Producers and Prosumers
A study into news producers’ perceptions of audience participation
at the Dutch newsroom
MA Journalism Studies Thesis
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Lecturer: Dr. T.S. Graham
Second reader: Dr. A.R.J. Pleijter
August 5, 2011
Judith van Kessel S1929232
judithvankessel@hotmail.com
Contents
CONTENTS... ... ... ... 2
CHAPTER 1 ... ... ... ... 4
INTRODUCTION ... ... ... ... 4
CHAPTER 2 ... ... ... ... 9
LITERATURE REVIEW ... ... ... 9
2.1 Introduction ... 9
2.2 The rise of UGC and participatory journalism within mainstream media ... 10
2.3 UGC practices in the actual newsrooms ... 15
2.4 To a journalistic decade of co-creation ... 18
2.5 Conclusion ... 21
CHAPTER 3 ... ... ... ... 23
METHODOLOGY ... ... ... ... 23
3.1 Introduction ... 23
3.2 The research design... 24
3.3 Data collection procedures: sampling and ethical considerations ... 25
3.3.1 Sampling within the Dutch media landscape... 25
3.3.2 Ethical considerations of the chosen data... 26
3.4 Methodological approach... 27
3.5 Validity and reliability ... 29
3.6 Limitations ... 30
CHAPTER 4 ... ... ... ... 31
DISCUSSION ... ... ... ... 31
4.1 Introduction ... 31
4.2 Findings ... 31
4.3 Interpreting findings ... 37
4.4 Reflection back on literature... 41
4.5 Conclusion ... 45
CHAPTER 5 ... ... ... ... 47
CONCLUSION ... ... ... ... 47
5.1 Introduction ... 47
5.2 Summary of the study ... 47
5.3 Reflections, limitations and recommendations ... 50
5.4 Producers united with prosumers ... 53
REFERENCES ... ... ... ... 54
Chapter 1 Introduction
“At the newsroom, the journalist thinks too little: what does the reader want?”
Peter Vandermeersch (Dagblad van het Noorden, November 26, 2010)
The above translated quotation comes from Peter Vandermeersch the new editor-in-chief at the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad. He maintains that most editors at his newspaper are not aware anymore that they are writing for an audience. This is a striking statement, and it begs the question whether the building blocks of the journalistic profession have become taken for granted, or worse, forgotten?
Since 9/11 it has become clear that ordinary people could not only be an important source for journalists, but could also produce first hand pictures and stories much faster than journalists who were not on site. Authors such as the American journalist Dan Gillmor refer to tragic moments such as 9/11, hurricane Kathrina and the London bombings of 2005 as clear indications that people are not only consumers but producers of the news media today
(Gillmor, 2004). Citizen journalism became more popular and news blogs and newspapers gave rise, such as Politico, the Huffington Post and OhmyNews. These blogs are mostly grounded on socio-political viewpoints of ordinary people which are not given that much attention in the professional media.
A remarkable phenomenon is that there is no blog or other citizen journalistic activity as the above mentioned blogs worth mentioning in the Netherlands. The few successful Dutch blogs such as Iphoneclub or Misslipgloss are clearly not driven by socio-political or
journalistic purposes. This also means that the threat academics are speaking about, referring to the possibility that professional media are being challenged by citizen journalists, seems negligible for the Netherlands. But this does not mean that the news media have nothing to do with citizens and vice versa. Citizens also produce pictures when they are eyewitnesses of an incident, as for example in 2004 with the pictures they sent to Dutch media of the murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh lying on a cycle path. Journalists are not omniscient and are aware of the fact that they cannot always be at the right place at the right time. This is why journalists need their audience as an interactive source, and their audience has to be aware of the many ways they can serve the media.
In this study, I will investigate whether Dutch journalists consider audience
participation or contributions as a valuable source for their own news production, how they deal with user-generated content during their own working routines and practices and to what extent journalists, bound to a news organization, are stimulating audience participation
nowadays. There is a lot written about citizen journalism, and other kinds of journalism which discusses the input or news production of citizens, such as public, interactive and participatory journalism (Nip, 2006). However, there is a lack of literature on the hybridization of story ideas and material of citizens and journalists, in order to come to a co-creation of the
dissemination of information. Instead of this, some of them are focusing on the vague concept of re-engagement in public life, as is the case with public journalism (Nip, 2006, p.213). The existing articles in journalism or cultural studies rarely combine the media and their audience together, in the coming about of a news story or item. Some authors write about the blurred relationship between the media and their audience, on which most authors refer to the phenomena of consumers becoming producers (Gillmor, 2004, XII). Other authors elaborate on this by writing about the blurring borderline that separates professional journalists and their audience (Domingo et al, 2008, p.326). However, there is little research here with regard to the Dutch context about the usage of audience input within the journalistic production of a news medium, and specifically, how journalists adapt or stimulate audience participation.
