subsequently affect news work, but also how various organizational factors account for such patterns.

Studying social media use in newsrooms in the Philippines provides a contrasting case to much existing literature on social media use in journalism, which has so far focused almost exclusively on developments in North America and Europe (e.g., Harder, Sevenans, & Van Aelst, 2017; Molyneux, Holton, & Lewis, 2017; Tandoc & Vos, 2016; Thurman, 2018). Heavy reliance on social media for audience traffic to online news websites started in the Philippines much earlier than it did in the United States (Lucas, 2014; Revesencio, 2015). This is because Filipinos are heavy users of smartphones, which facilitate the widespread use of social media (Lucas, 2014; Revesencio, 2015). More than 67 million of the country’s 104 million population is on Facebook, making the Philippines among the top Facebook-using countries in the world (Camus, 2018). The increasing number of Filipinos working overseas also makes social media use a cheap and easy platform to maintain family ties (Aguila, 2014).

This exploration is guided by research on social media and audience metrics in journalism in relation to organizational arrangements (Boczkowski, 2004; Poell & van Dijck, 2014), specifically the impact that similar technologies have had on how audience information influences journalists (Bastos, 2015; Tandoc & Vos, 2016). Organizational arrangements refer to how news companies adapt to social media in promoting news, where it is placed in the organizational structure, what its role in editorial decision-making is, and the presence or absence of feedback mechanisms between editorial teams and social media teams. Through in-depth interviews with high- and mid-level editors of news organizations as well as social media managers or news workers charged with running social media accounts (including strategy, content, and metrics), we sought to understand how companies embedded social media in their news operations, what factors affected the extent of embeddedness, and with what effects on news work.

Literature Review

Journalism and Social Media

Social media sites have become important gateways for news as more and more users get their news from sites such as Facebook. Although some news consumption might be considered as incidental (Tewksbury, 2003), such changing news consumption habits are giving traditional news organizations reasons to worry. Social media are functioning not only as alternative distribution channels for news, but they are also providing spaces for audiences to take part in the news construction process—simultaneously consuming and producing messages (Bruns, 2005; Napoli, 2011).

In response, journalists have adopted social media (Ju, Jeong, & Chyi, 2013; Lariscy, Avery, Sweetser, & Howes, 2009; Lasorsa, Lewis, & Holton, 2011). Many journalists now turn to social media to promote their news content (Gulyas, 2013; Lariscy et al., 2009; Tandoc & Vos, 2016). Such content promotion is believed to help generate traffic to their news websites (Hong, 2012; Lasorsa et al., 2011). Some journalists also use social media as sources of information for story leads (Paulussen & Harder, 2014). Finally, journalists also use social media to monitor audience feedback, paying attention to trending topics or what readers are posting on social media about their news organizations (Tandoc & Vos, 2016).

However, patterns of social media use among journalists and the extent to which social media are embedded in newsrooms vary. For example, a comparison of journalists’ social media use in France and the United States found that while U.S. journalists use social media to engage audiences, those in France focus on engaging with their peers while audience engagement on social media is left to news organizations (M. Powers & Vera-Zambrano, 2017). Interviews with audience-oriented editors from different countries also revealed different patterns of social media use across different news organizations (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018). Although many newsrooms around the world now designate specific social media editors or staff, their involvement in day-to-day news operations varies across news organizations and media markets (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018). Therefore, in extending this work to the Philippines, a unique news market, we first ask,

RQ1: How are social media news workers organizationally embedded in the journalistic process?

Social Media and Organizational Arrangements

The adoption of social media in journalism has instituted new kinds of work and new job newsroom descriptions (E. Powers, 2015). For example, more and more news organizations are designating engagement editors or managers (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018; E. Powers, 2015; Tandoc & Vos, 2016). This requires some adjustment in the gatekeeping and editorial process. However, technology alone does not transform news organizations and their practices. Organizational structures and influences, among others, can mediate the extent to which new technologies, such as social media, disrupt and transform news operations (Boczkowski, 2004, 2005).

