This thesis explores the impact of the hybrid media system on journalism practice in the West. To do this I use a conceptual framework which discusses the normalisation hypothesis in the context of the hybrid media system and considers both homophily =and institutional logics in an analysis of journalism-audience interactions on the social media platform Twitter. The study explores the question of normalisation through a quantitative analysis of political journalists’ Twitter interactions and two qualitative textual analyses of social media policies from mainstream news organisations in the US, UK, Ireland, and Canada. This thesis finds that homophily influences journalists’ interactions as they largely use Twitter to focus on each other, a type of practice that typifies “pack journalism” and is known to contribute to groupthink. News organizations are seen to reinforce traditional ideas of professional practice in their guidance which conceptualise the audience as passive, albeit potentially hostile, consumers rather than participants or collaborators and that while they neglect the potential for contributions from their news audiences they also lay down very prescriptive ideas about their employees can and cannot do on social media. These findings suggest that both practitioners and organizations are not only neglecting historic opportunities to create a renewed relationship with their audiences, but that they are also failing to develop proficiency in a system where power resides not just with those who held power in the older media system but also with those who best understand how to work with information in the newer system (Chadwick, 2017). The findings inform the concluding discussion which argues that journalism education needs to consider a hybrid curriculum rooted in academic research and industry practice to better prepare students for a media world of the future