Hype or Hope? The Debate on Blockchain Journalism in Germany and the United States

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Hype or Hope?

The Debate on Blockchain Journalism in

Germany and the United States

Lena v. Goetz Student ID: 12536822

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Humanities New Media and Digital Culture

Supervisor: Stefania Milan Second Reader: Tomás Dodds Rojas

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ABSTRACT

The starting point of this thesis is the paradigm shift from journalists as traditional gatekeepers of societies knowledge horizons towards platform complementors. This transformation is explained by an ongoing commodification of journalistic content caused by decreasing ad-revenues for news media in an online environment. Touching upon topics of filter bubbles, algorithmic control and fake news the global crises in journalism is briefly outlined and declining trust is established as a key problem. New business strategies of news outlets with a focus on staff, content and technology are introduced, as well as the potentials of collaborative and citizen journalism for the industry. Based on these transformations the subject of investigation itself, the concept of blockchain journalism is introduced, covering the emerging debate surrounding the application of blockchain technology to journalism as a possible trust guaranty. Through Robert Entman's analysis elements: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and treatment recommendation a frame analysis is conducted. The main goal of this thesis is to establish interpretation patterns concerning blockchain journalism in Germany and the US through a four-step analysis (descriptive analysis/ keyword analysis/ content analysis/ frame analysis) of the 100 first Google News results. Blockchain journalism, is it a just a hype or is there hope? How is the new concept covered by media?

KEYWORDS:

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Three Economic Strategies of News Organizations; adapted from Bakker ... 19

Figure 2: Citizen, participatory, public & collaborative journalism in Comparison ... 21

Figure 3 Hash Immutability: Example ... 33

Figure 4 The process of proof-of-sharing ... 37

Figure 5: Fake photo depicting dolphins in canals of Venice ... 44

Figure 6: Article Distribution in Years (GER/US) ... 55

Figure 7 Article Distribution according to central Topic of the Article ... 56

Figure 8 Article Distribution according to Media Category ... 57

Figure 9 Article Distribution according to Article Length ... 57

Figure 10 German Article Distribution according to Media Outlet ... 58

Figure 11 US Article Distribution according to Media Outlet ... 59

Figure 12 Tag Cloud of Keywords mentioned in the context of the first 100 Google News Results for the query [blockchain journalismus] in Germany ... 61

Figure 13 Tag Cloud of Keywords mentioned in the context of the first 100 Google News Results for the query [blockchain journalism] in the US ... 62

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS:

ABC American Broadcasting Company

AfD Alternative für Deutschland

ANSA Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata

AP The Associated Press

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

CBS Columbia Broadcasting System

CEO Chief Executive Officer

CNN Cable News Network

DAO Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

DNN Decentralized News Network

DSGVO Datenschutzgrundverordnung

EG English

EIC European Investigative Collaborations

EU European Union

EY Ernst & Young

FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

GAFAM Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft

GDPR General Data Protection Regulation

GER German

ICO Initial Coin Offering

LSE London School of Economics

MP Member of Parliament

MSNBC NBCUniversal (NBC) and Microsoft (MSN)

NBC National Broadcasting Company

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

NPP News Provenance Project

NYT New York Times

PoS Proof of Stake

PoW Proof of Work

PwC PricewaterhouseCoopers

SEME Search Engine Manipulation Effect

SEO Search Engine Optimization

SERP Search Engine Result Page

SRF Schweizer Rundfunk

TV Television

UK United Kingdom

URL Uniform Resource Locator

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INTRODUCTION

Elections are won by spreading fake news about opponents (2016 American presidential election), the freedom of the press is threatened as journalists lose their accreditation when asking uncomfortable questions (withdrawal of accreditation from well-known CNN journalist Jim Acosta), provenance of manipulated content online is impossible to track and on top of it all a highly infectious disease spreads across the world (Covid-19). No – this is not a dystopia; it is reality in 2020. Never has the need for fact-checked information and contextualization by quality journalism been bigger.

Traditionally journalists played a central role in curating societies knowledge horizons, contextualizing information on relevant issues for public audiences, making them gatekeepers of information. This powerful position has changed tremendously throughout the last decade due to digitization and new technologies. The business model of gathering, producing, and distributing news has transformed rapidly. Mainly because the primarily ad-funded revenue model of newspapers has not fully translated to the digital economy. This monetary problem evolved to a competitive one, as platforms such as Google and Facebook developed to news aggregators themselves. This so-called platformization of news media has impacted not only the employment rates of journalists in traditional newsrooms, which have halved in the US since 2008, but has also led to a decline in public trust in news media, especially since the rise of fake news. The urgency to generate clickbait in the context of the attention economy forces journalists to produce more content in lesser time, while not necessarily focusing on the contextualization of relevant information but rather conceptualizing their stories quickly, according to platform settings and in a most eye-catching and attention-seeking way (Franck).

The growing pressure urges news organizations and publishers to produce more inexpensive content and establish new business strategies. The first reactions were measures such as online paywalls or new subscription opportunities. Now, there are three main strategies which are employed in newsrooms across the globe: staff strategies, content strategies and technology strategies. Bregtje van der Haak et al sum those strategies up as follows: “Most media owners have squeezed news organizations to do more with less.” (2924). As simplistic as this statement might seem, the outcome of these strategies is an undeniable decline in working conditions and a simultaneous increase in workload for many journalists.

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By offering an overview of this ongoing turmoil within journalism (chapter 1), this thesis will introduce strategies and innovations within the news production environment. A strong focus will be put on the need and chance of global collaboration not only between professional journalists (collaborative journalism) but also with the public (citizen journalism). Through the establishment of these to modes of journalism (chapter 2) advantages and disadvantages are argued leading towards the technology of blockchain. As problems of declining trust and overwhelming information floods cannot be solely solved by collaboration, how can trust between all stakeholders in the media business from journalists to publishers, advertisers and readers be restored in times of fake news and media concentration? There is an emerging debate surrounding the application of blockchain technology to journalism as a possible trust guarantor.