In this thesis, I want to find out to what extent news media organizations in the Netherlands use the input of their audiences for the establishment of their own journalistic product and in which ways they are stimulating audience participation to enrich their journalistic potentials. To mark out my research question, I want to take a look at the production side of the journalistic process, not the content or reception side. The production side says something about the way journalists give meaning to their news items and about the way media organizations are working according to a system which is journalistic worthy. We have to keep in mind that the word ‘journalism’ does not simply and solely refer to a
profession. As the Dutch media-theorist Mark Deuze (2005) states, journalism is also an ideology, a ‘system of believes’ (Deuze, 2005, p.444). This means that the journalistic practice is dependent on the meaning journalists give to their news work. Thus, it would be interesting to take a look at the production side of journalism in the Netherlands, in trying to find out whether journalists consider audience participation or contributions as a valuable source for their own news production and to what extent they stimulate audience participation nowadays.
According to Deuze, the biggest obstacle to media convergence is the individualistic nature of journalists (Deuze, 2005, p.425). There are tensions between the media as a top- down organization with the citizens as a bottom-up force. I do not want to claim that professional journalists are at bay, but as Deuze says, it comes down to the combination of mastering newsgathering and storytelling techniques, coupled with a rethinking of news producer-consumer relationships as one of the biggest challenges in current journalism (Deuze, 2005, p.451). Questions such as ‘How do Dutch media reinvent themselves?’ and
‘Does audience material change the journalistic practice?’ will come up in this thesis.
To specify what I mean with audience input, material or participation, I want to outline the following. I’m referring to all various types of information - for example e-mailing story suggestions or remarkable photographs- of which the audience of a news medium contributes to the final products of that medium in question. I will also apply this definition when I am talking about user-generated content (UGC), although I am aware that the content the
audience is communicating about with journalists is not always online content. Following on this, research from Wardle & Williams (2010) made clear, the term UGC has a lot of layers; it can refer to audience content, but also to audience comment, and so on. In this study, I will take into account of these various layers. The term ‘user-generated content’, shorted as UGC, will in this thesis not be used as a way of describing content being created and shared by users on the Internet, as being used in the article of Singer & Ashman (2009) for example, because I’m not necessarily referring to audience material which has been created and shared by the audience itself, but under the name and accountability of a medium. By contrast, the term UGC can be used in the way authors as Domingo (2008) and Hermida & Thurman (2008) refer to in their articles, as a way in which the audience generates content but where journalists often interfere as gatekeepers before a (news) story is being established. In this thesis, it is also taken into account how many formats of UGC are being developed per specific Dutch medium, to find out if the medium is stimulating audience participation. For this, I’m referring to the UGC formats as examined by the media-researchers Hermida and Thurman (2008).
Mainly, this thesis will provide its reader a clear understanding of the relationship between the Dutch media and their audience. I will examine this by interviewing journalists from national, local and regional newspapers and broadcasters in the Netherlands. One of the important reasons why my research is focused on the production side is that it is odd that most literature cuts the audience out when it comes to professional journalism. Distinctions such as Joyce Nip’s (2006) between five different types of journalism (traditional, public, citizen,
interactive and participatory) gives the idea that these ‘types’ exist next to each other and gives also the assumption that traditional journalism is not susceptible to change and has nothing to do with audience contributions. Nip is aware of the fact that the audience is a great news source from which journalists gather information and opinion (Nip, 2006, p. 216). But, she doesn’t mention anything about the fact that citizens are also capable to come out with information or visual material on their own, by which they want to contribute to the
dissemination of information by a news medium in order to co-create the news. Citizens do participate in the news service of professional media, instead of being solely mentioned in a particular section such as ‘Letters to the editor’. It looks like the interaction between the media and the audience in this thesis would be more of a mishmash between the concepts of traditional and participatory journalism.
Apart from the cultural dynamic of the journalistic practice, the media landscape is also dynamic and liable to change. Deuze describes the changing culture of journalism in an obvious way. While in the 19th century print media were the most common information source, with the coming of radio and television, the 20th century media landscape changed to an electronic landscape. In addition to this, citizens were going to use the Internet at a daily basis. The important role of the Internet in everyday life led to a digital culture in the 21st century (Deuze, 2006, p.62). Nowadays, everyday life is influenced by computerization, which has also to do with changing cultural processes such as globalization, post nationalism and individualism (p.63). As a result, media are being subject to a re-mediation process, while citizens are having the ability to participate more in this digital culture. One of the
expectations is that the digital age could have changed the way journalists and citizens interact and exchange information with each other for the benefit of the journalistic practice.
For my research, I conducted face-to-face in-depth interviews with Dutch editors-in chief, editors and journalists from a dozen different news media organizations between September-November 2010. I selected both national, local and regional media, as well as written and audio-visual media to give a taste of the various Dutch media landscape. Readers of this thesis will therefore gain a broad understanding of the relationship between Dutch media and their audience. This means that I do not want to claim a once and for all remaining conclusion of how ‘the’ Dutch media generate audience material. My research will discuss the communication between Dutch news organizations and citizens nowadays and will give recommendations for the future. The respondents I interviewed had direct experience with incoming story suggestions or user generated content. For the interviews I used semi-
structured qualitative interviewing, the way it is being explained by Bryman and Bell in chapter 18 of their book Business Research Methods (2007).
