Effects of Journalists' Social Media Activities on Audience Perceptions

Business research method
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Lee, Jayeon. "The double-edged sword: The effects of journalists' social media activities on
audience perceptions of journalists and their news products." Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 20, no. 3 (2015): 312-329.
The main aim of the research done by the author was to investigate how the social
activities of the journalists would affect the perceptions of the audience towards them and their
news products. The author conducted research through conducting an online test which involved
testing the self disclosure and the interaction of the journalist in low and high situations. This
was done by creating a Facebook profile of a made up journalist.1 The participants were
undergraduate students of a university. The participants were 267. In this research no samples
were used. The main findings were the response was higher when the self-disclosure was higher.
This meant that the response was lower only when a link was provided. Another finding was that
interaction was also higher when the journalist encouraged the participants to contribute to the
articles. More comments were noticed when the author asked “Do you agree?” Another finding
was that interaction was low when no question or feedback was provided by the journalist. The
strengths of the research are higher response rate from the participants. The number of
participants were also few making it easier to collect data. The weaknesses of the research are
that it covered a smaller geographic area therefore the accuracy was doubtable. The method of
research was also prone to biasness. The author concluded that the social media activities of a
journalist would affect the audience’s perception.2 The author also concluded that the
journalist’s online relations with the audience had a negative effect on the perception of the
1 Lee, "The double-edged sword: The effects of journalists' social media activities on
audience perceptions of journalists and their news products." 312-329.

audience in the dimension of professionalism. This article helps in the research question by
proving that social media could be a double edged-sword representing a problem and
opportunity.
Lee, Joonghwa, Soojung Kim, and Chang-Dae Ham. "A double-edged sword? Predicting
consumers’ attitudes toward and sharing intention of native advertising on social media."
American Behavioral Scientist 60, no. 12 (2016): 1425-1441.
The aim of this research was to predict the attitudes of the consumers towards and
distribution objective of the native ads on the social media platform. The individuals who
participated in the research were 550 MTurk members. A sample was used. The author used
author randomly chose 505 users as a sample for the analysis of the data. An online survey was
conducted on the participants.3 All participants took part. One of the findings was that more
educated participants demonstrated a lower intention of sharing the native ads. Negative attitude
was also demonstrated by them. Another finding was that people who use the social media top
look for information most often show positive thoughts towards the advertisements and are likely
to share the ads. Another finding was that people who use the social media for socialization
purposes show an attitude which is negative towards the ads.4 Lastly the author shows that users
2 Lee, Joonghwa and Chang-Dae Ham. "A double-edged sword? Predicting consumers’
attitudes toward and sharing intention of native advertising on social media." 1441.
3 Matthews et al., "The double-edged sword: A mixed methods study of the interplay
between bipolar disorder and technology use." 300.
4 Nguyen et al., "Double-edged sword." 590-593.