Organizational structures, which reflect as well as shape work practices, influence the adoption of technologies (Boczkowski, 2004). In the case of news companies, the adoption of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and the manner in which news workers incorporate uses in news work, is determined in large part by the organizational arrangements and structures in place (Anderson, 2011). Institutional management strategies, physical space, the presence of social media personnel in editorial meetings, resource allocation across different production and distribution teams and phases, information flows between different units of a news organization, among other organizational arrangements, either emphasize or de-emphasize the use of new technologies, such as audience metrics, in editorial and journalistic decisions (Anderson, 2011). Based on comparative research in four countries, Jung and Villi (2018) argued that organization structures and policies can filter social media’s impact on news production and distribution.

Guided by Boczkowski’s (2004) framework on the process of adopting technologies in newsrooms, this study focuses on how organizational factors are shaping newsrooms’ technological adoption, particularly social media. Scholars have identified organizational influences on journalism. Schudson (2000) examined social-organizational perspectives as applied to news production, while Shoemaker and Reese (2014) mapped out organizational and social institutional levels of influence on news production. An organization’s vision of a technology’s capabilities, and how they can further the goals of, say, a news organization, would shape how the news organization uses the technology (Boczkowski, 2004). Therefore, we ask the following:

RQ2: What organizational factors shape how social media news workers are embedded in the journalistic process?

Social Media and News Audiences

Social media significantly changed the relationship between journalists and news audiences. News audiences are no longer passive consumers of news—some of them now share information about or images of newsworthy events they witness using their phone cameras and personal accounts on Facebook or Twitter (Hermida, 2011; Jewitt, 2009). Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter also provide platforms to comment on the news. These platforms, along with analytics software, also supply journalists with instantaneous and quantified feedback (audience metrics) that show journalists which articles are being read and commented upon by how many people (Tandoc, 2014). Facebook provides journalists easy access to story-by-story audience engagement metrics: comments, shares, and likes or reactions. This has important implications for news work. For example, Anderson (2011) found that the ubiquity of audience feedback mechanisms has changed journalists’ conception of their audiences as more active than before.

Earlier studies documented how journalists paid little attention to traditional forms of audience feedback, such as letters to the editor or survey results (Gans, 2004). An important explanation for this is how journalists are socialized to protect their editorial autonomy—that is, editorial decisions are supposed to be based on a story’s journalistic merits, not its popularity. However, social media, along with other tools, have made audience feedback omnipresent in the newsroom, making it easier for journalists to provide what audiences want instead of what they need (Tandoc, 2014, 2015). Thus, Ferrucci (2018) argued that “social media are infringing on journalists’ perceptions of professional control, something held dear in the profession” (p. 9). Through new feedback mechanisms, such as social media, audiences have gained greater control over the news agenda (Ferrucci, 2015; Tandoc & Vos, 2016).

Although they resisted in the past, journalists now seem to be increasingly more open to audience engagement as an important metric for news organizations (Batsell, 2015; Nelson, 2018), and some journalists have accepted that more meaningful engagement with audiences may lead to better and more impactful journalism (Guzman, 2016). Indeed, many journalists acknowledge the influence audiences now have, through social media, on journalists’ work processes exercised, and how these influences have power to shape professional norms (E. Powers, 2018). At the individual level, reporters make strategic decisions on their own news reporting based on what they think will get the most retweets and shares (Ferrucci, 2018). Journalists also use social media to assess how audiences react to an article, reading how communities of readers would react to a story through posts and comments (Ferrucci, 2018). These reactions, in turn, can change how editors and other journalists will proceed in their pursuit of a story. However, as newsrooms embed social media in their routines in varied ways, the extent to which audience influence flows into the news operations vary. Therefore, we also ask the following:

RQ3: How do the conceptually distinct ways in which social media editors are embedded in the news construction process enhance or constrain the influence of the audience on the journalistic process?

