News corps more concerned about employees' social media use

Realising the risks of social media, major global news organisations have framed new guidelines for employees regarding how to use popular sites like Facebook and Twitter, separate from the companies' existing codes of conduct, according to a new study.
Jayeon Lee, assistant professor at Lehigh University in the US, analysed the guidelines and found that news organisations are more concerned about the current social media environment than excited about it at least when it comes to their employees.
The study, a content analysis of the social media guidelines of nine American news organisations - The New York Times, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NPR - and three British news organisations - BBC, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph - investigates how these employers frame messages about employee social media usage.

"I was wondering what approaches news organisations take when it comes to their own employees' social media uses," Lee said.
"In particular, knowing both positive and negative implications of journalists' social media uses, I wanted to see if their guidelines were dominantly positive, negative, or neutral in their framing of the implications," she said.
Overall, Lee found that the guidelines focus primarily on the risks and challenges presented by the use of social media rather than the opportunities and advantages for media.

"As some media critics point out, overreaching rules can stifle creativity and morale and even discourage overall social media use itself," she said.

According to the study, news organisations are most concerned about - accuracy, breaking objectivity, inappropriate online behaviours, and harming news organisations' principles and credibility.
Accuracy - sourcing or redistributing false information from social media without sufficient fact verification - was the most frequently raised topic and accounted for 17.8 per cent of the total sentences studied.
"The results show that the prevention-focused approach is more common than I would have predicted," Lee said.
"Although I expected that the guidelines would include various warnings related to risky social media activities, I was surprised to find little comment about how to use social media wisely or effectively to derive full benefit from it," she said.

Lee recognised that news organisations are actively utilising various social media to reach a wider audience and build brand loyalty.
"However, it seems they are keen on keeping their own employees from actively engaging in social media," she added.
The study appears in The Communication Review journal.