TY - JOUR
T1 - How source-level and message-level factors influence journalists’ social media visibility during a public health crisis
AU - Zhang, Xinzhi
AU - Zhu, Rui
PY - 2022/12
Y1 - 2022/12
N2 - Social media has become a channel through which journalists distribute their work, reach audiences and gain visibility. Informed by the frameworks of journalistic branding, the heuristic-systematic model, and hypertextual elements, the present study examines the extent to which the source factor (journalists’ branding on social media profiles) and message factors (communication styles and hypertextual elements) influence visibility (i.e. the popularity of the account and the number of favourites and retweets of the posts). We analysed the Twitter profiles of 98 health journalists from seven major media organizations in the US and conducted a manual content analysis of a representative sample of their public tweets (n = 3982) published during the Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast to expectations, branding contributed little to any indicators of visibility, and profiles with institutional branding had fewer followers. Both affective messages and rational messages received more likes and retweets than messages without these elements. Tweets containing images or news-related hyperlinks received more retweets, whereas the number of @mentions in a tweet was negatively related to visibility. Journalists from traditional media, those who tweeted more often, and those with more followers had higher levels of visibility. © The Author(s) 2021.
AB - Social media has become a channel through which journalists distribute their work, reach audiences and gain visibility. Informed by the frameworks of journalistic branding, the heuristic-systematic model, and hypertextual elements, the present study examines the extent to which the source factor (journalists’ branding on social media profiles) and message factors (communication styles and hypertextual elements) influence visibility (i.e. the popularity of the account and the number of favourites and retweets of the posts). We analysed the Twitter profiles of 98 health journalists from seven major media organizations in the US and conducted a manual content analysis of a representative sample of their public tweets (n = 3982) published during the Covid-19 pandemic. In contrast to expectations, branding contributed little to any indicators of visibility, and profiles with institutional branding had fewer followers. Both affective messages and rational messages received more likes and retweets than messages without these elements. Tweets containing images or news-related hyperlinks received more retweets, whereas the number of @mentions in a tweet was negatively related to visibility. Journalists from traditional media, those who tweeted more often, and those with more followers had higher levels of visibility. © The Author(s) 2021.
KW - communication style
KW - heuristic-systematic model (HSM)
KW - hyperlinks
KW - journalistic branding
KW - public health
KW - social media
KW - visibility
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107260236&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85107260236&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1177/14648849211023153
DO - 10.1177/14648849211023153
M3 - RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal
SN - 1464-8849
VL - 23
SP - 2627
EP - 2645
JO - Journalism
JF - Journalism
IS - 12
ER -