Since the application of this blockchain to financial assets, namely Bitcoin, facilitated by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008, the interest in this innovation has grown exponentially. The mathematical and conceptual the idea of blockchain is hard to grasp. Therefore, this thesis will provide a comprehensive introduction to the technology itself and to its range of applications (chapter 3.1). Finally, four key advantages of the application of blockchain technology to journalism are explained: decentralization, cryptographic encryption, immutability, open source. As blockchain and journalism concern fields that change within the hour and not a lot of academic research has been conducted so far, the public discourse will be discussed through three major contributions by the Columbia Journalism School (Ivancsics), the London School of Economics (LSE) (Erkkilä) and Kim and Yoon, who have developed a journalism model based on a hybrid blockchain.

After establishing theoretical foundations (chapter 1-3) the methodological approach of this thesis will be outlined (chapter 4). The research goal is to establish interpretation patterns by the media of blockchain journalism in Germany and the US through a four-step analysis of the 100 first Google News results. Blockchain journalism, is it just a hype or is there hope? How is the new concept publicly perceived? Is it just a shiny new thing, as Julia Posetti would call it or are there unknown potentials that need to be explored?

Germany and the US are chosen here as they are often referenced as opposites according to their media systems, their data protection laws and the general affinity towards new technologies, in this case blockchain. A Google News query as a means for data collection is selected as it has become the main source of news for many people around the globe, having

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the biggest search engine market share in Germany and the US (SEO Summary). For the data collection a research browser is set up and settings are adapted to local domains.

Following the explanation of the data collection process the actual research object, the frame is introduced by providing a genealogy. Within this thesis exclusively issue-specific frames in textual media content will be analyzed (Potthoff). They will be clustered through Robert Entmans approach, where a frame can be identified by four categories: problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation. Under the assumption that media are the form-giver of public opinion (Luhmann), i.e. on the one hand they are an expression of social circumstances and on the other hand they observe society through media reporting, it can be concluded that media reporting can be used to trace how the phenomenon of blockchain journalism is publicly presented.

Subsequently, a four-step analyses is conducted, and results are presented in chapter 5. First the data is analyzed descriptively by investigating the article distribution according to the collected meta data. By comparing the German and US datasets first assumptions concerning common storylines in connection with blockchain journalism can be established. This is followed by an in-depth keyword analysis. For this analysis tag clouds of most frequent keywords for the German and US dataset are created and the output is clustered by considering only most relevant keywords. Thereupon, a content analysis is conducted, which determines anchor terms. These anchor terms sum up topics and phrases within articles to represent the frame elements. Afterwards the actual frame analysis is done via a close reading of the first 10 articles from the US and German dataset. Finally, a conclusion is drawn towards the most common frame scenarios in connection with the issue of blockchain journalism.

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1. JOURNALISM IN 2020: WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES?

Journalists have traditionally played a central role as information gatekeepers of society by curating society’s knowledge horizons and contextualizing information on relevant issues for their audiences (White). This powerful position, however, has changed tremendously since the 1990s due to the spread of the internet and hence the digitalization of media, additionally driven by social media and information floods available on the World Wide Web.

The digitalization of the news business has deeply impacted the primarily ad-driven revenue model of traditional newspapers and magazines, which formerly funded quality journalism. Therefore, the business model supporting the gathering, producing, and distributing news has undergone a rapid transformation. Particularly as online platforms such as Google and

Facebook became competitors on news curation and aggregation. In this respect, Niebourg and

Poell argue that cultural production has become increasingly platform dependent, affecting the autonomy and economic sustainability of news production.

One major cause for this impactful evolution is the so-called regime of visibility, locking the journalist in the ever-reoccurring loop of the attention vs. relevance problem - the economic maxim of attention-grabbing content to place advertising as targeted as possible vs. the journalistic maxim of news relevance (Bucher). To be economically competitive, visibility and traffic needs to be achieved by securing user attention though personalized content. The inherent role of journalists in society, however, remains to sustain a democratic discourse by presenting relevant information to the public. This ongoing turmoil in traditional journalistic work will now be further elaborated by introducing the shift from gatekeeping towards platform complementation in journalism and its implications for public discourses, information curation and trust in news media. Platformization and changes within the traditional gatekeeper role will be causally established before arguing the disadvantages and risks of filter bubbles, echo chambers and a declining trust caused by a convoluted information system facilitating fake news.

1.1. THE PLATFORMIZATION OF NEWS PRODUCTION

Through personalization and algorithmic curation news production and publishing have become increasingly dependent on online platforms such as Google and Facebook, which end up operating as news aggregators. Tarleton Gillespie addresses the dilemma of narrowing the term platform associated with online content-hosting intermediaries by differentiating four

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Through these four perspectives he comes to the conclusion that the role of platforms and their “[…] substantive interventions into the contours of public discourse[…]” (Gillespie, Platforms 360) are not to be underestimated as they deal with same controversies of free speech and public expression but also entail substantially new challenges.

Especially the so-called GAFAM platforms (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) have impacted the way news are produced and distributed through their design, which affords a certain contingency of content to achieve visibility and in return generate ad-revenues. Nieborg and Poell summarize this process as platformization: “[...] the penetration of

economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions of digital platforms into the web and

app ecosystems, fundamentally affecting the operations of the cultural industries” (4276). In virtue of the extensive reach of the phenomenon, this chapter will focus solely on the impact of platformization on news publishing to raise the issues of ongoing commodification of content by platforms and the exploitation of cultural labor such as journalists (Cohen; McGuigan & Manzerolle).

Two actors are particularly relevant in this change: intermediaries and aggregators. Intermediaries, such as the search engine Google, enable multiple sources to be reached on a question, while aggregators, such as Facebook and Google News, are often used to consume news. Because of the content conveyed by aggregators and intermediaries, they have more accurate information about their users and could deliver more targeted advertising by the use of algorithms. Epstein and Robertson criticize this targeted exposure to information by the means of the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). The SEME shows, how much people are influenced by rankings and accept them as objective input. In their opinion, the economic maxim to place advertising as targeted as possible contradicts the journalistic maxim of news relevance.

Hence, understanding platforms as news aggregators rather than news curators, explains the pressure on publishers to adapt to these platforms. To increase visibility and traffic and generate ad-revenue online, publishers had to shift their editorial practice away from highly curated content bundles towards individual news stories. This is due to the fact that individual stories can be shared on several platforms at the same time instead of being bound to a certain context of only one outlet. Accordingly, this forces journalistic news production to be contingent in structure and content, in favor of adaptability to multimedia platforms. Therefore, cultural producers such as journalists are transformed into mere platform complementors (Nieborg and

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Poell). A fact that is particularly important as the production of reliable information and analysis plays a vital role for the adequate performance of a democratic society (Pariser, Sunstein, Habermas).

