From “Selfies” to Breaking Tweets: How journalists negotiate personal and professional identity on social media

The aim of this paper is to analyse the different ways in which journalists negotiate representations of their professional and personal identity on social media platforms. We argue that the differing representations of personal and professional identity on social media correspond to the professional, organisational and institutional tensions that have emerged in this new space. Using qualitative interviews with various journalists and editorial staff from Australian media organisations across television, radio, print and online publications, we indicate that journalists present their personal and professional identity on social media in three different ways. The first group create public, professional social media accounts, but also create secondary, private accounts that are only accessible to personal networks. The second group either choose, or are required by their media organisation, to only have a professional presence on social media; that is, they have public accounts that are only associated with their media organisation and display only their professional activities. The last group merge a professional and personal identity on their social media sites, showing aspects of their personal and their professional lives on publically available accounts.