Citizen participation in news
Citizen participation in news
The process of producing news has changed significantly due to the advent of the Web, which has enabled the increasing involvement of citizens in news production. This trend has been given many names, including participatory journalism, produsage, and crowd-sourced journalism, but these terms are ambiguous and have been applied inconsistently, making comparison of news systems difficult. In particular, it is problematic to distinguish the levels of citizen involvement, and therefore the extent to which news production has genuinely been opened up. In this paper we perform an analysis of 32 online news systems, comparing them in terms of how much power they give to citizens at each stage of the news production process. Our analysis reveals a diverse landscape of news systems and shows that they defy simplistic categorisation, but it also provides the means to compare different approaches in a systematic and meaningful way. We combine this with four case studies of individual stories to explore the ways that news stories can move and evolve across this landscape. Our conclusions are that online news systems are complex and interdependent, and that most do not involve citizens to the extent that the terms used to describe them imply.
audience participation, citizen journalism, citizen participation, news production, online journalism, online media
737-758
Scott, Jonathan
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Millard, David
4f19bca5-80dc-4533-a101-89a5a0e3b372
Leonard, Pauline
a2839090-eccc-4d84-ab63-c6a484c6d7c1
3 September 2014
Scott, Jonathan
d1d8c6ed-90cc-4d26-a053-aece826dc716
Millard, David
4f19bca5-80dc-4533-a101-89a5a0e3b372
Leonard, Pauline
a2839090-eccc-4d84-ab63-c6a484c6d7c1
Abstract
The process of producing news has changed significantly due to the advent of the Web, which has enabled the increasing involvement of citizens in news production. This trend has been given many names, including participatory journalism, produsage, and crowd-sourced journalism, but these terms are ambiguous and have been applied inconsistently, making comparison of news systems difficult. In particular, it is problematic to distinguish the levels of citizen involvement, and therefore the extent to which news production has genuinely been opened up. In this paper we perform an analysis of 32 online news systems, comparing them in terms of how much power they give to citizens at each stage of the news production process. Our analysis reveals a diverse landscape of news systems and shows that they defy simplistic categorisation, but it also provides the means to compare different approaches in a systematic and meaningful way. We combine this with four case studies of individual stories to explore the ways that news stories can move and evolve across this landscape. Our conclusions are that online news systems are complex and interdependent, and that most do not involve citizens to the extent that the terms used to describe them imply.
Text
landscape online journalism.pdf
- Author's Original
More information
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 September 2014
Published date: 3 September 2014
Keywords:
audience participation, citizen journalism, citizen participation, news production, online journalism, online media
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 368652
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/368652
ISSN: 2167-0811
PURE UUID: 51f71723-164a-43a0-b862-7f070c550b94
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Date deposited: 01 Oct 2014 11:16
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:59
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Contributors
Author:
Jonathan Scott
Author:
David Millard
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