How to Use Social Media as an Ethical Journalist

Sara Dowler
sd719116@ohio.edu

Source: ecommercetimes.com

Social media entering the world of journalism is inevitable. While it may be sad, print is indeed becoming less and less common. As discovered in research done by the Pew Research Center, more and more people are using social media on a daily basis. The internet is faster, easier and reaches a greater audience. And it would be absurd for journalists to not try and reach that audience through social media.

As talked about in this video, social media can be very beneficial to journalists. It allows them to connect with audiences like never before. As mentioned in the video, social media allows the journalist to be more visual. Now audiences can see content such as photos that may not have made it into the story posted on Instagram or an interesting anecdote that happened while reporting the journalist can now share in a tweet or blog post.

However, journalism entering the world of social media brings about a new set of ethical problems.

Now that audiences have access to social media, they want news instantaneously. This can then lead to ethical problems if journalists are competing with other news outlets and cutting corners in order to be the first to get a story out.

As described by Dan Kennedy in this article, most major news networks have adopted a policy of neutrality. Meaning, that journalists who work for such networks cannot upload partisan opinions, offensive comments, endorse political candidates or really do anything on social media that would damage their network's reputation. This is in an attempt to ensure that all material posted maintains the same journalistic standards of that news media outlet whether in print or on social media.

And while that is a safe way for a news outlet to maintain their reputation, it still does not answer if that is the best way for journalists to use social media. For it is undeniable that it is difficult to fit all the information that would normally go into a story into a social media post.

So how can a journalist use social media to gain a larger audience while maintaining their network or publication's standards in 280 characters or less?

While there may not be one clear answer for every news network, Annemarie Nicholson of cision.com presents one solution: short-form content.

What does this mean? In essence, it means putting out shorter content that promotes a story a journalist has written. Short-form content can range from posting a graphic with statistics or other data on it to posting a headline with a link to read more. It is really the time for a journalist to get creative in order to attract another audience to their stories.

It is also important to take these measures as journalists so that we do not go back to the days of yellow journalism and post untrue 'clickbait' to attract audiences. It is still important to remain ethical in order to maintain a good relationship with one's audience so that audiences know where to go to receive accurate and truthful news in an era of seemingly endless oversaturation of information.

All so that journalism can fully transition online and onto social media in a way that is easy on both the journalist and the audience.