The remainder of this study is organized into four chapters. In the following chapter, a review of the literature is presented. Recent articles and debates will provide insights about journalistic developments concerning audience participation within media organizations, user- generated content and participatory journalism. This is followed by a chapter of research design and methodology adopted for this study. In Chapter 4, I present and discuss the results of this research. In particular, I provide reflection on the findings and draw conclusions which attempt to answer the research questions of this thesis. At last, the final chapter contains the summary, conclusion and recommendations of the study.
Chapter 2
Literature review
2.1 Introduction
In the past decade, a lot of literature has been published about the changing media landscape with regard to the altered role of the audience in the news process. According to the latest IPI- Poynter report by the International Press Institute, the media are coping with many changes such as lowered advertisement incomes, splintered audiences and the so-called ‘muscling-in of amateurs’ (IPI, 2010). Two authors of the report, Shirky and McKenzie, refer to a shift of power, caused primarily by the Internet, which is two-way and group orientated; or as Shirky states: “a medium that makes everyone who connects to it a potential producer of bits and not just a consumer of them” (p.19). The dreaded shift of power would indicate that the new lightweight technologies, available to almost everyone, are a new capacity for instant scrutiny and accountability that is way beyond the narrower, assumed power and influence of the traditional media (McKenzie, 2010, p.33). In other words, professional journalists have to be on their guard against a transformation of their own audience into citizen journalists; stealing their scoops, deciding what is news and, eventually tone down their position of the Fourth Estate. The audience is turning itself into a Fifth Estate, not based on an institution such as the clergy, nobility, the commons, and the media, but on a new ‘network of networks’ space or platform (Dutton, 2010, p.22).
This thesis recognizes these changes in the media landscape, but goes against the notion of a Fifth Estate as a threat to the Fourth Estate. Audience material is rather seen as an addition to the news making process and indirectly shows that journalistic routines and practices are still operative and necessary, which will be shown in empirical studies. In doing this, this chapter will provide insight into the occurred changes in the 21st century media landscape concerning professional journalism, including the rise of user-generated content (UGC) in the newsroom and the measure in which audience participation is guaranteed by editors and reporters within a media organization. I will give this a scientific basis later on, in view of drawing conclusions out of this literature review chapter in combination with the fourth chapter, which will represent the results of the in-depth interviews with journalists at twelve Dutch media-organizations.
In most articles in which audience participation and UGC are combined with professional journalism, the online journalism of a media organization is studied instead of the usual traditional production process of professional journalists. This thesis will also hold on to this line, although we must keep in mind that there are also ways for journalists to bond with the audience through a traditional medium, such as the newspaper, broadcasting and radio programs. But these activities are studied to a lesser degree in academic writings and are therefore not easy to classify. Deuze’s (2003) research provides an overview of the kinds of online journalism that have emerged during the first decade of the Internet by identifying four types: mainstream websites, index and category sites, meta and comment sites and share and discussion websites (Deuze, 2003, p.204-205). This thesis will only refer to mainstream news sites, given the focus of this study. At that time, Deuze stated that this type of news site does not differ much from print or broadcasting journalism in its approach to journalistic
storytelling, news values and relationships with audiences (p.209). The last statement is called into question because nowadays, online newspapers seem to stimulate the relationship with their audience much more online. Research by Thurman (2008) and Domingo (2008) for example touch upon this. Furthermore, this thesis will look at online participatory journalism as opposed to citizen or civic journalism (Nip, 2006). This means that citizens are not
particularly viewed as members of communities, but as individuals who could give contributions to professional news writing in order to conceive a better, democratic journalistic product.
In section 2.2, a short overview of factors that changed the 21st century media landscape are provided. Additionally, I pay particular attention to the rise of UGC and participatory journalism. In section 2.3, I elaborate on this, by providing a mapping of UGC practices and lend insight into relevant ethnographical and empirical studies about newsrooms and their adoption of UGC. In section 2.4, theoretical as well as empirical views of the
changes western newsrooms are coping with are discussed, in order to come to a journalistic decade of co-creation. Finally, in section 2.5, the chapter ends with some closing remarks.
2.2 The rise of UGC and participatory journalism within mainstream media
Although the building blocks of journalism with ideals to strive for objectivity and neutrality in coverage are steady, the concept of journalism has always been liable to change while flourishing in western democratic culture. Journalists are meant to be a source of information,
a mediator between politicians and the public, an advocate of the public’s rights and with Edmund Burke’s contributions in the late 18th century, journalists also need to operate as watchdogs (McNair, 2009, pp.239-242). They also should provide a platform for and stimulate public debate (Habermas, 1989). But giving a professional interpretation to these building blocks nowadays is different, due to cultural and technical changes. One of the buzzwords referring to the latest changes in journalism is ‘Web 2.0’. O’Reilly (2005) coined this term to refer to a new generation of web-based services that put emphasis on social networking, collaboration and participation. With the emergence of the Web 2.0, audiences are occupying a space at the intersection between old and new media and are demanding the right to participate within that culture (Jenkins, 2006, p.24).