The two US news outlets BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post are frequently cited as examples of aggregators and seem to exploit platform network effects in a most effective way. They represent the stereotype of online news aggregators, publishing collections of single stories without contextualization. Providers of these stories, mostly journalists, are hereby rendered into platform complementors rather than information gatekeepers and relevance curators. They have to submit to platform contexts and rules to achieve the commodity of interest, visibility and therefore money. The topic of this transformation will be analyzed in depth in the following part.

1.2. FROM GATEKEEPER TO PLATFORM COMPLEMENTOR

According to the traditional idea, the public is organized in an orderly fashion. There are senders and receivers, speakers or publicists and their audiences. Legitimate and authorized gatekeepers used to decide which information is relevant and allowed to pass through into the public sphere (Habermas). Who are these gatekeepers nowadays?

Patrick Rössler constituted a broadening within the field of gatekeepers as early as 1999. He assumes that online, people become communicators, although they are not necessarily professionally or institutionally legitimized to do so (98). In his study, he examines selection processes of these online communicators. He argues that the major difference between the gatekeeping of content online and that of the classical mass media lies in the lower selection pressure by the related actors (97). One could argue that the selection work of journalists online becomes superfluous as users, aided by search engines and platforms, can carry out this process themselves. However, Mike Friedrichsen makes a compelling argument against this theory:

But data is not information, information is not yet knowledge, and knowledge is not necessarily understanding. The performance of journalists in conveying an understanding of a subject is becoming increasingly demanding. For this reason, it is unlikely that users will want to do without the orientation services offered by journalists. (126)

Hence, it can be argued that, for one, journalists add their own, differently motivated information particles to the content flood, while at the same time trying to structure it through the embeddedness of links and references and the contextualization of information. Nevertheless, gatekeepers in whatever capacity are increasingly locked in the platform system as the whole ecosystem of news production is impacted by their governance, affording certain

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programming, interface adaptions, word choices and even topics. Individual stories by journalists are constantly “modularized, revised, and recirculated, transforming it into a contingent cultural commodity” (Nieborg & Poell 2935). This broadening of the gatekeeper field and the commodification of content is exploited by news aggregators such as The

Huffington Post. Staff strategies for the purpose of cost reduction come in to play here (Bakker).

According to Nieborg and Poell the shifting power structures in this growing ecosystem of content aggregators impact many work environments and is known as the Gig Economy, describing precarious work conditions disguised by the appearance of freedom and flexibility (Rosenblat & Stark; van Doorn). Especially journalistic labor has been subject to this

gigification of labor as freelance work has increased exponentially throughout the last years in

this field (Spilsbury).

The main issue of public concern over the past years has been the general reduction of journalistic staff employed in newsrooms all over the world. In the United States (US), newsroom employment was cut in half since 2008, with the biggest loss registered for traditional newspapers (Grieco). A similar development can be witnessed in Germany (Steindl et al.). Nevertheless, staff strategies are not only limited to layoffs but also include the replacement of staff, by non-unionized workers or rather technology affine employees such as community managers, specialized in social media content or trained search engine optimization (SEO) writers. Furthermore, the utilization of freelancers, amateurs, bloggers and volunteers has risen as well as the deployment of user generated content (e.g. comments and photos) (Bakker).

In addition to expanding freelance work environments, technology has disrupted the vital relationship between journalists and their public audience. Algorithms play a twofold role, when it comes to these disruptions. On the one hand, algorithmic content curation by search engines and other filter-algorithms raise the issue of accountability, when it comes to the supposed journalistic key task of content moderation (Sandvig et al.). On the other hand, attention became the commodity of interest for journalists, which can only be achieved when submitting to platform power and their algorithmic content curation. Therefore, journalists like many content curators can be investigated as subjects of algorithmic control (Griesbach et al.; Rosenblat & Stark). Referring to the earlier mentioned traditional selection processes of gatekeepers, following an editorial logic and the choices of experts, Gillespie introduces a new knowledge logic “depend[ing] on the proceduralized choices of a machine, designed by human operators to automate some proxy of human judgement or unearth patterns across collected

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social traces” (Algorithms 192). The according lack of accountability in algorithmic news curation and the strain on an audience’s connection to the journalist led to a loss of confidence in news media. This development will now be investigated by looking into related phenomena such as filter bubbles, echo chambers and fake news in order to understand the broader implications for the vital public discourse in democratic societies.

1.3. FILTER BUBBLES & ECHO CHAMBERS

The term filter bubble was first coined by the political scientist Eli Pariser in 2011. The starting point of his thesis was an increasing personalization of web content by platforms such as Google and Facebook and the impact of these developments on society. According to Pariser changes in filtering processes by Google on the December 4th_{, 2009 mark a radical turning point in}

modern information consumption: “[…] there is no standard Google anymore” (6). Since then Google started using tracking cookies to determine the page rank based on click signals. The goal was and still is to algorithmically provide users the most matching answer to what they were inquiring rather than overwhelming them with thousands of links (Pariser).

However, this yielded a central problem. First, the ideal answer for one individual is not automatically the perfect result for another, which gives rise to the risk of informational determinism (Pariser 63). In exchange for the service of filtering, users often unconsciously provide large platforms with vast amounts of personal data, which in turn is needed to determine the users' respective relevance horizons as precisely as possible (Gillespie, Algorithms). Using the data, provided voluntarily or not, algorithms calculate a user’s interest and preference and thus their online identity. This determines, which content Google presents to the reader. Ultimately, it carries a risk of trapping users in echo chambers of themselves, by rendering serendipity and randomness impossible, and with it the broadening of knowledge horizons.

The most prominent representative of the echo chamber research is Cass Sunstein, who defines these information cocoons as “[...] communication universes in which we hear only what we choose and only what conforms and pleases us” (9). Thus, echo chambers differ from filter bubble, as they are immediate result. Additionally, echo chambers can also occur offline in one’s social environment, while the phenomenon of the filter bubble is limited to online processes. How and if this horizon reduction impacts society will be discussed next.

