Journalists on Instagram: identities and personal brand
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51385/1p87t584Keywords:
journalism, Instagram, Puerto Rico, identity, personal brandAbstract
Carefully crafting a public identity and cultivating relationships with followers to establish a personal brand on social media are part of the routine for many journalists. This study examines how journalists produce their identities through the profiles and messages on Instagram. Through a content analysis, the study reviewed the biographies of 97 active journalists with 1.000 or more followers on public Instagram accounts who work in national media in Puerto Rico, as well as the messages they produced during a constructed week. It was found that journalists establish the prestige of their brand in the visual and written biography through journalistic and professional identities. Meanwhile, in the publications and through different uses of native narratives, they embrace both personal and journalistic identities to showcase the authenticity of the brand and normalize the platform, respectively. To a lesser extent, they adopt a professional and promotional/advertising identity, a practice that shows the commercialization of the brand. It was identified that publications are often self-referential, although not the ones with journalistic content.
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