German Political Journalists and the Normalization of Twitter

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since its introduction in 2006, journalists found ways to incorporate the microblogging platform Twitter into their daily work routines. Communication scholars quickly viewed the journalistic adoption of Twitter as a normalization process where journalists adapt a new media affordance in line with their professional role conceptions, norms, and work practices. Rather recently, concerns regarding the applicability of the normalization concept were expressed. In hindsight, the literature on normalization must be updated to draw on results from international contexts. The normalization hypothesis also benefits from theoretical and operational additions to highlight its continued usefulness in times when journalists have come to be acquainted with Twitter. The present study does so by providing a comprehensive analysis of how political journalists from Germany tweet while also reframing the operationalization of the concept by comparing journalists’ tweets with temporally corresponding articles published in their respective media outlets. Quantitative data from a week-long sampling period in late June and early July 2018, as well as semi-structured interviews, reveal that the tweets of German political journalists and the articles published across the media outlets they work for correspond in the choice of content and are largely consistent with regard to the interpretive standpoints chosen.