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PRE-SELECTED VS. SELF-SELECTED PERSONALIZATION

In contrast to Pariser and Sunstein, Christoph Kappes advocates that these allegations are exaggerated. To him the filter bubble is neither the limitation and reconfirmation of an individual’s opinions nor the threatening of exception, but rather the online mirror of natural human selection processes. At this point, however, the differentiation of pre-selected and

self-selected personalization developed by Zuiderveen Borgesius et al. is crucial. Self-self-selected

personalization is a conscious decision of a user to deal exclusively with like-minded opinions, while the pre-selected personalization by platforms, advertisers or other actors takes place without a conscious decision nor consent by the user. In pre-selection, however, the user's knowledge of the ongoing personalization is not completely negated. For instance, the public became increasingly aware of Google’s and Facebooks’s personalized SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and Feeds during the 2016 US elections (Pariser). The following chapter will address the effects of this increased and ongoing personalization of available information on democracy, public discourse and consequently journalism.

EFFECTS OF PERSONALIZATION ON DEMOCRACY AND JOURNALISM

What is understood as the public today is a product of the 18th century Enlightenment. The demand for a public sphere stood in the historical context of the struggle for freedom of opinion and freedom of the press and was initially directed against any state censorship. This gave rise to the idea of a free intellectual exchange between free, self-determined citizens - albeit within closed circles such as the famous Parisian salons or the Masonic lodges. In his essay What is

Enlightenment Immanuel Kant made the public a condition of enlightened self-thinking

(Fleischacker). In our time, it was above all the discourse theory of Jürgen Habermas that tied in with Kant's optimism about the enlightening role of a rational public. Herby, Habermas provided a definition that is still relevant today. According to him the public can be understood neither as an institution nor as a system, but rather as a network for the communication of content and opinions, in which human communication flows are filtered and synthesized in such a way that they condense into public opinions by means of discourse (Habermas). According to Habermas, the mass media should understand itself as a mediator between the political system and an enlightened audience that critically comments on the political process. In this way, the public discourse sphere of polyphony gains its constitutive role for a liberal democracy.

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Hence, personalization may be useful for advertisers and consumers, but it does not encourage responsible and participatory citizenship. Sunstein, the aforementioned creator of the echo chamber theory, further highlights the importance of serendipity and surprises to be indispensable in guaranteeing a functioning discourse within democracy: “unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself” (9). Accordingly, Pariser addresses the interest vs. relevance problem and the danger of the entire political process becoming invisible, since the filter bubble often fades out or even renders topics of social relevance invisible that are complex and unpleasant. He further investigates the role of media and discourse for a functioning democracy: “Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead we’re being offered parallel but separate universes” (8). The algorithmic information curation increasingly displaces public discourses based on common ground but leads to more and more polarization. Individuals get encapsulated in their radial spectrums not being exposed to the opposition’s opinion.

Simon Hurtz journalist of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung created a second

Facebook profile. His alter ego Tim opened him doors to the parallel world of right-wing groups

on the social network. The experiment revealed interesting results:

• Integration into this community is easy. By liking the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Facebook page, a German right-wing party, algorithms suggested further pages of even more right-wing groups and organizations.

• The same content and storylines are repeated on several of these pages, e.g. hate speech against Turks, Muslims and foreigners in general.

• Sources of information are not questioned. Again, and again Tim is confronted with links to Anonymousnews.ru, the netwomen, or Halle Leaks, which spread partly invented, partly grossly distorted reports. For Tim it seems like users only read the headlines of these reports.

• Only what fits into the own world view is shared - including fake news. People find it difficult to doubt once they have held their convictions. They tend to think that their world view is the only correct one and deny information that contradicts their opinion. News is interpreted in such a way that it confirms their own expectations and prejudices. Psychologists call this tendency confirmation bias1_.

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Zuiderveen Borgesius et al. confront this problem by distinguishing between selective exposure and selective avoidance. They point out that it has been scientifically confirmed that people are more likely to choose content that suits their own interests. However, it has not been proven that people intentionally avoid complex or contradictory content. Pariser's argument is therefore difficult to substantiate, but it emphasizes the responsibility of journalists and new gatekeepers, for a diverse public discourse. This is specifically important as news and information are increasingly consumed via personalized search engine results. Referring back to the issue of platformization this could bare the risk of a news environment which does not offer contextualized content bundles but only personalized single stories. Through the potential of this narrowing of one’s knowledge horizon the argument for the important role of traditional journalistic gatekeeping is established.

1.4. FAKE NEWS & DECLINING TRUST IN NEWS MEDIA

Pariser’s prophecy on the broad consequences of personalization on society’s news consumption, political decision making, and public opinion became reality in the US presedential election of 2016. Kappes also pointed out that filter problems and information pollution could have a direct impact on the formation of opinions and warned against misuse (7). It was precisely this form of poisoned information flows that took place during the elections. The US intelligence services assume that Russia directly interfered in the election campaign by spreading of fake news via social bots. This form of disinformation campaigns did exist in the past but have now evolved into veritable information wars (Beuth). In the context of known disinformation campaigns, Patrick Beuth follows Kappes by referencing so-called newspaper ducks. He draws a connection between classical and online media, noting that journalists have never been error-free. Fake news, however, make intentionally targeted use of the functional logic of social networks to spread false reports and instrumentalize stimulating topics such as the fear of foreign infiltration; the abuse of power; the question of war and peace. As Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Vasilievich Gerasimov said: “Wars are not won by those who have more weapons. Wars are won by those who control the information” (Beuth et al.: 3). Applying this strategy Russia is assumed to have actively interfered in the American election campaign (Beuth et al.). BuzzFeed has determined that in fact the 20 most successful false reports were shared, denigrated and commented on more often than the 20 most successful reports in established media (4).

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However, influencing public opinion does not only take place through pure false reports. Frequently, specially programmed opinion robots, so-called social bots, are used to create a political mood within social networks (Grimme et al.). Pariser foresaw these negative effects of personalization and the provision of information on the internet as early as 2011, including the impact of personal political targeting and the difficulties of fact checking for journalists. From this realization he concludes: “More voices, in other words, means less trust in any given voice” (39).

