The Logics of Social News: How BuzzFeed, Junkee, and Pedestrian.tv are Making News More Engaging, Sociable, and Personal Edward Hurcombe BA(Hons). University of Melbourne Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2019 ii Keywords BuzzFeed Junkee Pedestrian.tv News Journalism Digital journalism Audience engagement Sharing Personalisation Sociability Popular culture Social media Platforms Textual analysis Social media analytics iii Abstract In recent years, disruptive digital technologies, monopolising platforms, fragmented and partisan news publics, and failing revenue streams have led to growing concerns regarding the health of journalism. Yet a number of commercially successful news outlets, that share common stylistics and operate in similar ways, have arisen from these developments. Journalism researchers, however, currently lack categories in which understand and evaluate these outlets. In response, this thesis proposes, conceptualises, and illustrates the emerging genre of “social news”, comprising specific forms and practices that are recognisably journalistic yet deeply embedded in the everyday cultures of social media platforms and the broader Internet. Specifically, it examines three exemplary Australian born- digital publications – BuzzFeed Oz News, Junkee, and Pedestrian.tv. These outlets are critically evaluated using a mixed methods approach that combines textual analysis of content and self-representational material from social news outlets, along with close readings of platform affordances, and social media analytics. In addition, a comparative content analysis of news articles is performed, based around a significant news event: the 2017 Australian same-sex marriage postal survey. This mixed methods approach ultimately enables investigation of the origins and operational logics of these social news outlets, and a broader evaluation of this genre’s capability to inform and educate audiences, and scrutinise and challenge power. Findings are organised into three key, intertwining social news logics, constructed for the purposes of analysis. These logics are termed “engagement”, “sociability”, and “personalisation”. Engagement refers to the commercial prerogative of social news outlets to maximise social media attention metrics, as well as how these iv outlets also attempt to foster civic action of various kinds. Sociability refers to the creative fashion in which these outlets seek such reader engagement, through organising their content around shareability. Social news outlets embody particular kinds of platform vernaculars and pop-cultural sensibilities: their fluency in these vernaculars and sensibilities supports their suitability for everyday socialising on platforms. Lastly, personalisation refers to how these outlets are co-ordinated around the personal. Social news writers position themselves within the stories they are telling and the issues they are reporting on, and against other political perspectives: social news, therefore, is frequently not “objective” or “balanced”, but neither is it biased, as its political perspective is often explicit rather than concealed. Instead social news features what this thesis terms a “transparent positionality”: an original intervention into the impasse around “objectivity” as a measure of trustworthiness and quality in news reporting. Furthermore, personalisation is a business strategy, as these outlets deploy micro-targeting on Facebook and Twitter. The conceptual framework of social news proposed in thesis responds to the need for new theory to understand current transformations in news and journalistic practices in relation to digital disruptions (Deuze & Witschge, 2017). A foremost benefit of this framework is that it highlights that emergent characteristics of social news – its challenge to problematic journalistic norms like “balance”, and its playful engagement strategies – can be considered useful experiments or even necessary antidotes to perceived failings of mainstream journalism. In these ways, social news is an important site of study that provides new knowledge about how journalism is co-evolving with a platform ecology, both reflecting and negotiating its challenges. v Table of Contents Title page ............................................................................................................................ i Keywords .......................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. vi List of Tables .................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. ix Statement of Original Authorship .................................................................................. x Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... xi Previously Published Content ...................................................................................... xiii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research design .......................................................................................................... 10 1.2.1 Social news outlet selection ..................................................................................... 12 1.2.2 Qualitative textual analysis...................................................................................... 14 1.2.3 Major case study: the 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey ................................. 18 1.2.4 Limitations ............................................................................................................... 21 1.3 Thesis structure ........................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2: Positioning social news within the Australian news media ecology ........ 28 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 28 2.2 Australian media histories and scholarly debates ....................................................... 29 2.3 Innovative journalism in late-night television ............................................................ 39 2.4 Digital disruptions in the Australian news ecology .................................................... 42 2.5 Social news profiles .................................................................................................... 46 2.5.1 BuzzFeed Oz News .................................................................................................. 46 2.5.2 Junkee ...................................................................................................................... 51 2.5.3 Pedestrian.tv ............................................................................................................ 58 2. 6 Social news as an emerging genre ............................................................................. 61 2. 7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 70 Chapter 3: Social media logics ...................................................................................... 72 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 72 3.2 (Mass) media logics and their conceptual offshoots .................................................. 73 3.3 Social media logics ..................................................................................................... 80 3.3.1 Programmability ...................................................................................................... 82 3.3.2 Connectivity ............................................................................................................ 86 3.3.3 Datafication ............................................................................................................. 96 3.3.4 Engagement ........................................................................................................... 101 vi 3.4.5 Self-branding ......................................................................................................... 107 3.3.6 Automation ............................................................................................................ 109 3.4 Governance by algorithms ........................................................................................ 111 3.5 Algorithms and news ................................................................................................ 114 3.6 Social news logics .................................................................................................... 118 3.7 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................