Abstract

This study explores the news media Twitter messaging on the issue of Grexit, as an exemplary case of transmediatisation of problems in highly polarized contexts. Our analysis focuses on media tweets (in English, French, Italian, and Greek) using the Grexit hashtag between March and July 2015. There are three main questions on the potential reshaping of journalistic sourcing and framing on Twitter. The first focuses on the milieu of actors used by media outlets as sources in the #Grexit debate, the second on the types of news frames that dominated #Grexit media tweets, and the third on how sourcing and news frames interact to construct a space of power positions. The above processes took shape within a close information system, which included politicians, media elites, and economic experts that marginalized alternative voices and critical perspectives. These findings indicate that mainstream news media normalized Twitter to fit their traditional sourcing and framing norms and practices. More specifically, our findings indicate the following: first, traditional sources and powerful economic actors get easier access to online media reporting on Twitter; second, the negative and episodic media-driven frames take the lead in the frame-building process; and third, the non-elite political and socially-driven frames are marginalized in the framing building process. The Twitter affordances were essentially normalized by media to fit into their understandings of the negotiation process as a high-stakes international politics and economic game with predetermined winners and losers. It is also likely that this normalization reflects the normalization of Twitter by powerful political and economic elites aiming to offer journalists on Twitter easy and instant access to their narratives.

Highlights

  • Twitter has been widely exploited by media outlets and journalists alike

  • The second narrative is based on the “normalization” theme, which suggests that traditional news media use social media in ways that fit them into established journalistic norms and practices. These narratives essentially function as working hypotheses aimed to advance academic inquiry into how mainstream professional journalism isshaped in social media platforms. Using these narratives as a backdrop, this study aims to explore and discuss how international and national (Greek) mainstream news media covered the Grexit issue on Twitter and in particular their sourcing and framing practices

  • The purpose of this study is to explore how mainstream news media use Twitter to cover polarized political debates in the context of negotiations between international actors and between international creditors and debtor states and to discuss whether and to what extent their tweets reflect mainstream journalistic norms and practices in sourcing and framing or less conventional ones

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Summary

Introduction

Twitter has been widely exploited by media outlets and journalists alike. Firstly as a free service to drive traffic to their news’ pieces, and as a handy tool for sourcing leads, newsgathering, and news reporting (Malik and Pfeffer 2016; Heravi and Harrower 2016; Newman 2009, 2011; Lasorsa et al 2012; Hermida 2013; Vis 2013; Artwick 2013; Hernández-Fuentes and Monnier 2020; Russell 2019). The blending of information, of discursive possibility, and social networking (Bruns and Burgess 2012) seems to be a determinant factor to the role of Twitter in professional mainstream journalism today. The first-hand reporting of events as they occur and instant assessment of the newsworthiness of events combined with Twitter’s massive use for ongoing discussions construct an ambient news environment (Papacharissi 2015; Van Aelst et al 2015; Hermida 2010; Burns 2010). In this environment, anyone, not just professional journalists and news media, can publish, aggregate, reframe, and define “news”

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