Australian journalists abandon X in wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, survey shows
Australian journalists are abandoning Twitter, now called X, with professional usage of the social media site now overshadowed by Instagram and LinkedIn.
A survey of more than 800 Australian journalists found that 10% deleted or ignored their accounts professionally last year and a further 26% said they still had an X account but rarely used it for work.
In the same year the Elon Musk-owned platform was rebranded X and the distinctive bird logo was banished, media organisations began to distance themselves from the social media platform.
In 2023 X was used by 58% of journalists compared to 69% in 2022 and 73% in 2019, according to Medianet’s 2024 media landscape report.
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Once a rich source of breaking news and a treasure trove of experts and institutions, X has dropped two spots in one year and is now the fourth-most used professional social media site by journalists.
While X use has decreased by 11%, TikTok has increased 6% in 12 months, the survey found.
Social media use by journalists – as a source of stories as well as a platform for sharing their work – is dropping overall. In 2020 77% of journalists surveyed said they used social media as a source of stories but that figure dropped to 73% in 2023.
Industry and professional contacts remain the top source of stories for journalists (86%), followed by press releases (81%), search engines (75%), social media (73%) and the general public (72%).
Facebook remains the favoured platform for professional use by 76% of respondents, but even Facebook has dropped from a high of 88% in 2019.
Last year the ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, shut down almost all of the public broadcaster’s official accounts on X, citing “toxic interactions”, as well as cost and minimal traffic.
The vast majority of the ABC’s social media audience is on official ABC accounts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Musk responded by accusing the ABC of embracing censorship.
“Well of course they prefer censorship-friendly social media,” Musk posted on X in reply to an ABC news report about the move. “The Australian public does not.”
According to a prediction by Harvard’s journalism thinktank, Nieman Lab, journalists “will stop begrudgingly depending on these platforms and start trying to circumvent them” because of the vitriol and misinformation which has multiplied.
“We’re already seeing small signs of this transition, as more news organisations invest in newsletters and other efforts to cultivate more direct connections with potential audiences,” Nieman Lab reported.
Last year X slapped a “government-funded media” label on the ABC and SBS and in the US NPR stopped using X after being labelled “state-affiliated media”, a tag that was later changed to ‘“government-funded media”.
NPR said it would “no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent”.
In other findings from the MediaNet survey, most journalists surveyed (74%) said they had not personally used generative AI in their work and 67% said they believed that generative AI could replace aspects of their jobs.
MediaNet managing director, Amrita Sidhu, said the introduction of generative AI has sparked concerns among journalists, with 12% saying they know someone who has lost work due to it.
“While the figure is quite small, it is concerning that some journalists had already lost work despite the relatively low uptake of AI in the media so far,” she said.
Money continued to be the greatest challenge for 43% journalists in 2023 (compared to 36% in 2022) and the gender pay gap is still significant.
The report found 38% of male journalists earn more than $100,000. That proportion drops to 27% of female journalists, and 14% of journalists who are non-binary.
