David Domingo

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.

Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualities of Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers

Comments in online news could be the contemporary enactment of the eighteenth-century cafés that founded public sphere. This article assesses to what extent do these forms of digital discussion fit in Habermas’ principles for democratic debate, using his discursive ethics as a demanding normative benchmark. The sample of more than 15,000 comments was selected from the online versions of five national newspapers of record from different political and journalistic contexts: The Guardian (United Kingdom), Le Monde (France), The New York Times (United States), El País (Spain), and La Repubblica (Italy). The ethical guidelines and legal frameworks set up by the newspapers as well as their moderation strategies were considered to understand the different settings of the conversations. Two models of audience participation emerge from the analysis, one where communities of debate are formed based on mostly respectful discussions between diverse points of view and another of homogenous communities, in which expressing feelings about current events dominates the contributions and there is less of an argumentative debate.

Waiting for Data Journalism

Data journalism has emerged as a trend worthy of attention in newsrooms the world over. Previous research has highlighted how elite media, journalism education institutions, and other interest groups take part in the emergence and evolution of data journalism. But has it equally gained momentum in smaller, less-scrutinized media markets? This paper looks at the ascent of data journalism in the French-speaking part of Belgium. It argues that journalism, and hence data journalism, can be understood as a socio-discursive practice: it is not only the production of (data-driven) journalistic artefacts that shapes the notion of (data) journalism, but also the discursive efforts of all the actors involved, in and out of the newsrooms. A set of qualitative inquiries allowed us to examine the phenomenon by first establishing a cartography of who and what counts as data journalism. It uncovers an overall reliance on a handful of passionate individuals, only partly backed up institutionally, and a limited amount of consensual references that could foster a shared interpretive community. A closer examination of the definitions reveal a sharp polyphony that is particularly polarized around the duality of the term itself, divided between a focus on data and a focus on journalism, and torn between the co-existing notions of “ordinary” and “thorough” data journalism. We also describe what is perceived as obstacles, which mostly pertain to broader traits that shape contemporary newsmaking; and explain why, if data journalism clearly exists as a matter of concern, it has not transformed in concrete undertakings.

Tracing Digital News Networks: Towards an integrated framework of the dynamics of news production, circulation and use

Research on the evolution of journalism is still lacking appropriate theoretical tools to (re)conceptualise the blurring boundaries between professional news production in the media industry, the public actively engaged in using, circulating and producing information, and the diversity of social and material actors involved in these processes. This article suggests how actor-network theory (ANT) can contribute to overcome the limitations of existing paradigms in journalism studies through three complementary moves: dissociating news practices from specific theoretical categories, overcoming the disciplinary divide between the analysis of news production and news consumption, and problematising normative principles of journalism. The article concludes with a discussion of the practical challenges and methodological strategies researchers may need to address when using ANT to trace news networks: the practices performed by a remarkable diversity of actors for the production, circulation and use of news.

To wish impossible things* Convergence as a process of diffusion of innovations in an actor-network

Research into current developments in newsrooms has paid a great deal of attention to convergence projects, focusing on emerging models of newswork and the attitudes of journalists towards change. This study proposes a longitudinal approach to the research of convergence, defined as a process where the outcomes are shaped by aspirations, power relationships and internal communications within a media corporation. The case of a European public broadcaster is evaluated through interviews performed over the span of five years. For the analysis of the discourses of journalists and managers, the article tries to build bridges between two traditions of innovation research: diffusion of innovations theory and actor-network theory. The proposed theoretical framework unveils the intricate and unpredictable nature of innovation processes in journalism. Results suggest that journalists’ evaluation of the relative advantage of convergence depends on their position in the network. In the case analysed, the complexity of groups within the media company, the historical distance between newsrooms, and power relationships complicated the compatibility of convergence with the organizational structure.

Opportunities and Limitations of Newsroom Convergence: A comparative study on European public service broadcasting organisations

Like many news media organisations, European public service broadcasters are adapting their corporate strategies to the specific demands of the evolving communicative environment. Digitisation and convergence have usually been presented as an opportunity to reinvent public service broadcasting into public service media, by producing and delivering (news) content across traditional radio, television and new online platforms. While investment in digital facilities has set the basis for a more integrated operation amongst the different news media outlets, finding a workable template to implement professional cross-media practices has been more complex than expected. With the aim of exploring key challenges of convergence affecting public service broadcasting newsrooms, this article presents a multiple-case study that investigates the current convergence processes of five European mid-sized public broadcasting corporations—the United Kingdom’s BBC Scotland, Spain’s CCMA and EITB, Norway’s NRK and Flemish-Belgian VRT. Combining an array of qualitative methods, the study focuses on specific convergence parameters, including newsrooms’ physical structure and management, cross-media production routines and workflows, degree of multi-skilling in journalists, professional identities, and attitudes towards convergence. Findings show that public broadcasters tend to follow a similar pattern in basic aspects, like grouping radio, television and online newsrooms together in the same physical space, even if this model has different outcomes in terms of cooperation across media and journalists’ involvement.

Research that empowers responsibility: Reconciling human agency with materiality

Despite the virtues of an emphasis on materiality in Journalism Studies, such an approach risks dis-empowering journalists as agents of change in the evolution of their profession. The principles of actor-network theory offer an opportunity to reconnect studies that are sensitive to the role of technology in the newsroom with the agency of the human actors that use it. By exposing the contingent nature of news practices, researchers can encourage journalists to take responsibility on the configuration of their work and the technical tools they use. The article proposes as well a collective discussion about the normative position of researchers and their engagement with fostering social change in the media industry.

Dealing with the mess (we made): Unraveling hybridity, normativity, and complexity in journalism studies:

In this article, we discuss the rise and use of the concept of hybridity in journalism studies. Hybridity afforded a meaningful intervention in a discipline that had the tendency to focus on a stabilized and homogeneous understanding of the field. Nonetheless, we now need to reconsider its deployment, as it only partially allows us to address and understand the developments in journalism. We argue that if scholarship is to move forward in a productive manner, we need, rather than denote everything that is complex as hybrid, to develop new approaches to our object of study. Ultimately, this is an open invitation to the field to adopt experientialist, practice-based approaches that help us overcome the ultimately limited binary dualities that have long governed our theoretical and empirical work in the field.

Follow Them, Closely

The ability to gather millions of data snippets of social media interactions offers a fascinating glimpse of the dynamics of the (digital) public sphere, a wealth of data asking for interpretations. This article pleas researchers not to rely solely on algorithms, but to resort to ethnographic methods to follow the citizens behind the social media users.