This article explores how journalists navigate the tensions between community engagement and professional detachment by tracing how journalists used Twitter during Tonga and Australia's inaugural rugby league test match in 2018. As a high-profile Pacific cultural and sporting event, it provides an opportunity to study how journalists engage with marginalised Pacific communities, and whether that engagement demonstrates the reciprocity needed to build relationships. More than 9000 tweets were analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods to reveal that media organisations and journalists tended more towards broadcasting than interactive approaches on Twitter. Practices differed between subgroups, however: Individual journalists engaged in public discussion more than media organisations, and Pacific journalists engaged more than non-Pacific journalists. In fact, Pacific journalists’ identity work – performed through specific discourses, including emojis – demonstrated a less detached journalism than did non-Pacific journalists, who appeared to talk past the Pacific communities in this Twitter public.

本文通过追踪记者在 2018 年汤加和澳大利亚首届橄榄球联赛测试赛期间如何使用 Twitter，探讨记者如何处理社区参与和专业超脱之间的紧张关系。 作为一项备受瞩目的太平洋文化和体育赛事，它提供了一个机会来研究如何记者与边缘化的太平洋社区接触，以及这种接触是否表明建立关系所需的互惠。使用定量和定性方法对 9000 多条推文进行了分析，结果表明媒体组织和记者更倾向于在 Twitter 上进行广播而不是互动方式。然而，不同小组之间的做法有所不同：个人记者比媒体组织更多地参与公共讨论，太平洋地区的记者比非太平洋地区的记者参与的更多。事实上，太平洋记者的身份工作——通过特定的话语，包括表情符号——表现出比非太平洋记者更少的独立新闻，他们似乎在这个 Twitter 公众中谈论太平洋社区。