The pressure of this attention economy forces journalists to produce more content in lesser time, while not necessarily focusing on the contextualization of relevant information but rather conceptualizing their stories in a most eye-catching and attention-seeking way (Franck). Nieborg and Poell argue that these individual stories can be altered by other content producers like bloggers or freelancers in real time. In combination with advertising-driven platforms, they argue profound implications for content accessibility, accuracy, and diversity. José van Dijck (2013) also argues this shift within the content strategy of news organizations, from accuracy and relevance as quality indicators towards platform-defined variables of popularity (van Dijck quoted by Nieborg & Poell: 4286). Respectively, Katherine Fink constitutes: “The single biggest challenge facing journalism today is the public’s lack of trust in it” (1). One could question the comprehensiveness of this truth, however, declining trust in news media and journalism due to fake news and phishing articles is at least partially a result of the platformization of journalistic work processes (Kim & Yoon). The Edelman Trust Barometer 2019 has shown that trust has changed profoundly in the past years. According to the study 73 percent of the global population worry about fake news being used as a weapon(Edelman Trust Barometer).

These transitions have multiple causes, which cannot be fully discussed in appropriate length here. Nevertheless, it has now been argued that key elements surround exaggerated and in-transparent manners of personalization (Pariser), sensationalized coverage and commodification of content (Niebourg & Poell) and fake news (Kim & Yoon). As the trust of public audiences is vital to a core function of a journalist sensemaking (Kovach & Rosenstiel 36–50), research on substitute models of news production, attempting a higher degree of detachment from platform power structures and algorithmic control, are of interest and will be introduced in the following chapter.

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2. JOURNALISM IN 2020: STRATEGIES, INNOVATION &

COLLABORATION

The general shift in journalistic work processes caused primarily by digitalization and platformization of content and the broader implications of these shifts for public discourse and trust in news media have been elaborated. This chapter is devoted to exploring possible solution and innovative approaches. By giving an overview of economically driven, cost controlling strategies with a focus on content, staff and technology a need for collaboration and cooperation within the field of journalism is illustrated. This is followed by the exemplification of collaboration and cooperation through two prominent modes of journalistic work: collaborative

journalism and citizen journalism. These complex concepts are first differentiated from familiar

journalistic practices of participatory journalism and public journalism, followed by an introduction of both models including prominent industry examples.

2.1. CONTROLLING COSTS AND INCREASING OUTPUT

The overarching turmoil in the business of news production has especially strained the economic stability of news organizations, calling for amendments of traditional payment models and modern means of revenue generation for media outlets. Piet Bakker outlines these means as: subscription and single copy sales, advertising and e-commerce and sponsoring, donations, non-profit public funding (e.g. crowdfunding). He too determines that all online news outlets nowadays compete for two central assets, the beforementioned audience attention and in turn advertising revenue. According to him news businesses use three focal strategies focused on staff, content and technology to compensate losses from outdated, print advertising-based business models (see figure 1). His summary is not deemed to be a universal solution but is suggested in the context of this thesis as a comparably comprehensive overview of measures taken by news organizations in general. All three strategies are highly intertwined but cannot be discussed in more detail here. Bregtje van der Haak et al sum these strategies up as follows: “Most media owners have squeezed news organizations to do more with less.” (2924) As simplistic this statement might be, the outcome of these strategies is an undeniable decline in working conditions and a simultaneous increase in workload for many journalists, which are further worsened by the influence of platforms leading towards aforementioned gigwork- environments.

Following a refined definition of journalism by van der Haak et al. anyone engaged in whatever capacity with one of the three key journalistic tasks “[...] of observing facts and asking

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questions, understanding answers and explaining those answers to others [...]” (2925) is for that reason involved in an act of journalism. This circumstance has broadened the scope of journalism tremendously. Accordingly, more people than ever before are working as journalists, yet are not employed as such in a traditional manner, but work as freelancers, bloggers, influencers or other forms of online content creators. Hence, there are two ways of looking at these developments. For one there is an obvious increase in competition for traditional journalists but also an enormous chance of cooperation.

Figure 1: Three Economic Strategies of News Organizations. Source: adapted from Bakker (627ff.).

Nevertheless, journalism does or rather should not have economic revenue at its core but the provision and contextualization of information to secure public discourse in democratic societies (Habermas; Keller et al.; Schweiger & Fahr; Scholtz). Therefore, collaboration becomes vital on another level as there is an ongoing debate on the deterioration of information quality and automated aggregation of content resulting in filter bubbles and fake news (see chapter 1). The fast pace and limited staff of traditional news agencies has led to “[...] fewer reporters on fewer beats, fewer new angles presented, fewer facts checked, and less inspired storytelling” (van der Haak et al. 2925). Consequently, there is not only a chance but a need for collaboration, not only with other news organizations or professional journalists but also with users, bloggers, citizens and other members of the broad field of news production.

1. Staff Strategies 2. Content Strategies 3. Technology Strategies

Replacing Journalistic Staff: Replacement of traditional journalists with non-unionized staff, technicians, community managers or

freelancers.

Re-publishing content

Automated Aggregation: (Automated) web searches resulting in relevant

articles on specific subjects. eg. Google News Paying less for Photos:

The prices freelancers receive per photo have decreased.

Using more syndicated content: (e.g. content prewritten and distributed by press

agencies)

Curation:

Combination of automatic aggregation and human labour. eg. Scoop.it - content curation to assist the

aggregator. Outsourcing and offshoring production:

Design, Editing, moderating of comments, etc. handled by external parties. (Domestic parties (outsourcing) or foreign countries (off-shoring).

Using more PR material

Material from social media: This conent that contains only specific words or

phrases are selected and can be automatically embedded on news websites. Using user-generated content:

Reuse of content from amateurs, bloggers or social media can result in substantial cost reductions.

