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This article examines the workflows, editorial guidelines, and managerial oversight of social media, particularly Twitter, at seven international news agencies. Through a series of in-depth interviews with news managers, social media producers, and public relations officials at Al Jazeera, CNN, Globo, Telecinco, RTVE, the US government's Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Voice of America, the authors examined how these policies may affect the framing of news stories. Results indicated that social media resources are currently being used more for promotional and audience tracking purposes than for newsgathering, although the Office of Cuba Broadcasting departed somewhat from that model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “high performance work organization” (HPWO) concept proposes that greater employee involvement in decision making and greater ability for workers to control their reward structure lead to more efficient workplace procedures, as well as happier workers. Although this sociological model has been studied in a variety of industries and work settings, its examination in the media industries has been limited. In seeking to fill that gap, this study undertook an e-mail survey of workers in television news to determine which, if any, HPWO initiatives stations were using and how effective they were. Findings indicate that profit sharing, in-house training, and suggestion systems were more likely to be offered than cross-training, job rotation, outside training, or merit-based pay, indicating that the HPWO initiatives that require little investment of time or money are the most likely to be offered by television stations. Station ownership patterns were not significantly correlated to presence of HPWO initiatives, and market size was only significantly correlated to 2 HPWO initiatives—outside training and profit-sharing programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 50 years ago, Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (1956) penned their groundbreaking work, Four Theories of the Press, in which they articulated the ideals of social responsibility. However, the economic model for the media in the United States has changed dramatically since Four Theories was written. Consequently, there is a need for a new model that combines the high ideals and First Amendment considerations of social responsibility theory while recognizing the economic realities of today's mega-corporate environment. Social responsibility is a no less worthy goal today than it was 50 years ago; however, although the paradigm shift has occurred, the theoretical writing has not kept pace with the modern reality. This study proposes a new dual responsibility model that acknowledges the equal weight of the economic responsibility to the stakeholder, as well as the social responsibility to the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]