Method

This study is based on qualitative in-depth interviews with 16 journalists from throughout the newsroom hierarchy (top-level editors, middle-level editors, social media managers, reporters) at four of the most popular online news sites based in the Philippines (at the time of fieldwork, according to the website Alexa). Some news workers interviewed had worked for traditional media: television and broadsheet news outlets. Interviews were conducted under condition of anonymity, audio recorded with interviewee consent, and completed between February and April 2015. Recordings were transcribed, processed, and analyzed using the qualitative data analytic software Dedoose by using a constant comparative approach (Glaser, 1965; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

The four news websites have diverse backgrounds. News Organization 1 is a news website that does not have an offline presence. News Organizations 2 and 3 are legacy media companies that represent the most popular television news sources in the Philippines, while News Organization 4 is a legacy newspaper with readership among political and business elites. These four news organizations represent the most trusted and widely consumed news sources in each platform (i.e., print, television, online-only). The interviewees, five females and 13 males, are comprised of four top-level editors (executive editors or editor-in-chief), five social media managers or equivalent title, and seven mid-level editors (e.g., chief of reporters, city editor, section editor). The interviewees also had diverse journalistic backgrounds: most hail from traditional news while others, many from the social media personnel, started their work online. No specific figures, ages, and equivalent numbers of interviewees are provided to shield the news organizations’ identities. We asked permission to name the websites in this study, but one organization refused to be named, and thus we chose to keep all of the cases anonymous.

Sites included in this study all have active social media presence with multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts. For three of the four websites, Facebook has been driving more than 50% of traffic since mid-2014 (according to study interviewees).

The Philippine Context

The Philippine news market, although commercially patterned after the American model in its reliance on advertising for revenue, is different from Western news markets (Maslog, 1994; Tandoc & Skoric, 2010). The country has a high poverty rate of 20% to 25% (living below US$1.50 a day) with low levels of high school completion. The population does not read newspapers regularly, in part because of their cost. Broadsheets are written mostly in English, which is widely understood, but English reading comprehension is concentrated among political and business elites and the small, albeit growing, middle class. The majority of news consumers rely on free network television, mostly through its primetime news programs. A survey of urban Filipinos found that 14% reported reading newspapers while 95% reported watching television (“8 in 10 Filipinos Consume Media Content Through Multiple Screens,” 2014).

Given socioeconomic backgrounds that divide the news market into the “elite” newspaper readers and “mass market” television news viewers, along with reliance on advertising revenue, these two groups of news media have vastly different content. This is also reflected in their corresponding websites. Broadsheets are written in English and are comprised mostly of political stories, business and economics, and editorials. Television news is written in Filipino and contains a large number of crime stories, road accident stories, and entertainment peppered throughout the newscast sandwiching all traditional news stories (Elumbre & Carreon, 2007). These market divisions affect the ways online versions of broadsheets and television news programs are produced. However, even though television networks broadcast news in the Filipino language, their news websites feature content mostly in English to appeal to Filipinos living overseas.

Some 47 million Filipinos (about 43% of the population) have Internet access (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2015), yet Facebook reports that 66 million in the Philippines are on their platform (Facebook Basics provides access to the platform through a smartphone with no other access to the rest of the Internet). The Philippines is among the countries with the highest Facebook penetration rates in the world (Revesencio, 2015). These online activities occur mostly on mobile phones, as an average of 20% of a typical Filipino’s day is spent using their smartphone (Lucas, 2014). A television event in the Philippines also now holds the record for the most number of tweets, drawing 41 million tweets in one day (Chen, 2015).

Results

Social Media Embeddedness

Again, RQ1 asked how social media news workers are embedded in journalistic processes. Our interviews reveal distinct patterns in which such embeddedness unfolds. Newsrooms can be conceptually placed on a continuum: from social media editors being completely embedded in the gatekeeping process to being completely separated.

