Modern media ownership, and what it means for marginalised journalists
Following Elon Musk’s takeover of X, formerly known as Twitter, there was a 69% increase in accounts that posted misogynistic and abusive content, according to a recent BBC Panorama documentary. They reported that Musk has created a ‘permissive environment’ for the creation of these accounts with these views, which also included racism, homophobia and transphobia. Whilst trolling and harassing people on social media is not new, the cultural shift to the right over the last 10 years has created a much more hostile environment for marginalised journalists, and as a result, pushing them off of the platform.
After Trump’s 2024 Presidential election win, journalists and news publications such as The Guardian flocked to BlueSky, abandoning X. The Guardian officially stated on their website that: “This is something we have been considering for a while given the often-disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.”
“The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse.”
For food journalist and author Angela Hui, X was a powerful tool for navigating the industry in the 2010’s whilst she studied journalism at university. She says: “it made breaking into media a little less intimidating.”
“There'd always be call-outs for pitches, a chance to connect, and chat.” For Hui, Twitter was how she broke into the industry, explaining how she landed her first paid freelance writing commission through the direct messaging feature, call-outs and general online networking.
In her experience, the hostility was always there but in a post-Brexit world there was a real shift, across the media industry as well as on the platform. Things got much worse for journalists as “certain politicians were using immigration as a scapegoat.” When Musk took over, he’d enabled trolls and harassment. Hui describes that “racists felt emboldened, saying anything without any actions.”
As a woman from China and Hong Kong, Hui describes how she has “too many” stories to tell regarding the racism and harassment she has experienced on social media. The typical faceless accounts telling Hui to ‘go back to your own country’ or calling her ‘woke’, which is often seen commented under any non-white person with a platform’s posts and notably not much is done about it too.
Her worst experience of harassment was when a celebrity chef didn't like an article she wrote and blasted her on social media. “I got death threats, and I had to 'lay low' on my social media. I became super paranoid about saying anything online and was genuinely worried for my safety in case somehow my information/address was leaked online. Luckily, it was fine, but it was a very stressful period.” Hui explained. She has since deactivated her X/Twitter account but says it's frustrating how some editors still use it to look for writers, so she keeps a burner account just for that reason.
“I've just joined BlueSky and it's nice. It reminds me of the early days of Twitter, which was an innocent time and a genuinely useful tool. I think it's interesting that it's the first social media that's mainly for millennials, and for me, its mostly just journalists talking to other journalists. The real test is whether the general public follows.” Angela says.
Non-binary music journalist and digital media specialist of colour, Yasmine Summan, has built a career through social media such as YouTube, Tumblr, X and more recently, Tik Tok. “It has always been important for me to be in online spaces where the culture and community I’m writing about exists.” Summan explains. The alternative music scenes thrive off community and authenticity, with its journalists and content creators being involved in these spaces and truly understanding their audience and the music they are writing about. Summan initially started off as a fan, using Twitter solely for that reason, until they began to utilise it for professional purposes. They were able to access the communities they were writing about and writing for.
Much like Hui, Summan found that Twitter/X was such a vital tool in a highly competitive field. “Before the pandemic, I struggled to get the attention of editors. Even just access to the information of who was the editor of what magazine was impossible to find. Being stuck inside and having to build a following and community online during the pandemic gave me the platform to reach the people I wanted to work with directly.”
Young journalists like Summan have been able to turn their social media pages into a medium for their journalism to exist outside of established newspapers and magazines, enabling them to create stories, features and content for their audience, and so they have been able to generate an income and portfolio without relying so heavily on freelance work and pitching to editors and magazines. “Oh, you don’t want to hear my pitch about a band on the rise that I want to interview? That’s cool. I posted it online anyway and it blew up.” They said. “I made myself inescapable and unavoidable by being everywhere on the Internet.”
Social media has provided journalists the opportunity to have more freedom over what they want to create, and with young people consuming more news and journalism via social media as opposed to traditional avenues like TV, newspapers and radio, they’ve been rewarded with a larger and a more engaging audience. However, with that has come a bigger opportunity for hate, trolling and online harassment.
Summan mentions how “there’s always been a seedy underbelly of hate on the internet that has now become platformed onto such a huge platform.” As a Gen-Z journalist, growing up during the birth of social media, they remember “scrolling on 4chan and seeing casually racist memes or homophobic posts that were always “just jokes.” However, it appears to have gotten progressively worse, calling it a “black hole” that continues to grow, consuming more of the internet.
In their opinion, politics has played a major role in shaping the way social media users operate and interact with one another. “I’d have to say when Trump came into power, I think that’s when it reared its ugly hate in a way we’ve never seen before. When a bigot can become president, it emboldens people. They don’t feel afraid to hide their hatred online, they have no shame. Because you can be a hateful person and still be The President of the United States.”