The ideology of journalism and the way it is realized in society was subject to some noticeable changes in the 21st century. Today, all aspects of everyday life in highly
industrialized post-modern societies are to some extent influenced and implicated by computerization (Deuze, 2006, p.63) in the contemporary network society (Castells, 1999).
Not only do we have to cope with digitalisation and an evolving Internet culture, the media have also become an integrated part of our lives. Contemporary media studies in wired countries such as Japan, the United States, The Netherlands or Finland tend to reveal that people spend twice as much time with online media, such as making blogs or adding information to Wikipedia, than they think they do (Deuze, 2007a, .IX). As a result, citizens became aware that they no longer have to rely on journalists to tell them what they can or should read or write (Chung, 2007, p.44).
When participation on the Internet gained an important meaning in the daily lives of citizens and journalists as well, citizens expressed at the same time a growing distrust of the media (idem). To make citizens feel more involved, professional media organizations were also making participation possible on their mainstream websites. In journalism, media and communication studies, authors refer to material which has been posted online by users themselves, as user-generated content (UGC). The concept is vague; UGC could be anything from breaking news footage to networked journalism. Its meaning depends on what kind of content or form journalists consider as content that has been generated by users. Therefore, when in this thesis UGC or audience material is mentioned, I will refer to Hermida and Thurmans (2008, p.344) definition of UGC; “a process whereby ordinary people have an opportunity to participate with or contribute to professionally edited publications.” In this way, firstly, it is clear that UGC refers to activities which are connected with mainstream media organizations; instead of user contributions on for example share sites such as
YouTube. Second, the audience does not literally have to be viewed as ‘users’, because people can also contribute to the news making process in communicating with journalists by sending in letters or making phone calls.
The rise of UGC has technological as well as social roots. We must not forget that the audience was already part of traditional media, mostly being used as ‘vox populi’. Next to this, they had the ability to communicate with traditional news media throughout letters or by making a phone call. However, UGC portals on mainstream websites made it possible for users to have better access to networked media and are making it easier and faster for journalists to talk back. This alteration fits into the transformation process in journalistic culture Deuze (2006) describes; as a changing pattern from print journalism in the 19th
century; to electronic journalism in the 20th century with the advent of radio and television; to a digital culture in the 21st century. But technology did not only play an important role in the transformation of the news production of journalism, it also indirectly blurred the line between the public and private sphere. Due to the Internet and all its latest technological features, the audience is not anonymous anymore and is not only receiving but also producing news (Pavlik, 2000, p.234). According to Pavlik, the process of publishing the news would become much more a dialog between the press and the public (Pavlik, 2000). As it has turned out, the rise of UGC portals on websites of traditional media, made a participatory instead of recipient engagement of citizens possible (Gillmor, 2004; Van Dijck, 2006; Shirky, 2010). It cleared the way for amateurs and professionals to come closer together and discuss their worldviews, which also points to social instead of technological changes in Western democratic media landscapes.
While the rise of UGC could be ascribed to technological changes, as Pavlik has done, it can also be viewed as an integral part of social constructivism. In this, the social
environment or social group takes part in the creation of a product (Bijker, Hughes & Pinch, 1987, p.5). For journalism, this means that the way journalists exercise their profession and make decisions of inclusion and exclusion in the establishment of their news productions, constantly gives meaning to the journalistic practice. In other words, each user attributes to the product and each medium tries to adapt it into their own newsroom to fit into their working routines and professional culture (Domingo, 2008, p.684). This possible
hybridization between the ideas of journalists and citizens may create a more transparent, comprehensive and dialogical reporting that could strengthen democratic participation in plural societies. Deuze calls the combination of mastering newsgathering and storytelling techniques in all media formats, the integration of digital network technologies coupled with a
rethinking and re-configuration of the news producer-consumer relationship, one of the biggest challenges facing journalism in the 21st century (Deuze, 2004, p.146).
Overall, the rise of UGC, due to technological and social factors, created a new type of journalism: participatory journalism. Since the Internet enabled every user to become a
producer of content and distribute it globally (Paulussen et al, 2007, p.133), users were already operating on an amateurish journalistic level. Participation is an important concept, because citizens can now in this highly-individualized society go on the Internet and join a community or network online and can share their opinions without being dependent on the media’s vox pops and opinion polls. But, instead of distancing themselves from professional journalists with citizen or public journalistic activities, and due to the creation of UGC portals at news websites, the media audiences now have the opportunity for becoming producers instead of solely being consumers. Moreover, participatory journalism has gained legitimacy as a form of news production in its own right (Deuze et al, 2007b, p.335). For example, the German online newspaper Opinio is a workable alternative to the traditional separation of journalists, their sources and the public and even has due to its success a print magazine with a selection of the best articles of the website (p.330). In short, journalists have to be aware that users have their own tools now for capturing and submitting stories and photos that are newsworthy, and therefore, they have to carry through some changes in their daily news making routines.
