Skills and professional profile of community managers in the media: commitment to Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Abstract

Introduction: Social media, specifically networks and instant messaging applications, have become a common channel for the media to distribute news. Methodology: after verifying the presences in this type of platforms of the most consumed televisions, radios, newspapers and digital newspapers in Spain (N = 35), qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to examine the profile of the professionals in charge of the management of social networks and applications in those media, as well as to check, from a report prepared by reviewing scientific literature, what are the disciplinary, professional, academic and specific competencies that professionals consider most necessary to develop their activity. Results: the results confirm preference for social networks over instant messaging applications for content distribution; community manager is the most common name to refer to social media managers and all of whom have studies in Communication; and the competencies to which they attach the greatest importance are the specific and professional ones. Discussion and conclusions: the competence most valued by professionals is the mastery of social media, a specific competence of this profile, but it is detected that the second most important is the use of tools and automation mechanisms for network management, which highlights the coexistence of human talent with robotic process automation (RPA) technologies in the newsrooms.