News Organizations 2 and 4 opted to create a social media team that functions separately from journalists and editors. Team members are not regularly included in “story conferences” (editorial meetings) and their roles are clearly delineated as taking the contents of the news website and only “promoting” or “pushing” them on social media. Thus, social media workers at these newsrooms play a detached and passive role when it comes to day-to-day news operations. One interviewee had worked as a social media manager in News Organizations 3 (legacy) and 1 (digital), and he or she experienced the evolution of newsroom practices:

The way it worked with News Organizations 2 and 3 is that their online is always an afterthought, and so it was always set up as a separate company. . . . Eventually I was asked to sit in the story conferences of [News Organization 3] online under [name of head editor], but that was a separate thing, they existed separate from us. Eventually when I came on board we agreed to have them (website) just refer links so the way we would tweet would include links, to see how much traffic we could drive. (Social media manager, digital news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

[T]here is a separate team that handles social media not just for news online but also for the whole network, their mandate is to manage the whole social media of the organization. We share a team with the rest of the TV news so they end up becoming our link to TV because if news TV needs to get something out or watch this, this is what’s happening on the program, it’s the same. . . . when there is major coverage our meetings are not just editorial it includes social media strategy in part because our reporters, we also require them to do their social media. We want them to do live tweets of events, and then the social media team picks up those tweets then posts them on the official social media accounts. (Top editor, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

In contrast, at the digital-only News Organization 1, the social media team is more organic to the news workflow. Social media news workers there work more closely with journalists; the social media team is involved in every part at every stage. Social media team members attend story conferences. They give, say, what is likely to garner hits, alert reporters about stories trending online that should be covered, and make decisions about which stories to post. Some social media team members also write stories that are gathered online. Communication is always open between the social media team and the rest of the newsroom, including top-level editors and managers:

(Social media team) they observe what’s interesting on social media they look out for what’s new in social media, they look out for what is going viral, they look out for anything that is new and then they will highlight that or storyfy. (Senior Editor, digital news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

These institutionalized arrangements are materially manifested in newsroom layouts. In two of the four newsrooms, social media editors are physically located within talking distance of the other journalists, facilitating information exchange and allowing for input into decision-making. This physical accessibility allows them greater influence over decisions made by news editors, some of whom routinely sought out their audience knowledge. In contrast, in News Organizations 2 and 4, social media teams are physically separated from editorial and interact with the news teams only on a scheduled basis.

When social media teams are separate from the newsroom environment and not deeply embedded, the flow of decision-making proceeds in this manner: Editors send content to social media, and then these are posted on social media accounts where social media teams have limited decision-making powers. The role of social media news workers is limited to deciding when to post certain stories, selecting photos, selecting pull-quotes, and sometimes revising headlines. Social media teams then post the stories that result in social media audience engagement. In this scenario, the social media team is not incentivized based on site traffic. They are not under the same pressure as content producers:

There are stories that, for example breaking news for banner, we contact the social media team immediately, let’s post it as we need to. Then there are stories that we know it’s big but we let them schedule at their convenience depending on the strategy of the social media team. (Top editor, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

Before social media was automated, but we found it made really stupid decisions when it is automated so not it is manually done. There is a separate team, as editors we can interrupt and promote a story that we feel strongly about. (Social media) are part of us, they are part of the team. Most of the time they understand what should be promoted and they have their own strategies. We feel (the editors) that if, for instance, we disagree, we can have access to the Facebook account so I just promote my own. Editors have access to the social media accounts. (Mid-level editor, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

On the contrary, when social media teams are fully embedded in the journalistic processes through organizational arrangements and policies that give them an equal role in editorial decisions and reporting as others, decision-making proceeds differently. Social media managers and editors are considered part of content production and are reviewed based on social metrics. This enhances the social media team’s gatekeeping roles. They are information sources about audience reactions and sources of story ideas based on what discussed in social media. They are part of story conferences and are exposed to newsrooms’ daily operations. They are not only pushing stories, but they strategize what is promoted, how often, when, and in which channels. They also take an active role in “repackaging” stories for the Facebook audience, in deciding what the headline should be and what story angle would be highlighted. They watch over the balance of how much hard news versus soft news is promoted in a day. As they are expected to provide feedback about audiences to editors, their roles in engaging social media publics and the general public is also enhanced. They take an active role in reviewing comments, answering them, giving advice to editors about comments that must be addressed or hidden, and in some cases warning reporters of the possible negative comments they will get from a story.

Organizational Arrangements

Again, RQ2 asked what factors affect the extent to which social media editors are embedded in newsroom processes. Two main patterns emerged.