Using stock-material

Rich Site Summary (RSS): A web feed that allows users & applications to access updates to websites. Used by websites to

promote and distribute content. Employing “amateur” bloggers or volunteers:

Writers get paid based on the revenue their articles generate. EG. The Huffington Post

Material “found” online:

(eg. Posting, linking reporpusion of social media post)

Promotion through social media: Items from websites are automatically shared on

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Reducing Staff

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Process used to increase the visibility of a website according to News Feed and Search enigine metrics De-integration of Print and Online operations

AI & Robot Journalism: Eg. Software to write articles, Datajournalism

and Research Algorithms Demanding more Output

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2.2. COLLABORATION AND COOPERATION IN JOURNALISM

The need for collaboration has created new ways of journalism in particular citizen journalism and collaborative journalism. What follows now is an attempt to differentiate the closely related and highly overlapping concepts of participatory journalism, public journalism, citizen

journalism and collaborative journalism (see figure 2). However, this section will exclude a

series of semantically similar and partly competing expressions. They are considered to be rather creative word creations and ad hoc formations and rarely or very rarely appear in the relevant specialist literature. These are, for example, grassroots journalism, network

journalism, amateur journalism, open-source journalism, peer-to-peer journalism etc.

(Neuberger, Nutzerbeteiligung).2

CITIZEN AND COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM – A DELIMITATION

Public journalism is a concept of journalism from the US in the 1990s, which was intensively

discussed, promoted and evaluated there in the course of the governor elections in Kansas. It originated in a lack of political participation opportunities for citizens. Therefore, it is not surprising that the participatory journalism, which only appears to have emerged with digitization, is often analyzed in part as a continuation of public journalism in US academic literature (Borger et al.; Rosenberry & Burton). In fact, parallels can be found between the two, but it is difficult to ignore a significant difference: While public journalism is primarily concerned with encouraging citizens to participate more strongly in public life and political discourse, especially in the local space of their immediate environment, participatory

journalism seems to completely miss a political dimension (Bosshart 126-130).

From a content point of view and in line with a growing body of research, it seems appropriate to limit the concept of participatory journalism to audience participation in professional journalism. This can be distinguished from the independent publication activity of amateurs, which takes place outside of professional journalism and in mass media. Sometimes this

amateur journalism (Schönhagen & Kopp) is attributed a journalistic potential, which is why it

is also called citizen journalism. The term has meanwhile become established in this sense, particularly in academic literature (Atton; Carpenter; Lindner; Wall; Zeng et al.).

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Accordingly, in this work, citizen journalism is defined in the sense of an independent publication activity of amateurs, following the definition of Atton:

Citizen journalism refers to journalism produced not by professionals but by those outside mainstream media organizations. Citizen journalists typically have little or no training or professional qualifications, but write and report as citizens, members of communities, activists, and fans. (487)

Hence, citizen journalism did not develop from professional journalism but represents a genuine civil society phenomenon. In contrast Sarah Stonbely defines collaborative journalism as “News organizations working together, and with non-news entities, to produce journalism.” (2).

She clearly distinguishes collaborative journalism from the concept of citizen journalism or related concepts and situates it solely within news organizations or the broader field of professional media.

Figure 2: Citizen, participatory, public & collaborative journalism in comparison. Source: adapted from Bosshart (130)

COLLABORATIVE JOURNALISM

In 2018 the public awareness for newsroom collaboration reached unprecedented heights as excellent collaboration projects were rewarded within an individual category at the Online

Journalism Awards for the first time (Bryant). A broadly discussed winner in the category was Verificado, honored for unmasking fake news during Mexico’s federal elections by including

not only newsrooms but universities and audiences via a multiplatform approach (Bryant).

Collaboration in journalism is not entirely new, but against the background of technological and resulting economic upheavals, it has reached a level today that would have been unimaginable just ten years ago: individual journalists as well as entire publishing houses are entering into partnerships with potential competitors, case studies and manuals provide insights into these diverse practice, and workshops and university seminars prepare future journalists for future collaboration. Collaborative journalism has become a household name in the profession, at the latest since the highly acclaimed and multiple award-winning publication of the Panama Papers 2016. This kind of cross-border research on offshore business under the Citizen Journalism Participatory Journalism Public (Civic) Journalism Collaborative Journalism

Defintion Independent publications

by amateuers

Audience participation in professional journalism

Citizen-oriented professional journalism

News organizations and professional Mediaoutlets

working together

Examples Weblogs, Microblogging, _{Wikis, Social News etc.}

Online commentary, Discussion forums, surveys,

reader's pictures etc.

Reader surveys, citizen forums, group discussions

Projects in which partners share and co-create content/data/resources/research

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leadership of the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism3_{has become a model}

for partnerships and research projects in journalism as it illustrated the global potential of international newsrooms sharing staff, facilities and knowledge.

If one tries to understand the development towards collaborative working in journalism, one could summarize the reasons for its’ success in one word: digitization. Falling revenues, changing news consumption and staff cuts are just some of the negative consequences of this trend, making it more necessary than ever for publishing houses and journalists to work together. On the positive side, communication is easier - in a fraction of a second across continents and oceans. Moreover, there is better access to large databases, which cannot be evaluated meaningfully without programmers and statisticians, the need to work closely with designers and programmers to create appealing interactive infographics, or ways to distribute one's own content worldwide and involve the audience more in news production through crowdsourcing.

Today, publishing houses share reporters, technical infrastructures such as servers and entire editorial offices, journalists exchange data and research results and editorial offices discuss the scope and date of publications in detail. But why and how exactly do competitors become partners? Does collaborative working fit every research, every journalist, every editorial office?

It was the first generation of data journalists who pioneered in collaborative journalism, bringing together journalistic judgment and the ethics of the open source movement (Lewis & Usher). But the understanding of working in a network, of sharing information, knowledge and infrastructure, which was still new to journalism, was soon transferred to other areas. As the number of journalistic projects grew, so did the scientific interest: in 2014, the US Pew

Research Center published the first comprehensive study on collaborative journalism. Five

examples were examined and described in detail, including both traditional and newly founded media companies, individual journalists and non-profit organizations. The research ranged from a unique joint and cross-border research on child prostitution to a long-term exchange of diverse content (Edmonds & Mitchell).

Stonbely was the first to categorizes with her model, published in 2017, new forms of journalism. The database of the Center for Cooperative Media, which is managed by Stonbely,

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has been collecting practical examples since 2018 and is growing steadily. She distinguishes six different forms of collaborative journalism: Temporary and Separate, Temporary and Co-creating, Temporary and Integrated, Ongoing and Separate, Ongoing and Co-Co-creating, Ongoing and Integrated (Stonbely). These models accord to whether they are designed for a short or long-term partnership and whether the cooperation takes place in separate, parallel or integrated teams (see Appendix 1). As extensive this model might be, it excludes any form of audience collaboration, despite successful examples such as the involvement of the Guardian's readership in the evaluation of more than 450.000 expense receipts of British MPs in 2009 to detect expense fraud (van Heerde-Hudson).