Various studies have discussed to what extent this affects professional journalism. In most theoretical studies, it is remarked that the usage of UGC and participatory journalism causes some tensions for professional journalists, because in former days the professionals were the main producers and distributors of information. As Harrison states: “UGC has created a range of tensions and problems for journalists who seek to reconcile their traditional values of quality, impartiality and balance with ‘audience participation’” (Harrison, 2010, p.243). Shirky (2010), being overly optimistic, believes in a shift of power from the media and politicians to the participatory ‘journalist’. He talks about the risk associated with shifting power from the Third and Second estate to the Fourth estate – what Dutton calls the Fifth estate - which would refer to citizens as participatory journalists. Shirky takes the example of the London bombings in 2005, where Prime Minister Tony Blair could not go along with the statement of the head of London’s Metropolitan police, who stated that there was an electrical failure in the underground, because of the hundreds of pictures and posts which were sent by witnesses (Shirky, 2010, p.20). In addition to this, when the news media are enabling specific UGC portals, they could somehow stimulate and filter footage very quickly and have a central
place for discussions and comments (Wardle & Williams, 2010, p.794), which is one of the biggest advantages for media organizations to stimulate audience participation. Another advantage of audience participation is that it should challenge journalists to experiment with new information distribution practices, while also pushing them to involve new voices that are traditionally excluded from mass media (Chung, 2007, p.46).
According to some authors, audience participation also brings along some tensions for professional journalism. It is important to keep in mind first that journalists have always used the input of their audience in the establishment of news stories. For example, journalists already received story suggestions and ‘letters to the editor’ and they needed their audience for man-in-the-street-interviews. But what is new here and has effect on journalism is not, according to Shirky, the possibility of occasional citizen involvement; “What’s new is that making public statements no longer requires professional outlets, that citizens now have tools that enable them to assemble around causes they care about without needing to live near each other” (Shirky, 2010, p.21). Gunter argues too that one of the most difficult changes for journalists in the online environment is the partial loss of their gate-keeping role: “With the Internet, sources can communicate directly to the public and the public can communicate directly to sources and to other members of the public, cutting out the requirement for a journalistic mediator” (Gunter, 2003, p.171). Arguments like Gunter’s seem to be based on groundless fears. Gunter does not mention one of the most important characteristics of professional journalism, namely the network of sources journalists have at their disposal, while the public has not. Furthermore, we must take into account that Gunter’s book was written in a year many news organizations and broadcasters were going online. News
websites were relatively new, so interactivity on the website of a news organization was also scarcely out of the egg. Gunter is, on the other hand, right by claiming that the increased use of computer-mediated technology in the newsroom has meant that journalists can no longer rely purely on traditional reporting skills (Gunter, 2003, VIII-IX). This argument is also been made by other authors (see also Chung, 2007; Domingo, 2008; Gillmor, 2004; Thurman, 2008). That is why it is still an important task for journalists to develop how to interact with the public.
2.3 UGC practices in the actual newsrooms
Adapting to all these changes in the media landscape, journalists have become more aware of the changing relationship between themselves and their audience. They are now in the process of rethinking and reinventing themselves and preparing themselves for an age of participatory news (Deuze et al, 2007b). It is namely important that the identity of being a journalist should not be built only on being a gatekeeper and top-down storyteller but also on being a gate- opener and a resource of participation (Domingo, 2008). Studies like Deuze’s (2007b) and Domingo’s (2008) referred to the same kind of fear: when journalists would not start to listen to their audiences, online users might look for other spaces to share information instead of wanting to attribute their material for professional journalistic outcomes.
In journalism studies, much of the empirical research has focused on how audience participation has influenced professional journalism. The key findings are mentioned below.
There are three bodies of empirical studies relevant to this study: mapping of UGC practices, ethnographic studies of newsroom practices regarding UGC; and interviews with journalists as a means of discovering the impact of audience material and participation on current newsrooms.
