Social but anxious journalists

According to a recent study, if French journalists use more and more social networks in their work, they do not grant them provided a blind trust.

The flood of social networks sweep all the traditional uses in their passage. Now the access to information has been carried out mainly by them. The change is also on the side of those which make it know the journalists, even if it has not been always done with pleasure. It is the result of a survey led by the world leader of the media research Cision and Canterbury Christ Church university with 357 French journalists. It highlights the contrasted relation which French journalists keep with social networks.

The social media are kings

In general, today they are more numerous to use than in the past. They represent 94% of respondents compared with 85% in 2012. Their objective is before any publication accompanied with the promotion of their contents, followed by the surveillance of other media (respectively 79% and 75% of respondents). It is reflected in their daily use dedicated most of their time to these activities. To note that if the viewing of video occupies the third position, the contribution to typical community platforms Wikipedia is reduced to be shrunk (4%), as if the contents in time-consuming substantive articles were visually more attractive. What about the end of an era? We shall come back later.

Besides, it is necessary to note that the practices are out of step with the aspiration. If French journalists also would like to take advantage of social media to tie professional contacts and interact with their audience, there is a little to do concretely. A gap is but not due to the lack of time. They consider that these channels are far from being the panacea to commit their audience even if they are less numerous to think of it than in the past. All the same rate of 32% of people interact with their public but 27% of them never do it. These disparities are to be qualified according to the journalist specialization domain. With the theme "lifestyle, sports fashion and entertainment", 49 % of them is exchanged with the audience every day, the figure falls to 34 % of those who work in the news feed and 29%  with the theme "Business and Industry".

"Digital native " vs " digital immigrant"

In these general tendencies, there is a generational fracture. In fact, this massive use of social networks is not experienced by everyone in the same way. To some people, it is positive and voluntary, to others, it is negative and forced. As such, the study defines six profiles of French journalists. On the one hand, there are  architects, developers, messengers and hunters. If their use of social media and pursued objectives are different, all will share a positive vision of these platforms. On the other hand, observers and skeptics have a common point to perceive negatively the latter. It is estimated that they degrade the values of their job.

Here we notice a real age-related break between two groups of almost the same size (52% and 48%). Those who we call "digital native" (or "children of the digital technology" aged from 18 to 27) are only 31% considering that the social networks undermine the values of journalism compared with 62 % of the people aged 28-45 and 61% of ones aged 46-64. There is a rate of 85 % of people declaring that they are not able to carry out in comparison with the rate of 64% and 51% of two other age categories. The balance is made when we recognize that skeptics, which is the most unwilling group towards these platforms (13 % of the panel), widely consist of more than 46-year-old people. Working mainly for the printing press, the e-mail is the communication channel preferred. They are even the most numerous to provide with the telephone.

We find this generational fracture in the used platforms. The children of digital technologies introduce some diversity with Messenger, WhatsApp in addition to "Holy Trinity" Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Being fond of visually attractive contents, they use Live Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. Conversely, blogs have fewer success to the young people. Other notable fact: the disappearance of Google + ranking.

Finally, it is necessary for Fake news phenomenon to find out a unity in French journalism. 72% of respondents perceive a serious problem. The same peculiarity is that: those  who do not use social networks in their work are the most anxious (up to 89 %).

Maybe it will urge them to put much more into these platforms.

Article written by Thierry Randretsa