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For the news industry, information is used to tell stories, which have traditionally been organized around “facts”. A growing problem, however, is that fact-based evidence is not relevant to a growing segment of the populace. Journalists need facts to tell stories, but they need data to understand how to engage audiences with this accurate information. The implementation of data is part of the solution to countering the erosion of trust and the decay of social discourse across networked spaces. Rather than following “trends”, news organizations should establish the groundwork to make facts “matter” by shaping the narrative instead of following deceptive statements.

Citizen participation in the news-making process has been a hopeful promise since the 1990s. Observers hoped for a rejuvenation of journalism and democracy alike. However, many of the enthusiastic theoretical concepts on user engagement did not endure close empirical examination. Some of the major fallacies of these early works (to whom the author contributed himself) will be outlined in this article. As a bleak flip side to these utopian ideas, the concept of “dark participation” is introduced here. As research has revealed, this type of user engagement seems to be growing parallel to the recent wave of populism in Western democracies. In a systematization, some essential aspects of dark participation will be differentiated. Finally, the benefits of (also) looking at the wicked side of things will be discussed.

Amid a broader reckoning about the role of social media in public life, this article argues that the same scrutiny can be applied to the journalism studies field and its approaches to examining social media. A decade later, what hath such research wrought? In the broad study of news and its digital transformation, few topics have captivated researchers quite like social media, with hundreds of studies on everything from how journalists use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat to how such platforms facilitate various forms of engagement between journalists and audiences. Now, some 10 years into journalism studies on social media, we need a more particular accounting of the assumptions, biases, and blind spots that have crept into this line of research. Our purpose is to provoke reflection and chart a path for future research by critiquing themes of what has come before. In particular, our goal is to untangle three faulty assumptions—often implicit but no less influential—that have been overlooked in the rapid take-up of social media as a key phenomenon for journalism studies: (1) that social media would be a net positive; (2) that social media reflects reality; and (3) that social media matters over and above other factors.

This study investigates how news organizations perceive the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in news production, focusing on the synthesis of traditional journalistic values with AI advancements. By conducting a meta-analysis of 59 scholarly articles published between 2020 and 2024 in the field of journalism, the research examines the perceptions of journalists, editors, and decision-makers regarding AI. The primary research question explores the general findings of previous studies on journalists’ perceptions of AI in their workflows and the frameworks used to reconcile AI with journalistic values. The findings indicate that AI is regarded as a transformative tool, enhancing efficiency, effectiveness, and fostering a new organizational culture. However, it raises concerns about costs and job security. Attitudes toward AI are polarized, with optimism about efficiency gains and skepticism due to potential impacts on employment and ethical standards. Three theoretical models—field theory, human–machine communication, and the technology acceptance model—are employed to understand these dynamics, with field theory addressing power shifts and human–machine communication and the technology acceptance model examining human–AI interaction. To effectively integrate AI with journalistic values, the study proposes three strategies: AI technologists should embed journalistic ethics into their processes, journalists should acquire basic AI technical skills, and collaborative platforms should be established to bridge gaps between journalists and technicians. These strategies aim to create a balanced framework where AI-driven news production can uphold essential journalistic standards while embracing technological innovation.

This meta-analysis summarizes evidence on how readers perceive the credibility, quality, and readability of automated news in comparison to human-written news. Overall, the results, which are based on experimental and descriptive evidence from 12 studies with a total of 4,473 participants, showed no difference in readers’ perceptions of credibility, a small advantage for human-written news in terms of quality, and a huge advantage for human-written news with respect to readability. Experimental comparisons further suggest that participants provided higher ratings for credibility, quality, and readability simply when they were told that they were reading a human-written article. These findings may lead news organizations to refrain from disclosing that a story was automatically generated, and thus underscore ethical challenges that arise from automated journalism.

