participatory journalism

PARTICIPATORY JOURNAL-ISM PRACTICESIN THE MEDIA AND BE-YOND

KANKAN ZHANGHYEJIN CHO

RESEARCH SUBJECT • making conceptual sense of the phenomenon

of participatory journalism in the framework of journalism research

• determining the forms that it is taking in eight European countries and the United States

EARLY SOCIETY

• Small & dense communities• Direct interaction between community members• Rare interaction between communities(messengers,

travelers)

COMPLEX(MODERN) SOCIETY

• Large, complex social networks• Stable groups (institutionalised, enduring structures)

vs. Fluid configurations• Dense ‘clusters’ vs. weakly connected parts• Central vs. peripheral nodes• Limited individual ‘reach’

POSTMODERN SOCIETY

• Large, complex social networks• Extension of reach by communication technology• Partial de-institutionalisation

THE STUDY OF INITIATIVES IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS (2007)

• Data sample: 16 online newspapers in 9 western countries• Qualitative analysis of the opportunities for audience participation and the rules and criteria regulating them• Identify in each stage who were the content contributors/ managers

STUDY RESULTS IN GENERAL• Most of the options explored by citizen media sites had not been widely adopted• Most common features: users can act upon journalistic content, eg. ranking and commenting• USA Today used community-building methods, which

creates more communication between users

STUDY RESULTS IN STAGES• Access/Observation

Relatively few websites explicitly invite the audience to submit story ideas.

• Selection/Filtering No participation opportunities.

• Processing/EditingUsually materials are carefully selected by journalists.

The content produced by users are limited to topics like entertainment and travel.

Exception: El Pais and Dnevnik

STUDY RESULTS IN STAGES• Distribution

Restricted participation, mainly as the ranking of the news

• InterpretationComments below the news or on a separate page.

Users can recommend or ‘report abuse’ towards

comments .

CASE STUDY: GUARDIAN.CO.UK

Community -building

Interpreta-tion

Access/observation

Interpretation

Processing/editing

CASE STUDY: GUARDIAN WITNESSInvite people to share their stories in forms of text, video and photoshttps://witness.theguardian.com/assignment/527bb34ce4b055987af674ef‘Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda: your photos and videos’

REFERENCES • David Domingo , Thorsten Quandt , Ari Heinonen

, Steve Paulussen , Jane B. Singer & Marina Vu-jnovic (2008) PARTICIPATORY JOURNALISM PRACTICES IN THE MEDIA AND BEYOND,Journalism Practice, 2:3, 326-342

• www.guardian.co.uk• https://witness.theguardian.com/