The Diversity Effect: New Media Use and Professional Role Enactment Among Journalists in Pakistan

Abstract

New media use among journalists is often treated as a single, undifferentiated phenomenon, yet its effect on how professional roles are actually enacted may depend on which facet of that use is measured. This study tested a 'diversity effect' model in which platform diversity, source diversity and content diversity were entered as separate predictors of professional role enactment (watchdog, gatekeeper, public service provider, disseminator-interventionist, infotainer, loyal facilitator and employee) among Pakistani journalists. Using a positivist, quantitative, cross-sectional design, data were collected through an online questionnaire administered to journalists registered with a National Press Club in Pakistan (N = 300; complete-case N = 262 for inferential analyses). Pearson correlation and simple linear regression showed that platform-level new media diversity did not significantly predict role enactment (r = .12, p = .057), whereas source diversity (r = .75, p < .001, r² = .558) and content diversity (r = .81, p < .001, r² = .657) were strong, highly significant predictors, together accounting for well over half the variance in role enactment. The findings demonstrate that the 'diversity effect' on professional role enactment is driven almost entirely by what journalists source and consume, not by how many platforms they use — a distinction with direct implications for journalism training and newsroom policy in Pakistan.