In April 2019, the University of Oxford’s research center Reuters Institute presented an analysis of three partnerships in local journalism. Two of the three cases examined here go far beyond the examples known so far: in Finland, a total of twelve daily newspapers share a content management system and several reporters and editors, while in the UK the BBC supports hundreds of local and hyperlocal editorial offices in their reporting through local news partnerships (Sambrook).

What is striking about almost all of the collaborations examined, is that partners are rarely direct competitors, but usually serve different markets or thematic niches. This minimizes frictional losses and should be considered in advance of every new collaboration. The collaborative cross-border network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), for example, brings together well-known media from all over Europe such as the German magazine Der Spiegel or the Dutch daily newspaper De Standaard. Although the network usually brings other media on board before the publication of its extensive investigative research - to reach the broadest possible public - the core of the network includes only one media company per country (EIC). Cross-border research is becoming more and more important in collaborative investigative journalism and is also attracting more interest in the academic world, as the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies on cross-border journalism shows (Gearing & Berglez). Among other things, it examines the influence of cross-border journalism projects on the transnationalization of the public sphere and shows how cross-border journalism can be used to counteract distortions in reporting and promote diversity (Alfter & Cândea).

Nevertheless, not all projects are suitable for collaboration. Partnerships demand a lot from those involved: trust, tolerance, patience and often investment (Stonbely). Research must be coordinated, communication between partners must be both simple and secure, and all partners

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must be able to provide the necessary resources. Nicolas Kayser-Bril, one of the pioneers of collaborative data journalism, warned against exaggerated expectations, especially from philanthropic donors such as foundations and NGOs committed to the further development of journalism (Kayser-Bril). Collaborations would most likely fail if the partners did not have a common goal in mind - be it improving research through collective efforts or achieving greater impact through coordinated publication. Fatally, it is mainly philanthropists, who finance

collaborative journalism. Even established media often develop their collaborations with the

help of foundation money and other funding (Scott et al.). Newer financing models such as crowdfunding or cooperatives need to be flanked by further subsidies, even for successful start-ups such as the American ProPublica or the Texas Tribune.

Therefore, the development of a successful collaboration can be difficult, especially when cultural differences, various time zones or language difficulties are added, it is gratifying that the first manuals and other aids are appearing. The journalist Heather Bryant used her experience gained from her work at public broadcasting in Alaska to develop a digital platform and handbook, which aids journalists in planning and carrying out their collaboration. The platform called First Draft includes the CrossCheck project, a new initiative from Google Labs and First Draft to support truth and verification in media (First Draft News). Her collaboration model focuses on three categories: consider, manage and access, by which journalists can improve their work but also deepen their relationship with readers and audiences. This project has gained particular prominence as it summarizes functionalities for communication, editing, distribution and task delegation in one open-source infrastructure (Bryant).

Nevertheless, according to Media Lab Bayern fellow Michael Seidel, the existing offers do not go far enough, as they do not yet make enough use of the current technological potential. Following his train of thought, collaboration has to be thought in bigger dimensions, involve more people and actors and be open and transparent (Seidel). Hacker and journalist Frank Rieger makes similar demands at the biggest German media conference re:publica 2019, to retain the value and ideals of the fourth power (Rieger). Both argue that collaboration and cooperation here do not only concern human interaction but human and technical collaboration alike, as it holds enormous potential to make journalism more pluralistic and efficient.

Currently, journalists from different media organizations usually come together, when they have common interests and work. Whether it concerns the sheer number of sources and data or the complexity of the topic, they can only master together, such as in the case of the

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beforementioned Panama Papers. Nevertheless, resonating questions like: Who publishes the article first and in what form? Who sheds light on which aspect? Who keeps track of reposts and fact checks? maintain even within established collaboration networks, constituting the main problem of exclusivity (Sambrook). If an outlet is not the first to publish the most explosive information, they lose clicks or purchases, and therefore money - which in times of a failing media market is anything but in the interest of the publisher.

Problems such as exclusivity, also effect other processes of journalistic work, for example the selection of experts. Research, surveys and tests have shown that experts are often selected more on the basis of criteria such as availability and exclusivity rather than on difficult to assess competence and expertise (Seidel). On the other hand, there is a mutual understanding that everyone should get the best possible information, i.e. access to the closest possible approach to the truth, in order to quickly find solutions, attention and majorities for urgent and global problems (Mathiesen). Accordingly, several interests are in conflict, often within one and the same actor. However, it is interesting to note that despite the contradiction between ideal and reality, many cooperative behaviors have already found their way into the everyday lives of journalists: Press releases and events, online research with competitors/colleagues or the use of shared information services etc. (Seidel).

Building networks and sharing knowledge is in line with the spirit of the time. Despite numerous stumbling blocks and an often-increased use of human and financial resources, collaboration in sensibly selected projects is necessary to cover an increasingly globalized and complex world.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM

A short overview of the current state of collaborative journalism has now been provided. Another vital concept concerning cooperative modes of journalism is the before mentioned

citizen journalism. In contrast to collaborative journalism, which focuses on cooperation

between professional news and media institutions, citizen journalism is constituted by the independent publication activity of citizens. Since every journalist is also a citizen, is therefore every form of journalism citizen journalism? Rather, the term distinguishes between professional and leisure-time journalism. In addition to the professional journalist, the citizen journalist is the writing amateur, who actively participates in reporting and therefore contributes to public discourse (Adria).

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The forms of citizen journalism range from classic reader letters to publishers and commentary on a blog or podcast. Citizen journalists have the opportunity to set their topics apart from editorial agenda setting of big newspapers and take subjective perspectives. In local editorial offices, they are a supplement, when it comes to topics directly on the spot and, in countries with limited press freedom, a source of uncensored reporting. Citizen journalism, grassroots or

participatory journalism – the terms vary, but they have in common that citizens actively

participate in the media landscape. This is done either by independently writing information on a blog, commenting on articles or working with journalists. Another area of participatory

journalism touches upon the involvement of the reader in the creation process of newspapers,

magazines or online media, conducted through reader advisory boards, surveys on desired topics or media offerings based on membership (Adria).

