Framing News in 140 Characters: How Social Media Editors Frame the News and Interact with Audiences via Twitter

The social media editor, the newsroom liaison to the digital world, is the newest position in journalism. This study used content analysis to examine how these editors interacted with audiences on Twitter; which frames occurred within the news articles they posted via Twitter and if these two points of foci varied according to the media format the SMEs represent-print vs. TV news. TV SMEs were more personal in their interaction with their Twitter followers. They also posted more articles that carried the technology frame while print SMEs emphasized the human interest, conflict and economic impact frames the most. Overall, all SMEs emphasized technology and human interest stories while downplaying the conflict and economic impact frames. This particular finding goes against the norm since research shows that mainstream news coverage emphasizes conflict and economic frames while readers follow disaster, economic and political news the closest.