Use of Facebook by German Political Journalists

The next session at IAMCR 2019 starts with a paper by Matthias Degen, whose focus is on the challenges that journalists face when distributing news on Facebook in Germany. The platform is now reasonably well established in Germany, too, and this means that news outlets and journalists are also beginning to explore its use and perhaps normalising its use as part of their daily practices.

The project engaged in a quantitative analysis of the Facebook accounts of German political journalists from the federal press gallery (Bundespressekonferenz), and also conducted some short written interviews as well as a smaller number of in-depth, in-person interviews.

This showed both professional and private Facebook use, with some use of professional disclaimers; younger journalists use the platform much more than older colleagues. They generally do not consider the platform as a tool for audience interaction, however, and do not use it to inform the audience about their journalistic practices; rather, they mainly use the platform for self-branding and the promotion of their or their outlets’ content. Facebook has not yet been fully normalised into journalistic practices yet, it seems – the presence of these journalists on Facebook does not mean that they necessarily use Facebook professionally.