Summan has spoken our greatly in support trans rights and when attending the Heavy Music Awards in 2023 , wore a jacket showcasing the major ongoing discrimination towards trans people within politics and the media. On the jacket there were statements and statistics detailing the anti-trans bills put through in the US and how anti-trans hate had ‘skyrocketed 156%’ in the United Kingdom. “My tweets are always flooded with bots and bigots.” They say that it’s never really gone beyond some awful comments, and that it takes guts for someone to say things like that in real life.
Summan has decided to remain on X, though they are in two minds about it still. “I think there needs to be some juxtaposition.” They say, if we let apps be run by bigots and fake news, they’ve won. Summan thinks that people with a platform and power should use their voice, as they still have some impact and can use it to fight bigotry on the app.
Whilst Summan says that one of the fundamental problems is that the US has a bigot for a president, Musk has reinstated the Trump’s account on X as part of his push for a “free speech” platform. Donald Trump was previously suspended for violating terms and conditions when the app was under ownership of Jack Dorsey. In a recent piece for Al Jazeera, business journalist Andy Hirschfield says that Musk has “banned journalists critical of him and been accused of censoring Democratic voices whilst simultaneously amplifying those of far-right extremists.” For example, Musk worked alongside the Turkish government to remove accounts of prominent Turkish journalists and news outlets, predominantly ones who were left-leaning and ones who reported on Türkiye’s trade relations with Israel during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
As news moves away from traditional media outlets like broadcast and newspapers, which are regulated by boards like IPSO and Ofcom, to social media like X and Instagram, which are independent to any form of regulatory board and are monitored by the owners themselves, we risk journalists being silenced at the whim of a powerful platform owner. Media ownership and political influence has always loomed over journalism, with Rupert Murdoch and his alleged influence on the Brexit votes due to his dislike of the European Parliament - “When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.” But social media ownership poses an even greater threat to free press and journalists due to those lack of regulations and how media ownership is even more concentrated online.
Elia Cugini, a transgender journalist based in Manchester, says how X has been a key promotional tool for progressing his career as a journalist. He says “I promote my work on Twitter and this means I have various editors who know me and my work, and I have one lasting editorial relationship that's come from Twitter.”
Much like Summan and Hui, Cugini describes how hostility on the platform was “present from the beginning” but got significantly worse when the site was sold off to Musk in 2023. “The platform adapted to aid and abet fascist and transphobic accounts more & the moderation system basically got gutted.” He says.
A major point of contention for journalists like Cugini surrounds the issues of censorship, particularly with the banning of certain words. Cugini explains that “trans users can't use the word 'cis' or 'cisgender' on the platform anymore, which is a pretty significant form of censorship.” Cugini tends to write about queer literature, sex and relationships amongst Gen-Z and Millennials and video games, which when keywords are flagged as violating terms and services, means then having to censor your own work so that Musk doesn’t do it for you.
On X, accounts can be shadowbanned, put onto ‘read only mode’, be temporarily suspended or removed from the platform entirely when violating terms and conditions, or when using certain wording or language – which is now no longer a problem for Trump. Shadowbanning is where an account’s posts are hidden from the timeline for whatever reason. As a result, people are less likely to see your posts unless people send it around, tag others in it, or directly search for the posts themselves. Previously, this was harder to work out, but since the ‘views’ feature was implemented, it has become much easier to recognise when an account has been shadowbanned. This feature shows how many times a post has been seen. Over the last year in particular, Palestinian journalists and activists have had their accounts taken down or shadowbanned allegedly due to their pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist opinions. This is now notably becoming an issue for journalists across the board, as Cugini claims that “a lot of journalists have noticed that links to outside sources, such as links to articles and blogs, receive a suspiciously low amount of traffic now.”
There's stuff that happens to trans journalists in particular that we sort of take as normal and that others would be horrified by, like people creating long threads on Mumsnet to comment on your appearance and dig up anything they can find about you.” So much of the vitriol against transgender journalists is rarely about their work.
“In my experience, however, being a journalist on public social media is more of a mundane grind than anything else” he adds, “it's rare that journalists get completely swarmed with abuse about their journalism, rather than about their general posts/identity. It's more just a day-to-day fight to get your stuff commissioned and read and to get yourself paid.”
The result of censorship and lack of moderation on reported abuse towards marginalised journalists is slowly resulting in journalists migrating to BlueSky and Threads, however many journalists are still debating the switch. Cugini says “I dislike the idea of capitulating to Musk by letting him chase me off my only platform with significant followers. However, fewer and fewer people use it regularly now, and there's definitely a point it could get to where it wouldn't be worth it.”