ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the rise of social media has extended and simultaneously changed the playing field for political reporting. The possibility of direct and open communication with and to citizens, even when it is unidirectional, has changed the power structures in political communication for better and for worse, as becomes clear from the Twitter gaffe of Emily Thornberry, an avid tweep. Based on a meta-analysis of Twitter research, the chapter presents a cross-national typology of seven dominant reporting practices and routines of political journalists on Twitter: monitoring, networking, engaging, sourcing, publishing, promoting, and branding. The sharing of news on Twitter and Facebook challenges their role as society's gatekeepers for information on current affairs, which is part and parcel of journalism but also harms their business model. The chapter also argues that normalization theory as a conceptual framework sells short the fact that coherent and distinct social media repertoires have emerged.
