The rise of online journalism in the last two decades has been accompanied by alternating hopes and scepticism. The transformation continues, but we now have a clearer understanding of what kind of channels better satisfy the demands of a public born into the internet age and growth with social media. If in 2010 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) alarmed about the fact that a significant part of young people did not read conventional news at all – or not in a regular way – the last Digital News Report by Reuters Institute confirms that the vast majority of under 35 gets news online by social media, search engines or news aggregators.

The driving force of social media, the report indicates, is reducing direct access to sites and apps. The UK market is a perfect example: there, 41% of people aged between 18 and 24 say social media is now their main source for information, up from 18% in 2015. Close to GenZ, there is also a portion of young millennials that increasingly use platforms to get news: a sign of the relevance and rising respectability of social media channels in the journalism landscape.

For publishers, the challenge lies in how to engage new audiences, prioritising platforms over home-page selections and revenue strategies concerning traffic on websites. But journalists are not exempt from these transformations. It’s not only a matter of how the professional approach has to be adapted to social media requests: the shift from a more traditional online one to platform journalism has increased pressure on work. The need for personal promotion, coupled with online harassment and direct feedback, poses significant challenges to journalists’ mental health.

Metrics surrounding quality

The psychological impact of platforms is directly connected to the new possibilities for online journalism, especially when newsrooms started to rely more heavily on metrics to better analyse and control editorial results. The way journalists deal with numbers is often emotional, as journalist Elisabeth Gamperl wrote in a recent paper over metrics anxiety.

Gamperl cited an ethnography by Caitlin Petre in which the author states that metrics have a strong influence on journalists’ emotions and morale, suggesting that news organisations have to take into account the effects of data on workers. In particular, she notes, metrics can be a source of intense stress – and, in another way, also one of validation – that spreads feelings like anxiety, excitement, demoralisation, competition and self-doubt. In this sense, metrics are a psychological trigger that cannot be ignored.

On social media, this process is amplified by platforms’ use of algorithms to disseminate content. Omitting piece quality and importance, without a clear data-driven strategy the performance of a content is more and more out of the journalist’s control and selection. At the same time editors and producers count on views, comments, shares and likes to evaluate reporters’ work, often leaving journalists in a grey area in which their professional performances are neither judged for their value nor are assessed with clear criteria.

Francesco Zaffarano is the head of content of Will Media, one of the most prominent media projects in the new information landscape in Italy. It bases most of its strategy on content disseminated via social media, starting with Instagram. Before joining Will, Zaffarano worked for Italian and English newsrooms, including Telegraph and The Economist, as social media specialist. At the start of his career, he understood that dealing with social media without a clear strategy generates chaos in newsrooms. “When I worked for the newspaper La Stampa in 2015, at that time the organisation had no experience in dealing with social media: it was like the ‘far west’”, he says. Zaffarano notes that “[at first], we had a basic approach focused on how to reach more followers and traffic instead of clearly understanding data in order to improve our community and editorial contents”.

With time, he has learned that having more analytic control over social media – starting by a clear analysis of data generated by platforms – could reduce stress in collaborators. “If you are aware of how the performance of the contents on the platform can fluctuate based on how the platform changes over time, you face the changes, sometimes even sudden ones, with more cool blood”, he says.

Zaffarano highlights the way to deal with metric anxiety, and in this process the organisation values and strategies are crucial: each piece of data is evaluated according to the media experience and business objectives, a collective process that only partially involves the individual. That’s why reporters might sometimes feel uncomfortable or “more like a stockbroker than a journalist”, as a Reuters Institute journalist fellow told Gamperl. Of course, this can undermine journalists’ self-esteem, as can be understood from the words of Elana Newman, Research Director of the historic Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project by Columbia Journalism School that moreover in 2021 launched a program training therapists to help journalists. For example, startups and new journalism projects that need to grow fast can put pressure on reporters to have strong results as soon as possible. “But when numbers overcome quality – Newman says – the entire purpose of journalism can fall”, with the consequence that the role of the professional is debased, and so is their morale.

Accountability, fear of messing up and online harassment

While metrics drive anxiety, loading pressure on performances, social media changes the relationship between writer and reader, making it more open and horizontal. From a top-down model, now the journalist has to deal with a multitude of commentators that judge their work in an immediate way. It is an opportunity to create community and validate the quality and accountability of journalists, but also a threat to their mental health.