Media professionals and media researchers use different approaches to describe citizen

journalism. For some, participatory journalism begins with writing a commentary or a letter to

the editor (Bosshart 130). Others use the term in connection with people who actively write articles or support journalists (Bosshart 130). For American journalist and blogger Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, all these different forms characterize participatory journalism. Within citizen journalism this can include content such as photos and videos taken by readers or the provision of specialist information. Moreover, citizens can enrich the research of traditional journalists with their expertise or commitment (Bowman and Willis 9). Citizen

journalism is therefore not in direct competition with classical journalism, in point of fact, they

extend it to include other perspectives, topics and opinions of the citizen and the audience (Lacy et al.).

The principle that citizens actively participate in social discourse can be traced back to the beginnings of the press (Bosshart). However, as this thesis is attempting the analysis of use cases for blockchain in journalism this quick introduction will focus on digitally enabled citizen

journalism on the web. What used to be leaflets, letters or reader calls is now offered by the

Internet. Here it is worth taking a brief look at the entire spectrum of social media offerings. Jan Schmidt distinguishes between the following five genres, which are in turn represented by different offerings:

• Platforms that offer a common infrastructure for communication or interaction to a multitude of users (e.g. social networks like Facebook or multimedia platforms like

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• Personal publishing tools that support the publication of individual content on the Internet, whereby the authors or originators are more important here than on the 'platforms' (e.g. weblogs, microblogging services such as Twitter or podcasts with audio content)

• Wikis in which hypertext documents are collaboratively created, extended and linked (e.g. the online encyclopedia Wikipedia)

• Instant messaging services that allow users to communicate with each other simultaneously (voice-based, but increasingly also via audio or video telephony) (e.g.

WhatsApp, Skype or Snapchat)

• Tools for information management (e.g. RSS reader, services for the collective collection and indexing of content such as Delicious or Mister Wong, but also social news services for the collective linking and evaluation of content such as digg or ShortNews) (25 ff.).

As this typology illustrates and Schmidt himself admits, a consistent and selective systematization of various forms of offerings is hardly possible due to the growing convergence of technical services. Meanwhile, numerous hybrids combine elements of different genres (Schmidt). For example, the short news service Twitter, which Schmidt assigned to personal publishing, also has elements of a platform in the sense of a social network, as users follow each other and thus remain in constant exchange. Facebook, on the other hand, allows users who are logged in to chat synchronously and thus has features of instant messaging. While certain genres are apparently characterized by the broad use of a certain software and its’ range of functions (e.g. Wikis created, using MediaWiki), others, such as personal publishing, follow a more content-functional definition and in principle cover very different applications and software solutions. For the present study and the state of research to be outlined here, however, such difficulties of order, which are also inherent in other proposals for the systematization of the social web (Ebersbach et al. 37 ff.), appear less problematic, because the primary question is, which applications on the Web have an affinity to journalistic media offerings? The overview therefore concentrates on offerings that are created and distributed exclusively by amateurs and have a functional and content-related proximity to journalism, which is why they are repeatedly mentioned in the literature on journalism research. This excludes social networks that primarily serve relationship and identity management (Busemann; Smith) as well as video portals such as YouTube and photo portals such as Flickr, which have so far hardly been associated with journalism due to their entertainment orientation in the specialist literature.

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Nevertheless, In the United States and Great Britain, leading newspapers and media have for years relied on a network of citizen journalists and their expertise. In some countries, critical bloggers, who report on topics that exclude state media provide information that professional journalists do not provide. In Germany, too, newspapers and online media are opening up to the various possibilities of actively involving their consumers through articles or other forms (Lacy et al.).

In contrast to professional journalists, many citizen journalists pursue their journalistic or participatory activity as a hobby. Out of enthusiasm and interest, they write or research on topics that are rather negligible for ordinary newspaper and magazine business. One difference is therefore the choice of topic, which is freely left to the citizen journalist him- or herself. Citizen

journalists have therefore, the option to report subjectively on what they have experienced and

to incorporate their opinion into their texts in a blatant manner (Linder). This is expressed in content, language and style. A journalist learns the basics of journalism, the various forms of presentation, narrative perspectives and the importance of research. Without practical experience or training in journalism, many citizen journalists differ from professional journalists in the quality and objectivity of their texts (Bosshart). While media organizations have to think first and foremost about their readers and sales figures, the citizen journalist is free of such pressures. Independent of current events, the citizen journalist may devote himself to a wide variety of topics and supplements classic journalism with thematic aspects (Adria).

The weakness of citizen journalism, however, lies in its lack of professionalism. In some cases, this results in not only a loss in objectivity but also quality (Kheny). What the neighbor next door writes about the ongoing 2020 Covid-19 pandemic is not necessarily based on facts but is mixed with personal experiences and his/her own opinion.

When citizens opt to produce content during conflict and disasters, they may be knowingly or unknowingly contributing to mainstream news efforts. Whatever the case, their efforts have led to a growing dependence on citizen content and have raised issues about the rights and responsibilities of both sides in these relationships.” (Wall 135)

Furthermore, citizen-journalistic texts seldom go through fact checking on the web (Kheny). For journalistic articles, proofreading and checking is indispensable to guarantee trustworthiness and through that the loyalty of readers, advertisers and other stakeholders. Furthermore, associations and defenders of the qualified journalist see a danger in enthusiastic hobby journalists inflating the price of content and further the trend of content commodification (Hood). Ultimately, citizen journalism can be regarded as complementing journalism rather

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than being in competition with professional journalists, who possess job-specific knowledge and practice that amateurs do not (Quandt & Schweiger).

Next to digitalization and platformization of news content a thrid trend has now been witnessed, an increased participation in various areas of society through the reconfiguration of the roles of service providers and recipients, the collective intelligence of a large number of users in the joint creation of content, knowledge and cultural assets observable in digital media environments (Bosshart). This, however, contributes to create a convoluted information environment on the web, deepening the problems of accountability and transparency and creating a breeding ground for fake news and misinformation. One of the currently most praised solutions to problems of trust is blockchain technology, which will be introduced in the following chapter.