Much of the earlier research has focused on mapping the adoption of UGC by mainstream news media. By doing this, the UGC portals or various forms of UGC are mapped, in order to find out what form of audience material is most used by citizens to interact in the news making process. According to Thurman’s research concerning British news websites there are seven major formats to encourage contributions from the public:
polls, ‘have your says’, ‘chat rooms’, ‘Q&A’s, ‘Blogs with comments enabled’, ‘Pre-
moderated message boards ’and ‘Post-moderated message boards’ (Thurman, 2008, p.140). In his article with Hermida, concerning in-depth interviews with editors and managers from 12 British news organizations, Thurman made a further distinction between ‘blogs’ and ‘reader blogs, changed ‘chat rooms’ into ‘message boards’ – probably because message boards such as forums are more common on news websites- and added the UGC-forms ‘Your media’ and
‘Your story’ (Hermida & Thurman, 2008, pp.345-346). The last two are of significant importance because these are the photos, videos and story suggestions readers submit, which they think matter. We should also be aware that audience images are seen as a subject on their own because they are the only-consumer-created content that is occasionally given a similar status as professional material (Pantti & Bakker, 2009, p.485), as was stated above in the example Shirky gave about the London bombings. Also polls, message boards and blogs
stimulate audience participation, but are more focused on opinion than on information that the public sees as important for the publication of news stories.
Mainstream media have been increasingly adopting participatory forms of journalism.
For example, online newspapers in Europe and the United States are increasingly adopting interactive features (Domingo et al, 2008) and well-known newspapers such as the Guardian are incorporating UGC in their perceptions and practices with their ‘Comment is free’
platform on the website (Singer & Ashman, 2009). Many current studies discuss the BBC, as being an innovative example of stimulating interactivity between journalists and citizens.
Recent articles from Wardle and Williams (2010) and Harrison (2010) both study UGC practices at the UGC Hub of the BBC, a part of the BBC newsroom devoted to audience participation since 2005. According to Wardle and Williams, the Hub has allowed the BBC to do two things: to filter breaking news stories very quickly and to have a central place where discussion board comments can be trawled for news gathering purposes (Wardle & Williams, 2010, p.794). Harrison’s research can be seen as a more critical attitude towards the UGC Hub at the BBC. Although Harrison found out that UGC is stimulated and viewed as a contributed factor to the news, it did not alter the news selection criteria or editorial values and also diminishes the public service standards of BBC news through the spread of soft journalism (pp.253-254). At the BBC, UGC reinforced a tendency toward soft journalism and human interest, as exemplified by the rise of stories centered on crime, calamities and
accidents (p.255), and therefore may limit the civil function of BBC news.
Although a tendency to human interest stories can diminish the quality of public debate, it can, on the other hand, make citizens feel useful by sending in audience material about topics they appeal the most to. This seems to stimulate a good relationship between journalists and their audience, as is been noted in Pantti and Bakker’s (2009) research based on interviews with journalists in different media in the Netherlands. Specific directed appeals to the audience, such as story suggestions about the liberation of the Nazi occupation, make the audience feel that they are worthy addressed as citizens and not as consumers (Pantti &
Bakker, 2009, p.487).
This means that there are various forms of incoming UGC possibilities in current newsrooms. However, while some ethnographic studies reveal that editors are welcoming audience material, at the same time, they thwart UGC. This is due to the fact that daily routines and practices in gathering news have not changed much. Domingo (2008) observed the working-routines of journalists at mainstream news websites and concluded that there is a strong inertia in the online news rooms that prevents them from developing most of the ideals
of interactivity. The main reason for this is that in traditional online newsrooms news production was strictly separated from interactivity management (p.696), while nowadays journalists have to find out how they manage UGC. Domingo elaborates on this in another study with Quandt and Heinonen on sixteen online newspapers (primarily in Europe): “The core journalistic role of the ‘gatekeeper’ who decides what makes news remained the monopoly of professional even in the online newspapers that had taken openness to other stages beyond interpretation.” In addition to this, most online newspapers viewed audience participation valuable for their readers to debate current events (Domingo et al, 2008, p.338) instead of solely attributions to their own news production. On the other hand, some
journalists considered that many voices were not worth listening to because they were too personal or offensive, as turned out in the study of Singer and Ashman (2009) at the Guardian newspaper and website.
With the incorporation of audience participation and UGC within the media process, the traditional bottom-up position of the audience and the top-down position of the media cannot be taken for granted anymore. However, the problem remains for journalists to integrate audience material, as photos or videos, and audience participation, such as
contributions like story suggestions or opinions on forums, in their own news-making process.
Most early research about audience participation reported that there is not a coherent approach in the newsroom to generate and integrate audience participation in the news making process.
The lack of a model to monetize citizens’ initiatives remained a pressing concern (Hermida &
Thurman, 2008, p. 353).
That adopting and managing UGC practices is sometimes difficult for journalists, is well explained in recent British research. Thurman (2008) analysed nine British news
websites, Singer and Ashman (2009) examined the assessment and incorporation of audience material at the Guardian newspaper and web and Harrison (2010) looked at UGC at the BBC Hub. In each of these studies, it was concluded that although media have begun to host spaces for user-generated content, they were still holding on to traditional standards (Thurman, 2008, p.154; Singer & Ashman, 2009, p.18; Harrison, 2010, p.253). This means that it is difficult for newsrooms to alter their traditional routines and practices, while they mostly have the will to adopt UGC forms. Newsrooms which stimulate audience participation, don’t give their role as gatekeeper away, they are of the opinion that only the professionals can select and filter incoming information. This attitude is mentioned in articles about online newsrooms and in interviews with editors. For example, Thurman (2008, p.142) found out that 80 percent of the 25 textual formats for reader participation were edited or pre-moderated. Furthermore, the
idea of publishing a comment without checking it first was described as ‘very dangerous’ and incoming comments or blogs have to be selected out of ‘those who actually can write and have something to say’ (Hermida & Thurman, 2008, p.350). Wardle and Williams (2010) concluded that the vast majority of the journalists interviewed articulated their approach to working with UGC using the lens of traditional journalistic techniques and values. In sum, technology might have changed, but the journalism practices and routines have not.
