Crafting News Narratives on Social Media

Thai news organizations are developing innovative cross-media news strategies and several of these strategies revolve around social media, which are fast becoming a hub for repurposing and extending traditional content. This paper reports on an empirical study conducted by using in-depth interviews with journalists from the social-media teams of three news organizations in Thailand – PPTV HD36, Nation Multimedia Group and Thairath – to analyse storytelling strategies. The key finding shows that cross-media content can extend news coverage to different aspects of a story, to inform and explain issues, and engaging audiences. This study suggests the objective use and design of content by dividing it into four types, based on functions: repurposing, engaging, cross-promoting and extending exclusive content to new-media platforms, so that it is designed with narrative styles that will carry a story across multiple platforms while ensuring that the different aspects and presentations remain connected to the main issue. A clear understanding of the function to be served by content can help newsrooms to plan suitable narrative styles and the sequence in which long-tail journalism is distributed across platforms to ensure that the quality of journalism is upheld in respect of providing a well-rounded coverage of diverse issues.