Normalizing platform logic: Motives, strategies and risks of news professionals’ traffic-oriented practices on social media in greater China

News organizations face mounting challenges in the social media era. This study, informed by the Normalization Process Theory, examines how social media metrics are embedded into the news production routines across Greater China, mapping journalists’ coherence (making sense of), cognitive participation (engaging with), collective action (adapting workflows for), and reflexive monitoring (evaluating) of traffic-driven practices. Semi-structured interviews with 19 news professionals reveal that while reporters uphold traditional standards like fairness and balance, they actively normalize social media affordances by innovating formats and content structures to align platform demands with institutional constraints. Key strategies include focusing on apolitical stories in order to align with official propaganda or avoid potential backlash, repackaging news with clickbait elements, and adopting shorter, interactive layouts specifically tailored for digital platforms. These practices enable pragmatic survival but also risk account shutdowns, revealing ongoing normalization struggles as technology and journalism negotiate their divergent logics.