The main issue is that when journalists do not change the way they perceive their role, participatory journalism cannot fully be embraced. An editor of the BBC declared that UGC is rather welcomed when their audience spends time on alerting the BBC to an event which has a chance of very substantial and influential coverage (Wardle & Williams, 2010, p.79). This means that journalists still have a tendency of holding on to the same authority-task they have had for decades. It is striking, though, that in spite of the results that newsrooms hold on to their traditional practices and routines, most of these articles start off with the assumption that the adopting of UGC by news organizations is evidence of audience empowerment or even more emphasized: “The rapid growth of various forms of user-generated content, from comments to hosted blogs to “hyper local” news stories, means the journalist has far less control over what was once an essentially industrial process of making news” (Singer &
Ashman, 2009, p.3). Eventually, the paradox is that most studies don’t conclude their research with a possible threat of the loss of journalistic routines and practices, but that traditionalism could be a threat when media organizations stick to it by not looking further for new ways to interact with their audience.
2.4 To a journalistic decade of co-creation
As mentioned before, most journalists and editors are trying to find new ways to incorporate audience material into their own professional productions, but on the other side are struggling in doing this. They can, however, not ignore the technological and social changes in the media landscape. The role of journalists is no longer to inform or entertain; it is to engage and
interact with an enormously diverse range of unseen, but definitely not unheard, people (Singer & Ashman, 2009, p.18).
Even though media are stimulating UGC portals on their websites, inclusion and exclusion of information always depends on the way journalists fulfill their gatekeeper- role.
In Domingo, Quandt and Heinonen et [al.] (2008), the authors analyzed the websites of
sixteen leading online newspapers, eight from European countries and eight from the United States. They made a distinction between five different journalistic processes:
access/observation, selection/filtering, processing/editing, distribution and interpretation. The key findings were the following. In most cases there was a way – but not always a specific portal – to contact the newsroom or specific journalists, but relatively few websites explicitly invited the audience to submit story ideas (Domingo et al, 2008, p.337). This means that there is good access, but it could be better when news organizations would stimulate
communication with citizens much more. Second, the authors concluded that the audience, which had the possibility to participate in the news making process via blogs, citizen stories and submitting photos and videos, did not take part at all in the selecting and filtering process.
Professionals reserved the last word in management of each stage of the production processes, citizens were generally limited to a role of contributors (Domingo et al, 2008, pp.334-335).
Exceptions to this rule are the stories of online newspapers that were chosen by citizens by a ranking of ‘most recommended stories’. Most striking is, that according to this research most online newspapers consider audience participation as an opportunity for their readers to debate current events (p.338). This goes against the idea of what in the above mentioned empirical research comes forward, of comments often been seen as invaluable contributions to the media organization. Next to this, the above mentioned research also points to one of the struggles for journalists to adopt UGC, because at the moment they have created UGG portals, they are not assured that the audience material or information they are receiving is actual contributing to their own news making process.
Another important issue of integrating UGC in the newsroom practice seems to be that journalists are practicing the same kind of journalism, they traditionally have learned, to use at another media level. For example, while writing an article for their mainstream website, journalists make use of the same kind of skills they have learned for writing articles in their newspaper. As a result, the website of the news medium is being overall viewed of secondary consideration next to the actual newspaper or broadcasting the medium disseminates.
Domingo (2008) calls this ‘the myth of interactivity’. There is a gap between, on the one hand, online journalists’ perceptions of the Internet’s potential and, on the other hand, the actual use of interactive features (Domingo, 2008, p.680). Domingo stresses the importance of the role of the public: “Users can also be the eyes of the journalist, uncovering new hot topics and submitting first-hand accounts, photos and videos that can enhance a story.”(p.687). So when the website of a newspaper or broadcaster is being used as a platform, journalists can gain more active consciousness of spotting new happenings and can thereby gain creative
ideas for new stories. However, the problem is that research has shown that reporters were seldom involved in user debates (p.688). It is thus remarkable, that empirical research such as Domingo’s and Thurman’s shows that journalists are willing to integrate interactive features to stimulate submitting audience material, but don’t know how to integrate this in their standardized working practice. The discussion section of this thesis will elaborate on that for the Dutch media landscape.
The Internet should challenge journalists to extend their research and hybridize the establishment of their news stories with material coming from their own readers or viewers.
