Ari Heinonen

PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM PRACTICES IN THE MEDIA AND BEYOND: An international comparative study of initiatives in online newspapers

This article is a contribution to the debate on audience participation in online media with a twofold aim: (1) making conceptual sense of the phenomenon of participatory journalism in the framework of journalism research, and (2) determining the forms that it is taking in eight European countries and the United States. First, participatory journalism is considered in the context of the historical evolution of public communication. A methodological strategy for systematically analysing citizen participation opportunities in the media is then proposed and applied. A sample of 16 online newspapers offers preliminary data that suggest news organisations are interpreting online user participation mainly as an opportunity for their readers to debate current events, while other stages of the news production process are closed to citizen involvement or controlled by professional journalists when participation is allowed. However, different strategies exist among the studied sample, and contextual factors should be considered in further research.

OLD VALUES, NEW MEDIA

More than a decade after the adoption of the Internet by news organisations and newsrooms, journalism is still coming to terms with its implications. It offers a novel platform for reaching audiences and has become a part of newsgathering and news-processing routines. But, as the Net develops in sometimes unpredictable directions, it raises an array of new questions about practices and values, some of which go to the declared defining essentials of journalism. The new media ecology, with its additional agendas of interactivity, democracy, multimediality, and with a new domain of bloggers and citizen reporters, presents a set of issues and opportunities that extend beyond familiar boundaries. European journalists in 11 countries were asked, in an informed survey, to respond to questions concerning these developments. The results elaborate some of the tensions between “traditional” journalism, rooted in “old” media, and the new perceptions, expectations and pressures of digital journalism in an increasingly inter-connected media system.

Weblogs and Journalism A Typology to Explore the Blurring Boundaries

Abstract From the perspective of journalism, weblogs can be seen as a new category of news and current affairs communication. Although most weblogs do not even pretend to be journalistic or related to current events in the sense shared by institutional media, when bloggers approach the arena of journalism, some of their working principles can challenge traditional professional standards: Conversation with the audience, transparency in the reporting process or even participatory news production are common in blogging. By challenging the conventional understanding of what journalism is, weblogs have revitalized the voices that expect a paradigm shift in journalism in the Internet era. In order to contribute to the debate on the influences of weblogs on journalism and make it more systematic, we propose a typology of journalistic weblogs, along a continuum ranging from the least to the most institutionalized in terms of their relationship to the established media: At one end, we find weblogs produced by the public outside media companies, and at the other end, we find those that are part of media content and produced by professional staff journalists. We argue that weblogs are a symbol of the ongoing change in the relationship between citizens, media and journalists - a change that questions the basic assumptions of the traditional roles of institutional journalism.

EXPLORING THE POLITICAL-ECONOMIC FACTORS OF PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM

This comparative study of user-generated content (UGC) in 10 Western democracies examines the political economic aspects of citizen participation in online media, as assessed by journalists who work with this content. Drawing on interviews with more than 60 journalists, we explore their perceived economic motivations for an ongoing redefinition of traditional journalistic roles, as UGC becomes an increasingly dominant feature of news websites.

Citizen participation in online news media: an overview of current developments in four European countries and the United States

With the continuing diffusion of the Internet, with the changing media-consumption patterns and with the impact of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, there seems to be widespread optimism regarding democratic participation and active citizenship through online media. Authors such as Bowman and Willis (2003) and Dan Gillmor (2004) describe how, on the Internet, the people themselves have become the media. In contrast to traditional media, blogs and other community-driven media are characterised by a fundamental convergence of the roles of content producers and consumers because every user has the opportunity to both consume and create content. Axel Bruns (2005) has coined the term ‘produsage’ to refer to this blurring line, while Gillmor (2004: 136) and Rosen (2006) speak of the “former audience” to stress that the public should no longer be regarded as a passive group of receivers. Some authors regard this as being part of a larger societal development toward a participatory culture, something that Hartley also has called a “redactional society” (Hartley, 2000). There are some doubts about the foundations of such a development though. Some authors question the idea of a “hyperactive audience” (Schonbach, 1997; see also Hanitzsch, 2006). They claim that only institutionalized forms of journalism guarantee quality through organizational structures and professional work routines and that they offer society a shared meaning in the form of content that reaches mass audiences.

News 2.0. Can journalism survive the Internet

journalism. Ryfe also ignores traditional journalism’s legitimating role*blessing events that surface elsewhere with established authority. Again, WikiLeaks’ relationship with the Guardian or New York Times would be instructive. Ryfe ultimately retreats from his challenge that journalists rethink their profession. Although many skills in this new journalism are those ‘‘of throwing a good party’’ (p. 166), the role journalists will play resembles that which the tears-in-their-beers reporters from his fieldwork wish to preserve. The examples he highlights ‘‘would not work without editors interacting with the community and journalists organizing their work into news stories’’ (p. 187). Their numbers will shrink, who knows how they’ll get paid, but journalists will still be recognisable as journalists.

Book Review: Understanding the Web: Social, Political and Economic Dimensions of the Internet

Couldry’s The Place of Media Power. These focus on the creation and use of alternative media by social movements, most commonly by social actors who are activists first, journalists second. The present collection complements these with its emphasis on first-person narratives and polemics by practising journalists from both the alternative and the mainstream press. There is much to say about the social responsibility of journalists and the pieces here offer some important groundwork for more academic studies. Jay Harris’s ‘master narrative’ of the corporate news world is a useful place to begin. A narrative that is ‘part ignorance, part arrogance, part bias, part laziness and part economic selfinterest’ (p. 165). All the essays collected here challenge that master narrative from both within and beyond mainstream journalistic practices. They are object lessons in critical journalism and alternative journalism. They share a clarity of expression, a deliberate passion and a call to arms from which many social scientists working in journalism and media studies should learn. These essays started life as a series of lectures delivered at New York University’s journalism department. As such they make provocative yet accessible reading for prospective journalists and their teachers. If we are serious about journalism education we must re-inject critical thinking into our curricula. This book should be a vital tool in that process. As Harris concludes, ‘the news isn’t a trivia contest; it’s the medium of democracy’.