While newspapers grapple with a transition to a digital world, community journalists continue to utilize the tools at their disposal to produce locally-focused, original content while combating declining readership and shrinking newsrooms. One of those tools is social media. Social media platforms have become seamlessly integrated into the on-the-job, day-to-day newsgathering routines of the community newspaper journalists involved in this study. This practice reflects the culture of newsroom socialization, which instills journalistic values across the organization.

Drawing from 14 in-depth interviews with American journalists at daily community newspapers, this thesis seeks to understand the underlying values of why social media has become an integral part of newsgathering process, and how the practice has become socialized in those newsrooms. This study advances that core journalistic values do not change with the entry of social platforms into daily newswork.