First, how embedded social media editors are in newsrooms depends on the organization’s background (legacy outfit vs. new player). News Organization 1, which has the highest level of social media team embeddedness in the newsroom, is an online-only outlet and has no legacy media background. In sharp contrast, News Organization 4 is a legacy elite institution with a low level of social media team embeddedness.

Second, the extent of embeddedness also depends on the news organization’s target audience: a mass market or an elite audience. News Organizations 1 and 4 are both elite-oriented in their target audience. But News Organizations 2 and 3 are both targeting a mass market and they both display a higher level of social media embeddedness than News Organization 4, which targets elite readers.

The need to protect, if not preserve, the news organization’s identity shapes how embedded social media editors are. For example, a senior reporter for News Organization 4, describing how they write headlines, said,

[The headline] has to be interesting enough for the people to click on your story. But definitely, we avoid clickbaits. We also protect the reputation of [our newspapers]. It has to be news, not clickbaits. (Top editor, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

The mass-market news organizations place responsibility for marketing on their social media teams, pushing hard news and then putting the onus on the entertainment, sports, and lifestyle people for bringing in the organic traffic. This organizational division of responsibility insulates the “real” journalists from the numbers games emphasized by social media managers:

While social media provides the platform for conversation, it is the news website that provides them information. You can to consider two things. Number one, stability of the house. The website gives stability, it is the provider of hard news. Number two, consider the business model of earning. What are the consequences for business if this shifts to pure social media? Editorial judgment on the news website is different. You have to consider speed of social media, in many instances the speed of social media overtakes the good editorial judgment of traditional media. (Social media manager, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

News reporters have little interaction with audience comments and engagement metrics. Traditional journalists are perceived as key to keeping the balance of news values closer to the old model of journalistic independence and autonomy from market forces than the new model of more intimate relationships with empowered audiences. This also demonstrates how these news organizations perceive social media’s role in journalism: Although they are embedded, albeit in different degrees, in news operations, social media are still considered to be external to journalism, used mainly to promote content and reach audiences rather than occupying a central role in news construction.

Audience Influence

Finally, RQ3 asked how conceptually distinct ways in which social media editors are embedded in the news construction process enhance or constrain the audience’s influence. The social media team’s embeddedness in the newsroom affects its impact on news production. When these teams are functionally separated from the reporters and editors, stories are not repackaged for Facebook and they are not reheadlined. They are just copied and pushed wholesale, and Facebook is treated as a mere extension of the website. A social media manager of a news organization agreed that they are not doing journalism, but more like marketing as they must market news. They are sent stories they need to push to generate traffic, and he or she bargained for some power to be allowed to at least choose what stories to promote—it was his way to negotiate for some “editorial independence.” His request was granted but not always exercised; they still measured against the goal of pushing for traffic. Social media feedback, in this organizational arrangement, exerts a limited influence on story selection.

However, in newsrooms where social media teams are more deeply embedded, they are able to closely influence decisions, the language, and the “pushing” of stories on social media, thereby facilitating stronger audience influence. In these newsrooms, social media team members perceive great agency in their work. When they are given an active role in the newsroom as a core part of the editorial team, they take very seriously their gatekeeping functions. Reporters and news editors produce many stories, but the social media team that promotes them does not treat all stories equally. Deeply embedded social media teams make their own decisions on strategy, on which stories will be pushed during social media “primetime,” and which stories will be posted only once. In extreme cases, they would write stories garnered from Twitter and Facebook or suggest stories that should be addressed. They are “ears on the ground” for the editorial team and are relied upon to inform the rest of the newsroom about what is being discussed by the public on social media. As Facebook is the primary driver of traffic, the social media team has a great influence on what audiences will see and which stories will get greater readership; their perceptions of what types of content engages audiences also influence editorial decisions. In these newsrooms, social media editors function as mediators between audiences and the newsroom, facilitating audience influence on news construction:

[W]e agreed that anything on social is content per se, you have to write the copy for posts. So you have to sell the stories . . . we agreed to regular outputs, at first just 2 columns regular a week from the social media team. These were bylined by the social media team. We are the team that “hears” what is hot, what needs quick reacting kinds of stories and storyfying. That was a term used a lot, we needed that in social media because we needed to write those stories, there is no reporter assigned to those. The social media team was writing a lot and there are really good articles, some team members have gone on to byline their own articles. (Social media manager digital news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

