The (re)presentation of journalist on Twitter: keys to the construction of professional digital identity

Abstract

This research aims to examine the presentation of themselves projected by 1,207 journalism professionals linked to four leading Spanish news organizations, two newspapers (El País and El Mundo), and two digital natives (Eldiario.es and ElConfidencial.com). The conclusions of our content analysis support that journalists show professional aspects over intimate or personal ones, an ‘appearance’ that contributes to a clear delimitation and occupational identification. These professionals do not usually promote alternative forms of contact, nor do they tend to make explicit communication frameworks for exchanges with their audiences, from which we infer that their participatory ‘manners’ are limited. Regarding their ‘performance’, the interdependencies between their social activity metrics –join date, number of followers, following, tweets or likes– treasure relevance to delimit the opportunities for interaction that can bear fruit with the active audience.