Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronique de Communication Special Issue: Social Media in News Discourse As professional media producers pay more attention to social media, from personal blog entries and tweets to Facebook updates and YouTube videos, journalists are faced with numerous decisions. Among these are how to integrate personal and often-relationship-focused media with the public and fact-centred discourse of the news. This special issue of the Electronic Journal of Communication invites contributions exploring the conventions that are emerging around the use of social media by news organisations, and the implications of those conventions for public communication. Contributions will have as their central concern whether or not the encounter with social media is changing aspects of news journalism. Possible questions arising from this concern include: How do the forms of personal expression to be found in social media translate into news discourse? What authority or status as knowers is given in the news to voices from various social media? How are specific kinds of social media typically made use of within news discourse? How are journalism's ethical frameworks applied to these media? to what extent is social media content decontextualised from its online social context when used by journalism? Are social media texts produced within news organisations also used in news texts? Papers should be 5000-7500 words in length and submitted electronically to the guest editor, Donald Matheson, at donald.matheson@canterbury.ac.nz<mailto:donald.matheson@canterbury.ac.nz>. Deadline for completed manuscripts is 20 December 2010. The issue is scheduled for publication in the second half of 2011. Authors are welcome to contact the guest editor to discuss proposed papers or related matters.