When social media teams are deeply embedded, traditional editors and reporters seem to be more flexible in their perceptions of the roles that the audience should play in determining what is and is not newsworthy. The more closely social media teams work with core editorial teams, the more likely the entire news organization is to adopt a liberal interpretation of what constitutes news, and adopt the language and presentation of stories that are perceived as “fit” for social media. Stories become news because they are trending topics, presented in forms such as listicles and photo slideshows. Stories about lifestyle and entertainment are more frequent and prominent. This setup represents the current accommodation and redefinition of news, even among traditional journalists. News becomes less what journalists think news is, and more what audiences think news is. For example, an editor from News Organization 1 said,

News is now conversation. It’s no longer just you broadcasting, the news organizations broadcasting to people, it’s also people talking back to us, telling us: “You should write about this is because it matters.” In a way, the reason why we look for trending topics is because of that, that’s an indication of things that matter to them, that somehow touch their lives. (Mid-level editor, digital news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

This increasing audience influence is also seen in how news workers adjust the way they write headlines and present stories as they try to anticipate readers’ interactions. Titles and photos must be strategically selected to convey the spirit of the story, anticipating widespread social media sharing among audiences who are unlikely to read or even click on the article. “How will the audience react to a story?” is now a real part of a reporter and editor’s decision-making process as to whether, and how, a story must be covered. For example, a mid-level editor from News Organization 3 said,

The social media team, part of their job is to look at comments and see what people are saying about us, so it does factor [in our decision-making]. If we feel that, for instance, this story is getting a bad reaction or sometimes something is incorrect, we do correct if there is an error. If a story is getting bad play—it depends—sometimes we just alert upper management: “Look, this is what [audiences] think.” (Mid-level editor, legacy news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

A striking example: One news website carried a story that a current Filipino senator, who was also a potential candidate for the Filipino presidency or vice presidency, had lied about his educational background. When the story ran, some readers posted comments accusing the news organization of being on a competing candidate’s payroll. This made the editors more careful about follow-up stories: They asked themselves what they should do, whether they should do follow-ups at all, and whether they should address the accusations. This conversation arguably would not happen in a print newsroom, and even in an online non-social-media-centric newsroom. Editors and reporters brace themselves emotionally for the impact of audience reactions to stories and have become more introspective about their relationship with readers. This is even more pronounced for the social media team whose job includes reading all the readers’ feedback. An editor from News Organization 1 said,

Social media [team] is a different unit and they are the front lines. We in the investigative (unit) just write the pieces—we are kind of isolated because the social media are the frontliners. They know they will absorb the anger or whatever violent reaction. We tell them “hey, we will release something” and they will anticipate, “OK, we will get ready psychologically.” Then, they absorb the violent reactions. (Top editor, digital news organization, personal communication, n.d.)

In contrast, in newsrooms where social media have a thin relationship with editorial, the editors send stories to social media teams, who are treated as a path to the audience, not part of the core group that sets the website’s direction. Legacy news organizations are more likely to have this arrangement, and there is a conscious effort to protect reporters from the daily pressures of watching over metrics. This, however, also seems to be fast-changing.

Organizational factors—whether the news organization has a legacy or digital-only background, and whether it targets elite or mass markets—affect the extent to which social media news workers are embedded in news operations. News Organization 1 is an elite news content producer with no legacy media background. Its social media team is completely integrated in its news operation. This arrangement affects its news work connected to audience orientation: It is highly adaptive to the audience agenda and reporters and editors report constant exposure to audience metrics. It pursues interests of social media publics aggressively to generate traffic and increase engagement. By sharp contrast, News Organization 4 is an elite institution with a legacy media background. It is marked by a low level of social media team embeddedness and, as a consequence, its orientation to audiences is low in practice (little interest in engaging publics, writing stories on trending topics, or responding to criticism). News Organizations 2 and 3, both mass-market news organizations that cater to large, mass-market audiences, are more tuned into audience agendas. These examples illustrate how organizational factors determine the degree of social media embeddedness, which affect the extent to which news organizations accommodate audience influence.

