Journalism Practice and Personal Branding on Social Media

Abstract

An important area of expertise that takes its share from digital transformation is journalism. Social media and the enhanced online services, which reshaped many sub-elements of journalism from news production to publishing activities, enabled the emergence of independent working models differentiated from the practices of corporate life. While the freelance working model brought ease in terms of providing flexible working hours and practical decision-making processes in the content creation process, it also led to the need for additional promotional activities for journalists in terms of personal branding awareness and reliability. The current study aims to examine the digital publishing practices and personal branding processes of freelance YouTube publisher journalists. Findings indicate journalists aim to seek balance among three contextual dilemmas, namely, user interaction, self-promotion, and news content creation.