Social Media Journalism as a One-Way Street?

A study of 250,000 adults in over 50 countries carried out for the Financial Times indicated that social media usage has been declining since 2022. The rise of AI and algorithmically curated timelines has reduced the role of the active user as “produser.” Professionalised user-generated content, influencer, and self-branding culture increasingly question the social nature of social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

From a news and journalism perspective, a 2026 Reuters Institute report indicated that publishers will focus more on social media platforms for the diffusion of novel content types known as social media journalism (Degen et al., 2024; Hendrickx & Opgenhaffen, 2024). Legacy corporations become increasingly dependent on social media platforms as third-party platforms in fulfilling their crucial role as information bearers (Ekstrom and Westlund, 2019; Salamon et al., 2026).

With recent Digital News Reports stressing that general usage of and trust in news is declining and citizens appearing to slowly turn their backs on social media platforms, how can (social media) journalism thrive? And how do publishers account for the growing competition from news influencers and AI-generated content? This thematic issue invites scholars to critically reflect on the future of social media journalism in an increasingly fragmented, digitised, and AI-steered (social) media environment. We explicitly welcome both empirical and conceptual contributions that foster a better understanding of the changing role of social media platforms in a fast-evolving news and information landscape. Ideally, these lead to in-depth scholarly discussions on how social media platforms can, must, and/or should facilitate news, information, and journalism, and how they continue to develop. Comparative studies that look beyond the Global North are particularly welcomed.

References

Burn-Murdoch, J. (2025, October 2). Have we passed peak social media? The Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/a0724dd9-0346-4df3-80f5-d6572c93a863 

Degen, M., Olgemöller, M., & Zabel, C. (2024). Quality journalism in social media: What we know and where we need to dig deeper. Journalism Studies, 25(4), 399–420. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2314204

Ekström, M., & Westlund, O. (2019). The dislocation of news journalism: A conceptual framework for the study of epistemologies of digital journalism. Media and Communication, 7(1), 259–270. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i1.1763 

Hendrickx, J., & Opgenhaffen, M. (2024). Introduction: Understanding social media journalism. Journalism Studies, 25(9), 919–930. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2368861

Salamon, E., Bélair-Gagnon, V., & Crawford, M. (2026). Journalism and social media in creator economies: Evolving structures and labor. New Media & Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251407336

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Media and Communication is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.