Editor’s note: The Fix is doing regular overviews of recent research studies on journalism and media business. You can check the previous instalment from October here.

Welcome to another edition of The Fix research roundup. In this instalment, we take a look at three studies – analysing how news publishers adapt their content to different social platforms, how newsrooms are adjusting to hybrid work after almost three years of COVID-19, and how Substack affects journalistic careers.

How do media adapt their content to different social media platforms?

Valerie Hase, Karin Boczek & Michael Scharkow (2022) Adapting to Affordances and Audiences? A Cross-Platform, Multi-Modal Analysis of the Platformization of News on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, Digital Journalism, DOI: 10.1080/21670811.2022.2128389

Social platforms might be a highly useful free tool for dissemination of content and heightening visibility for news publishers. However, they vary in their audiences and algorithms – and publishers need to be vigilant on how to approach each platform and what works best for their audiences.

TikTok, while extremely popular among the younger generation, keeps raising worries about the spread of disinformation and surveillance issues over its ties to China. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, is notorious for changing algorithms at a whim according to its business interests, impacting news publishers in the process. And, whole books can – and will – be written about recent changes at Twitter.

Intuitively, publishers are supposed to adopt their strategies and their content to different social media platforms. However, do news organisations really follow the platform logic? Let’s see how the German media giants adapt their news to social platforms.

A group of German scholars looked into four German news outlets – Spiegel, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Tagesschau, ZDF Heute – to see whether and how they repackage their news stories for social media.

It turns out that those big publishers do little to adapt their journalistic content to different platforms that they use. The organisations analysed “do not systematically select or adapt news on a more communicative level, for instance by preferring specific topics for social media or by using more engaging language on platforms”, the authors write.

Moreover, the four outlets share only a fraction of the coverage via social media (from 1% to 44%). Evidence in research suggests that news organisations follow some general technical practices specific to each platform, such as by including or excluding links to their website, though they are not really trying to use interactive features, engaging language or personalization on social media.

This research underscores an interesting tendency that big legacy media outlets, despite having a lot of resources, often do not have a visible strategy for adapting their news to social media platforms.

Coming back to office or staying hybrid: how have newsrooms adapted to hybrid work?

Federica Cherubini (2022) Changing Newsrooms 2022: media leaders embrace hybrid work despite challenges, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

It has been close to three years since the pandemic forced many of the world’s knowledge workers to start working from home. Many stereotypes and presumptions about remote work turned out to be not true, and workplaces generally adapted pretty easily to employees working outside of the office.

Now, as the pandemic is, hopefully, under control, newsrooms have gone back to working in-person or, what is more prevalent, adopted hybrid working. How are newsrooms doing after multiple twists and turns in their workplace – and what comes next?

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism recently released a report that answers some of the questions about how newsrooms are doing after moving to hybrid. Here are some interesting findings from the report and what it can mean for the future of journalism and workplace organisation.

News organisations have been doing well with the shift to hybrid. 61% of surveyed respondents across 39 countries have implemented hybrid rules and 57% think that their organisations are doing a good job with it. Interestingly, only 20% of respondents want to come back to the pre-pandemic working model. This shows that work habits and how-to work perceptions really changed during the pandemic.
Whether or not the staff comes back to the office depends on the company’s policy. Many companies are adopting a flexible approach. 49% of respondents have required a minimum number of days per week or month employees need to work from the office. 29% are more lenient and require people to set their own number of days.
Newsroom employees also noted some changes with moving to hybrid. First, offices themselves experienced transformation, with many respondents saying that their media organisation is redesigning the office spaces to fit the hybrid way of working, reducing office space, and investing in technologies for hybrid work. Second, the staff itself changed. Almost half of the respondents say that with hybrid work, it is much easier to retain and hire people, especially from underrepresented communities.

While there are many other interesting findings in the study, one of the most important conclusions is that good communication is key to successful hybrid work. Clear set rules and expectations that are communicated to the team make it easier to organise a post-pandemic workplace. Make sure that journalists know why they are coming back in person and what are the benefits. With some people still struggling with the idea of coming back to the office, effectively communicating the needs and perks of offline work is essential for motivating people to actually go back – if, indeed, you actually need them to go back to the office

Can a Substack newsletter be a career for a journalist?

Shira Zilberstein (2022) Digital Platforms and Journalistic Careers: A Case Study of Substack Newsletters, Columbia Journalism Review

With the rise of social media influencers, journalists are using some of their tactics. Newsletters, particularly those enabled by Substack with its easy-to-use publishing and monetisation tools, have been one of the most prominent ways for reporters to build a personal profile.

Shira Zilberstein from Columbia Journalism Review examines how Substack affects individual journalists and their careers. Her goal is “to understand who uses Substack, why journalists use the platform, how they use it, and how Substack relates to the broader media ecosystem”.

By analysing case studies of journalists publishing Substack, she is able to identify three dominant themes that explain how journalists use and conceptualise the platform.

“Newsletters as a career source”. Media professionals see a newsletter as an opportunity to expand and highlight their work. Self-promotion is a big part of their motivation; however, it does not mean that they are ready to leave their workplace. These writers actually uphold journalistic norms, usually doing their newsletter for free; therefore, they still rely on ties with their media organisation.
“Newsletters as an alternative media model”. Some journalists are tired of the media models that dominate today. Newsletters for them are like a breath of fresh air – they feel that with them they can produce whatever stories they want, without looking back at editorial constrictions. While these journalists might look like a direct competition to media organisations, their number is relatively low. As these writers are trying to cover alternative stories and rely on paid subscription models, it is usually niche projects that only benefit media diversity.
The third group of journalists see newsletters as a lifeboat. In other words, if other options fail, at least they have a newsletter to lean on. Writers in this group often lack either professional or economic fulfilment, so for them running a newsletter might be a good source of both.

Now, understanding what kind of journalists are looking toward having newsletters is not the only finding of this study. What is particularly interesting is that journalists are not fixated on newsletters as a source of income. It is the constant search for career growth and new opportunities that leads reporters to launch a newsletter, record a podcast, host events and so on. These experiments are not hidden behind the doors of media publishers but are open to the public, which means more alternative and diverse sources of information.

Hybrid workplace, newsletters and multiplatform approach: what does recent research say about the media environment?

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Roundup of three research papers on the news media industry

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