Indian Journalism and the Impact of Social Media

Almost every Indian news organization today has its own website. Most also have their official Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Within organizations, different teams run their private WhatsApp or iPhone chat groups. Others use Slack. When news breaks today it is, almost without exception, first reported on social media. Only after several minutes, when one has a few lines of copy available, is that news shared on websites, on TV channels, and over the radio. The good old newspaper reports it the following morning.

Never before has journalism faced such a crisis, an existential crisis if ever there was one. Trust in news and journalism is declining with each passing year, and everyone with a smartphone seems to have become a news provider, complicating matters further. This chapter discusses the state of journalism today from a global perspective, but with an eye on India. I discuss possible reasons why journalism finds itself in a crisis, and the spread and usage of social media as a source of information sourcing and sharing—both in India and globally. Next, I analyze social media’s possible effects on journalism, based on previous evidence, and finally establish a rationale for writing this book—how it may increase collective knowledge about social media’s impact on Indian journalism, as well as the possible practical, methodological, and theoretical significance for different audiences.

This chapter synthesizes existing knowledge about journalistic practices in an online-first era and, more specifically, the challenges before Indian journalism. I begin by explaining the origins and tenets of gatekeeping theory, how it has evolved into one of the most well-rounded, theoretical models to explain how journalists select and disseminate information, and how the emergence of social media may have disrupted some of the key concepts of gatekeeping.

Next, I introduce and explain the HOI model. This section describes how each step (individual factors, routine factors, organizational factors, social institutional factors, and social system factors) can influence journalistic gatekeeping decisions and the specific items within these factors that affect journalists’ decisions to select or share breaking news. I then discuss existing studies and what they tell us about journalists’ use of social media and their perceptions of such platforms as professional tools.

Finally, I evaluate studies that focus on journalism in India, specifically, how journalists select and share news. In doing so, I discuss knowledge gaps, such as lack of studies examining journalists’ perceptions about social media, social media usage patterns for professional reasons, and factors that influence their online-first gatekeeping decisions. This chapter concludes by reexamining the relevance of gatekeeping theory in a digital-first era.

This chapter discusses the framework of the study, elaborates on the research questions, and describes how I went about collecting data. It describes in detail, how the survey instrument was created, examples of key questions that were asked of respondents, and the existing, trusted scales that were used to measure different variables (such as usefulness of social media). Next, I describe how I conducted the interviews with editors and how the survey results helped me formulate questions for the editors. Here I also justify the research questions and hypotheses by citing key findings from previous literature and identifying possible gaps in knowledge.

In the methodology subsection, I describe the procedures, including the survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The final subsection explains the semi-structured interview process in detail, including its advantages and disadvantages, reasons for using this tool, as well as the definition of subjects, procedure, and interview instrument design. This chapter concludes by discussing the benefits of triangulating data to seek answers to specific questions. Specifically, I reiterate how triangulating data offers both breadth (through the online surveys) and depth (through in-depth interviews that provide explanations, and perspectives of informant or expert respondents)—thereby making the findings more robust and credible.

This chapter reports the results of the survey. The results indicated that journalists perceived social media to be an extremely useful journalistic tool, especially for purposes of gathering information, checking breaking news, verifying information, monitoring public opinion, and sharing links. However, they also accepted that social media was a relatively unreliable tool, rating it low in terms of accuracy of news, objectivity, authenticity, and other factors.

Next, regression analyses show that journalists’ decisions to upload breaking news on their organizational websites were influenced somewhat by individual factors (personal beliefs and attitudes), organizational factors (organizational diktats), and social institutional factors (how advertisers, PR firms, sources, etc., react to the story). Journalistic routines such as timeliness, authenticity, unusualness, and relevance or ideological factors such as aptness of a story for the social milieu were less likely to influence story selection or sharing decisions—according to journalists themselves.

When uploading on social media handles, only individual factors and ideological factors were perceived as having any influence on journalists’ decisions to upload breaking news on official social media handles. The findings raised key questions such as why do journalists continue to value social media platforms so much, when they acknowledge credibility concerns? These findings set the stage for senior editors and media managers to be interviewed.

In this chapter, I share the details of initial discussions and interviews with several editors and media leaders. In this initial phase, I wanted to examine if editors were on the same page as the journalists who had taken the online survey. Therefore, the questions I asked were a repetition of what I had asked in the survey. This is known as seeking complementarity. Here I discuss the first of the broad questions, namely effects of social media on journalism. Three major themes emerged: (1) social media as a useful tool for journalists, (2) social media adversely affects news industry practices, and (3) social media has changed news dissemination process. When editors described positive usages of social media platforms, they were grouped under three sub-categories, namely: (a) useful as a source of information, (b) useful for engagement and reach, and (c) useful for better-researched news stories. Similarly, their reservations about social media platforms were grouped under three sub-categories, namely: (a) affects journalistic values and norms, (b) not a credible news source, and (c) accuracy is sacrificed at the altar of speed. Editors also spoke about a third, separate theme, explaining how the news-sharing or dissemination process had been affected by the advent of social media as a breaking news source.

This chapter ties together the results of the survey and the interviews to draw out broader implications for journalists and news organizations, media scholars, and journalist educators. I discuss the irony of findings that indicate social media is perceived as a very useful tool by journalists, but also as a low-credibility tool. Implications are discussed, including (mis)use of social media and its effects, the need for training journalists in social media ethics, and the possible setting up of guidelines to more efficiently usage of social media. Similarly, implications related to credibility issues are analyzed, such as the need for journalists to be more transparent and use social media as a tool to engage with audiences and be perceived as real people.

Influences or factors that influence journalists’ news selection and dissemination decisions are analyzed next, followed by the contribution of the findings to theory building. Other issues discussed in this chapter include implications of platform type or usefulness of a platform influencing story selection decisions. I also discuss one of the key findings that Indian journalists are not keen to be referred to as gatekeepers any longer. They see their role more as news-conditioners who filter out polluted news and offer the most ambient news to audiences.

The final part of this section offers practical suggestions such as making newsrooms more inclusive, conducting regular training workshops for journalists, and adapting to changing trends.