The Use of Twitter/X in Saudi Sports Journalism: Newsgathering, Newsroom Hierarchies, Identity and Audience Power.

Abstract

This thesis investigates the use of Twitter/X in Saudi sports journalism, exploring how the platform is reshaping professional practices, editorial routines, and public engagement within a hybrid media system. Set against the backdrop of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reforms and enduring institutional controls, the study examines how sports journalists negotiate the affordances and constraints of Twitter/X in their daily work. Through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 40 Saudi sports journalists, the research identifies five interrelated areas of transformation: news gathering, audience interaction, editorial decision-making, newsroom hierarchies, and professional identity. The findings reveal that Twitter/X serves both as a tool of empowerment and a site of constraint. Journalists leverage the platform for real-time reporting, branding, and bypassing traditional gatekeeping structures, while simultaneously navigating censorship, reputational risk, and digital harassment. Female sports journalists, in particular, are shown to leverage Twitter/X as a space for asserting professional legitimacy and negotiating gender-based barriers in a traditionally male-dominated field. The study also highlights the transformation of journalistic routines, where Twitter/X reshapes traditional news-gathering practices, compressing timelines and altering editorial workflows. It reveals how audience interaction is central to participatory journalism, though it also introduces challenges related to audience pressure and abuse. The research examines how Twitter/X disrupts editorial decision-making and gatekeeping practices, as journalists navigate the tensions between audience expectations and institutional control. Journalists' professional identity is increasingly shaped by their personal branding on Twitter/X, with gender-specific challenges especially prevalent for female journalists striving for visibility in a male-dominated profession. The thesis contributes to platform studies and gatekeeping theory by demonstrating how platform affordances are locally reinterpreted in semi-authoritarian contexts. It challenges deterministic models of digital disruption, emphasising the negotiated nature of journalistic adaptation in the Global South. Methodologically, the study provides rare empirical insight into sports journalism within a politically regulated and under-researched national setting. By centring the lived experiences of Saudi journalists, this research expands the geographical and conceptual scope of journalism studies. It offers a Global South perspective on the intersection of digital innovation, institutional constraint, and sociocultural norms, contributing to wider debates on professional identity, gender visibility, and the evolution of journalism in transitional societies.