Till Örebro universitet

The purpose of this article is to contribute a critical theoretical understanding of cross-professional relations on social media, focusing on politicians, journalists and PR practitioners. It is well known that these professional groups establish personal and close relations in offline contexts, but more attention needs to be paid to the role of social media. Here, it is argued that in the context of digital media use, semi-private chatting, humour, and mutual acknowledgment, including the use of likes, smileys, heart symbols, etc., are evidence of a ‘neoliberalisation’ of cross-professional relations. The underlying idea is that the common practice of self-branding undermines representations of professional belonging and exacerbates the blurring of professional boundaries. The critical conceptualisation of such ‘transboundary’ interaction between politicians, journalists and PR practitioners, which is guided by a culturalmaterialist approach, includes the presentation of examples deriving from the Swedish Twittersphere, and suggestions for empirical research.