What’s newsworthy about ‘social news’? Characteristics and potential of an emerging genre

This article describes the emerging genre of ‘social news’ – characterised by a ‘born-digital’ form of journalism which is both symptomatic of and a pragmatic response to the logics of social media. The article outlines the genre’s key formal characteristics, illustrating them through discussions of three key Australia-based publications – BuzzFeed Oz News, Junkee, and Pedestrian.tv. The analysis of these examples indicates that social news departs from traditional journalistic norms around objectivity, instead exhibiting a strong and explicit positionality, and actively critiquing ideas like ‘balance’. The article argues that social news demonstrates the progressive potential of new forms of journalism that have emerged from the same technological and economic developments that have caused the crisis in the news business. It concludes with a more elaborated description of the social news genre, with suggestions for further research.