Exploring Journalists’ Intentions to Become Social Entrepreneurs

Abstract

ABSTRACT The aggregation of people and information on the Internet has caused individual journalists to forge self-employed and self-branded social entrepreneur careers, an endeavour that combines commercial and nonprofit methods to keep citizens informed and achieve social change. However, academic research in social entrepreneurial journalism is scant. To fill this gap, two studies were conducted to explore the effects of personality traits, entrepreneurial creativity, and social capital on the social entrepreneurial intentions of journalists in Taiwan. Through an online survey, the results of Study 1 confirmed the factor structures of the four scales, with five factors of personality traits (extraversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness), two factors of entrepreneurial creativity (originality and usefulness), two factors of social capital (bridging and bonding), and two factors of social entrepreneurial intentions (conviction and preparation). The results of Study 2 partially supported the mediation model of social capital. Complex relationships were demonstrated in this model, including full mediation relationships resulting from personality traits, partial mediation relationships caused by creativity, interactive relationships resulting from conscientiousness and originality, and inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationships caused by openness to experience.