In the first episode of Media in the Margins, Becky Beamer speaks with Salla-Rosa Gröhn, a Finnish media professional specializing in social media journalism, audience engagement, and youth-focused platform-native storytelling.
This conversation asks a deceptively simple question: Can journalists learn from influencers without losing journalistic integrity?
Salla-Rosa discusses how journalism is changing on social media, what it takes to reach audiences who are not engaging with traditional news outlets, and why credible public-interest media cannot afford to abandon the platforms where people spend much of their daily lives. The episode also explores language barriers, AI translation, platform censorship, ethical self-regulation, and the need for trustworthy journalism to become more visible, accessible, and human online.
Salla-Rosa’s work includes the 2022 Polis / LSE report “Can Journalists Be Influencers?”, which examines how journalists can adapt influencer-style communication to reach hard-to-reach audiences while maintaining independence and authority. Her public profile also notes her work with Yle Kioski and her focus on social media storytelling for young and hard-to-reach audiences.
Key Themes
Trust on social platforms
Journalists as public-facing personalities
Influencer methods without influencer ethics drift
AI translation and language barriers
Why credible journalism must be present where audiences already are
Platform censorship and the limits of big-tech distribution
Links
Salla-Rosa Gröhn — personal site: https://www.sallarosa.com/about
Reuters Institute profile: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/people/salla-rosa-grohn
LSE report — Can Journalists Be Influencers?: https://blogsmedia.lse.ac.uk/blogs.dir/19/files/2022/06/22_0295-POLIS-Report-Journo-Influencers-V4.pdf
Ethics & Transparency
This episode is part of Media in the Margins, a public-facing research and journalism project. We treat journalism as an evolving process built through dialogue, transparency, and revision. Editorial control remains with the host and production team, and any corrections, updates, ethics notes, or source links will be documented in the show notes:
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