Study: UK journalists 'spending less time on social networks'

The time UK journalists spend on social media every day has declined since 2012, with the majority now using social networks for up to two hours a day, claims a report released this week.

The Social Journalism Study 2015, published by Cision and Canterbury Christ Church University, shows 17.6 per cent of journalists surveyed last year said they were active on social media for between two and four hours each day, down from 22.6 per cent in 2013 and 32.4 per cent in 2012.

More journalists are now spending under two hours on social media per day, with 63.8 per cent citing this as the amount of time they spend on social networks daily, compared to 61 per cent in 2013 and just 34.1 per cent in 2012.

Dr Ágnes Gulyás, reader in digital transformations at Canterbury Christ Church University, said the dip in numbers could be due to the novelty factor of social networks wearing off.

"When social media appeared a few years ago the optimists argued journalists will just use social media and only digital tools in the future," Gulyás told Journalism.co.uk.

"I don't think that will happen. I think social media is another tool they use but at the same time they rely on other methods for sourcing information, traditional methods."



The study results are based on an online survey which asked 466 journalists from Cison's media database to estimate the amount of time they spent on social networks, among other questions about their perceptions of social media.

Cison uses the term 'journalist' to include all media professionals who took part in the survey, including researchers and editors.

The report also noted that "there is a degree of saturation and an optimum time for social media use".

However, more than half (53.5 per cent) of UK journalists surveyed said social media was essential for their work, up from 43.4 per cent in 2013 and 28.1 per cent in 2012.

57.7 per cent agreed social media has made them more productive on the job, compared to 54.1 per cent in 2013 and 38.9 per cent in 2012.

A study from the University of Indiana called The American Journalist in the Digital Age, which surveyed 1,080 US journalists in autumn 2013, found that 25 per cent said social media helped their productivity increase. However, 62 per cent said they thought social media made their reporting faster.

Twitter is the most popular social network for journalists as 75.1 per cent of respondents used it, followed by Facebook (56.7 per cent) and Google+ (41.2 per cent).

The ways journalists use social media and its impact on their work varies across the board depending on their roles in the newsroom.

For example, hard news journalists are the least likely to say social networks have a fundamental impact on their stories (3.1 per cent), compared to review writers (27.7 per cent) and editorial staff (22.2 per cent).

The report also noted an increase in the number of journalists who are worried about online security – 48.5 per cent in 2014, up from 22.4 per cent the previous year.

Gulyás pointed to the Snowden revelations as one of the factors that made data security and the potential risks of using social media a cause for concern.

The study predicted that "as journalists become more efficient in their use of social, their workload won’t be reduced – social media will help them to do more".

Gulyás told Journalism.co.uk journalists interviewed also noted pressures from media outlets around their use of social media.

"There was a bit of a contradiction because they did say that social media does make their life easier, and it is a great tool in many ways, so there is that positive aspect," she said.

"But at the same time I think there's this pressure that... they need to do more."

"What's happening in news organisations, especially in relation to newspapers for instance or other type of print media productions, there's the pressure on resources, [and] in certain organisations obviously cuts.

"There's also [a] pressure of producing content on a variety of different platforms," she explained.

• Journalism.co.uk is running a one-day workshop on social media content strategies in London on March 19. For more details click here.

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