As the journalist Cristiana Bedei wrote in an article for the community of International Journalists’ Network, “since online platforms and social media allow immediate and direct feedback, journalists can feel like they’re under an intimidating level of scrutiny. When a story goes live, your sources, readers, and everyone else can publicly and instantly point out a misstep, criticize or even attack you. Accountability is a positive motivator, but the fear of messing up can become paralyzing”.

In just an instant, an upset comment can turn into online harassment, or worse, an intimidation. Journalists who work in authoritarian nations or emerging democracies are more subjected to these dynamics, but those involve mature democracies too. In 2016, a Swedish study based on a sample of 1471 journalists in the country showed that a third of the respondents had experienced threats at work in the previous year, and the very large majority said they had received offensive and insulting comments, often via social media. Newman confirms that “one of the changes that I have observed as a researcher in these years is that with the rise of social media online harassment and violence against journalists have been increasing. This situation makes journalists more anxious, and more and more are worried about becoming a target of an attack”.

A compendium of studies analysed by the Dart Center sums up the most common responses to online harassment that by its nature is upsetting. Studies on female journalists documented reactions like tension headaches and feeling ill, insomnia and panic attacks. Other women talked about “bursting into tears” and being afraid to leave their homes. Papers on general populations outline distress and depression. Journalists also reported self-coping through drinking alcohol, binge or unhealthy eating, and some reporters feeling a sense of shame or alienation due to lack of support by the newsrooms. This situation can push journalists until burnout and leave the profession.

Women and people of colour are particularly affected by these attacks. The numbers are meaningful: a global study on online violence against women reported by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) found out that 73% of respondents experience online violence. The mental health impacts of online violence were the most frequent consequence (26%).

Understand social media to deal with pressure

The landscape depicted so far is quite dark and destabilising for the profession. To face it, journalists have to understand that they are a part of a broader process that affects people who use social media. One of the most famous cases of online hate in Italy is that of Laura Boldrini, former president of the Chamber of Deputies – one of the two branches of the Italian Parliament – attacked for her left-wing and feminist positions. “But she is not a journalist: social media [platforms] are a place in which hate speech finds easy ways to attach, it does not count who you are”, Zaffarano says. “It is not a problem of online and platform journalism. Rather, it is about how people experience that space as a place without rules. The journalists are simply more exposed, like other categories, by virtue of their position, but these are dynamics that affect everyone. That’s why journalism cannot solve the problem alone, we should promote education and respect in these spaces”.

In this sense, a cordial and positive approach could mitigate aggressive attacks. In the case of social media storms, Will replies to every negative comment, in a public or private way. Zaffarano says that “we try to explain our position [by] taking criticism to heart. In many cases we observe a sudden change in the mode of engagement on the part of the commentator. The moment you treat the other person as a human being who can have [their] own positions, the commentator immediately readjusts to a more civilised linguistic register. In this way you have the opportunity to change the other person’s mind, taking care of that fundamental relationship of trust between the publisher and the user”.

The approach described by Zaffarano above could be helpful in dealing with attacks, preserving both media’s accountability and the well-being of reporters. Dribbling waves of online backlash is one of the daily strategies that should be adopted to control the presence in social media. But when that presence itself starts to be psychologically unsustainable, Newman sets out some recommendations summarised below:

Do everything you can to ensure you always have a sense of control, such as having a response plan or clear policies
Therapy isn’t necessary for everyone, but if you feel you need it, look for a therapist who is familiar with people who experience trauma and can deal with severe stress
Thanks to you speaking publicly about attacks, people can better understand that journalists are also under attack and need support and understanding. When they recognise the value of your work, it’s easier to deal with stress, making you more resilient
Support other journalists in difficulty, helping a colleague is like giving support to yourself, creating a sense of community
Try to disconnect as much as possible; you don’t have to be online all the time. For example, don’t scroll through social media before going to bed
On social media use a personal and professional profile separate from each other. It is safer to protect you and the people in your life from attacks

Source of the cover photo: https://unsplash.com/

Francesco Zaffarano

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