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A comparative study of social media guidelines of media organizations

Abstract

This paper qualitatively analyzes social media guidelines of six media organizations: Indonesian Press Council, The Canadian Association of Journalists, Los Angeles Times, Mail & Guardian, Reuters, Associated Press. It presents the findings under social media account; political advocacy; tweets, retweets and reposts; news sourcing themes. The analysis shows, social media guidelines have various points of agreement as well as contradiction among them. They also need to elaborate more on several vague guidelines. For instance, Reuters leaves it to the discretion of its journalists to decide what constitutes matters of public importance. It points out various contradictions that the social media guidelines have. It also outlines a set of recommendations on social media use for media organizations to include in their guidelines.

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