This article focuses on news journalism, social media platforms and power, and key implications for epistemology. The conceptual framework presented is intended to inspire and guide future studies relating to the emerging sub-field of journalism research that we refer to as “Epistemologies of Digital Journalism”. The article discusses the dependencies between news media and social media platforms (non-proprietary to the news media). The authority and democratic role of news journalism pivot on claims that it regularly provides accurate and verified public knowledge. However, how are the epistemic claims of news journalism and the practices of justifications affected by news journalism’s increased dependency on social media platforms? This is the overall question discussed in this article. It focuses on the intricate power dependencies between news media and social media platforms and proceeds to discuss implications for epistemology. It presents a three-fold approach differentiating between (1) articulated knowledge and truth claims, (2) justification in the journalism practices and (3) the acceptance/rejections of knowledge claims in audience activities. This approach facilitates a systematic analysis of how diverse aspects of epistemology interrelate with, and are sometimes conditioned by, the transformations of news and social media.

The contours of journalistic practice have evolved substantially since the emergence of the world wide web to include those who were once strangers to the profession. Amateur journalists, bloggers, mobile app designers, programmers, web analytics managers, and others have become part of journalism, influencing the process of journalism from news production to distribution. These technology-oriented strangers—those who have not belonged to traditional journalism practice but have imported their qualities and work into it—are increasingly taking part in journalism, whether welcomed by journalists or shunned as interlopers. Yet, the labels that keep them at journalism’s periphery risk conflating them with much larger groups who are not always adding to the news process (e.g., bloggers, microbloggers) or generalizing them as insiders/outsiders. In this essay, we consider studies that have addressed the roles of journalistic strangers and argue that by delineating differences among these strangers and seeking representative categorizations of who they are, a more holistic understanding of their impact on news production, and journalism broadly, can be advanced. Considering the norms and practices of journalism as increasingly fluid and open to new actors, we offer categorizations of journalistic strangers as explicit and implicit interlopers as well as intralopers. In working to understand these strangers as innovators and disruptors of news production, we begin to unpack how they are collectively contributing to an increasingly un-institutionalized meaning of news while also suggesting a research agenda that gives definition to the various strangers who may be influencing news production and distribution and the organizational field of journalism more broadly.

Does new media promote accountability in nondemocratic countries, where offline media is often suppressed? We show that blog posts, which exposed corruption in Russian state-controlled companies, had a negative causal impact on their market returns. For identification, we exploit the precise timing of blog posts by looking at within-day results with company-day fixed effects. Furthermore, we show that the posts are ultimately associated with higher management turnover and less minority shareholder conflicts. Taken together, our results suggest that social media can discipline corruption even in a country with limited political competition and heavily censored traditional media.

After a significant surge of active fact-checking organisations over the past decade, fact-checkers now operate in more than 100 countries. Although the fact-checking movement is diverse, the majority of organisations function at a national level. However, some organisations operate on a sub-state scale, based either on community or geographic region. These fact-checkers investigate statements relevant to specific populations that might otherwise go unaddressed. In Europe, signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network are active in regions with federal or devolved power. This study brings a comparative analysis of regional fact-checkers in Europe, combining qualitative interviews with editors and managers of these organisations with complementary document analysis. Our findings highlight how organisational formats influence fact-checking motivations, the difference in scope between political fact-checking and debunking routines, and the collaborative relations regional fact-checkers maintain with national and international organisations. This article contributes to the debate surrounding the global fact-checking movement by raising awareness of regional and local fact-checking, which helps address so-called fact deserts.

The proliferation of social media platforms has profoundly reshaped news reporting, particularly concerning sensitive events like suicide. This study investigates how Chinese news media framed the suicides of two high-profile female celebrities, Sulli and Coco Lee, on the influential social media platform Weibo. It examines the dominant reporting frames and explores how Weibo’s unique interactive environment influenced the framing process. Computational thematic analysis was employed to investigate dominant themes from Weibo posts published by verified news media accounts, and three primary frames were identified: mental health, gossip, and nationalism. While the mental health frame marked a shift from traditional Chinese reporting, it often remained superficial and was intertwined with sensational elements. The gossip frame, which centres on personal scandals and conflicts, aligns with the problematic sensationalism often observed in suicide reporting. The nationalism frame positioned the suicides within contexts of cultural comparison and national pride. Findings indicate that social media affordance significantly shaped these frames, resulting in more sensational and dynamically evolving narratives. This has shifted traditional gatekeeping and agenda-setting power, and potentially diminishes the quality and responsibility of reporting. This research highlights the complex interplay between journalistic norms, platform dynamics, and audience interaction in the digital news era, underscoring the need for updated approaches to responsible reporting on social media.