Discussion and Conclusions

We found that news organizations consider audience preferences in their editorial decisions, allowing audience influence into their newsrooms, but the extent to which they do so depends on the organizational arrangements surrounding how embedded their social media teams are. This is consistent with Boczkowski’s (2004, 2005) argument that organizational structures mediate the impact of new technologies on newsroom practices. Findings are also consistent with those of Jung and Villi (2018), who previously argued that organizational policies and procedures, including the editors’ attitudes toward the relative role of social media over their legacy media channel, shape the adaptation of social media in news processes.

The specialized role of social media managers is to understand, track, and strategically use engagement metrics to expand (“push” or “promote”) reach of stories. Social media teams direct traffic, look for audiences for stories, program the content audiences will see, and expand communities around their brands. This is intensive audience-centered work that still exercises some gatekeeping function, not in the traditional way of whether a story is covered, but rather of whether the appropriate audiences see an already-written story.

Striking an appropriate balance between integration and independence between news production functions and social media distribution functions may be a constant concern for newsrooms everywhere. Although news organizations may treat social media news workers as separate from editorial, isolating their conception of these roles as purely on the distribution and marketing side, it will become increasingly difficult to discount the importance of social media teams in story generation, coverage of public sentiment, and readers of audience preference. As these social media roles expand in news organizations, editorial policies should consider orienting those serving these functions in news values and reporting rules and ethics, as social media teams increasingly influence news agendas and audience creation. Note that while legacy news organizations in this study all started off with separate social media teams operating away from the day-to-day decision-making of editorial teams, all had plans to increase operational integration of online and offline news production, including social media. If the social media profession expands within the industry and personnel hired into these positions have no background in journalism, distribution-side gatekeeping decisions may not hew closely to the values and norms of editors and journalists. In the end, social media teams or workers who service news functions of media are part of the journalistic news production process, at the very least through distribution, and at most as reporters on a “social media beat.”

Several factors limited this study. First, while we purposely selected four newsrooms that are the most used news sources in the Philippines, it is possible that social media embeddedness in other news organizations work differently. For example, we did not interview any journalist from a radio news organization, a platform popular in the Philippines that targets niche audiences and, therefore, does not operate in the same scale as the national online, television, and newspaper organizations we included in the study. Less popular news organizations and/or those that are not national also might differ. Therefore, future studies should build on our findings and use the same framework to investigate institutional arrangements for social media in other types of news organizations, and those in other news media contexts, such as those where market control is low but state control is high.

Second, we relied on the strengths of the interview method, but it is possible that our interviewees have not completely recalled and narrated their respective organization’s institutional arrangements for social media. Therefore, future studies should explore the same questions with a different methodological approach, such as conducting observations across different types of newsrooms and analyzing their content to compare effects on stories being pushed on social media by different types of newsrooms. Still, we hope that our study can contribute to a more nuanced, less Western-centric understanding of how social media are reshaping journalistic work.

In the past, audiences were institutionally constructed (Turow, 2005) and mostly imagined by news producers (de Sola Pool & Shulman, 1959), but social media now provide journalists with detailed and intimate information on audience preferences, reactions, and opinions of news products in real-time. This has important implications on how journalists do their work, particularly when it comes to balancing giving what audiences need and what they want (Tandoc, 2014). However, the presence of social media in the newsroom does not automatically lead to dramatic changes in news routines. The extent to which social media news workers, and hence social media logics and values, are embedded in the newsroom is what determines the extent to which audiences can influence news construction processes. This is consistent with the conceptualization of social media editors and engagement editors, new positions being created in an increasing number of newsrooms around the world (Ferrer-Conill & Tandoc, 2018), as mediators between newsrooms and audiences. As social media become more and more embedded in newsrooms around the world, the roles of these social media news workers will become more central, as news organizations increasingly find themselves having to balance their traditional identities and the economic realities confronting the industry. It is important, therefore, to keep track of how they are navigating their roles of having to balance the interests of the audience and that of journalism.

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