Domingo concludes that although traditional news production was separated from
interactivity management (p.696), journalists have to get rid of their traditional myths and must stimulate the reception of audience material (p.698). Deuze (2006) holds strong views about the idea that journalists need to adapt to the occurring changes in the media landscape.
Domingo (2008) gives the suggestion of making the mediums public accessibility bigger, by for example putting the e-mail address of a reporter at the bottom of an article on the website which belongs to the newsroom. E-mail also seems the best way for the audience to make contact with the news media (p.694). Chung (2007) also mentions that news organizations are not making enough use of interactive possibilities on the Internet, such as feedback options as for example e-mail addresses beneath the article of the journalist in question (Chung, 2007, p.47).
Opposed to this, not all journalists make use of interactive features on the Internet.
According to Chung’s article concerning interviews with website producers in the United States, editors which did not consider message boards as a valued part of online journalism, were of the opinion that people would only complain about things (p.54). According to them, a question and answer form of UGC would lead to more intelligent questions and answers, and would for journalists lead to better indications of important news topics. By comparing the attitudes of editors towards interactive features, Chung divided them in three subdivisions from most progressive till most conservative; the innovators, cautious traditionalists and purists. An important remark is that a conservative outcome is not necessarily related to a general conservative attitude within the newsroom. This is due to the fact that UGC portals, such as message boards, have to be moderated all the time, in order to avoid or remove offensive or uninteresting topics. Therefore, interactive features are costly to maintain, and also costly to implement (pp.56-57), which could discourage news organizations from making use of interactive features. In this thesis will therefore later on be brought to the notice how media organizations are dealing with this costing problem and whether journalists in the
Netherlands get enough time to implement and moderate interactive features on behalf of stimulating audience participation.
While making use of interactive features is a challenge for journalists, interactive communication could change the journalistic profession forever. Deuze and Fortunati (2010, p.2) recognize the 21st century developments about citizens becoming the ‘people formerly known as the audience’, a term Internet Guru Jay Rosen came up with. It would according to them then make sense that journalism as a profession would increasingly shift towards a co- creative mode. However, empirical research, which is above-mentioned, shows that it is hard for journalist to adapt to the latest participatory changes. According to Deuze and Fortunati, the reason for this is that journalists do not know how to respond to the conflict between journalistic ideology, rhetoric and ethics and the contrasting requests coming from their employers (p.3). What Deuze and Fortunati do not say literally, but mean with this, is that the uniqueness of the journalistic profession is decreasing. And more importantly: not only due to the fact that the people are not at the receiving end of the media anymore, but also due to the fact that much of the news as produced today is a commodity that people have either come to expect as free –for the Netherlands nu.nl is an example of this- and is also a lot distracted from stories to news agencies (p.7). It is therefore now more important than ever for
journalists to be creative in their profession and take back their unique position by listening to the stories their own audience moves. Stimulating interactive features and forms of UGC gives the audience a portal to communicate these stories with journalists.
2.5 Conclusion
In what has been stated above, turns out that the ultimate challenge for journalists in this digital and network-based culture is to manage audience participation and come to a co- creation of their own work included with audience material to strengthen their journalistic potentials. Only then, the profession of journalism can wield to defend its unique position in contemporary democratic society. The main issue is whether to see journalism as it works today as a profession that is ‘finished’, or as a trade that is continually evolving and therefore is ready to invest itself in its own development. Deuze’s observation that there is a gap on the one hand between online journalists perceptions of the Internet’s potential and, on the other hand, the actual use of interactive features (Deuze, Neuberger & Paulussen, 2004, p.22), seems still in place. There are no new journalistic working models for journalists which could
tell hem how to cope with audience participation properly. And the latest articles still speak about the unstable position of professional journalism (IPI, 2010) or about the myth
journalists are coping with to turn audience participation into a problem to deal with instead of an opportunity for change (Domingo, 2008). We still know very little about the effect of UGC behind the walls of media organizations. In the next chapters, I will examine how journalists in the Netherlands are coping with these changes in the media landscape and on which way they are trying to change their daily routines to integrate audience material in their own professional fieldwork.
Chapter 3 Methodology
3.1 Introduction
We know very little about how professional Dutch journalists deal with audience material in their daily working routines. Few studies focus on how UGC is being adopted by media organizations in the Netherlands. Deuze, Bruns and Neuberger (2007) mention the Dutch weblog Scoops, an initiative by Utrecht’s School of Journalism, but this site no longer exists.
And research which has been conducted within the professional news media sphere, such as Pantti and Bakker’s (2009), focuses on the content of incoming UGC, in particular on audio- visual audience material.
In this study, interviews were conducted with editors and journalists at 12 Dutch media organizations. The aim of the research is to pay attention to the production side of the communication between journalists and their audience and the way journalists are making communication possible with their audience, in order to strengthen their own journalistic outcomes. Their way of dealing with audience participation is examined with a qualitative approach. Qualitative research for instance implies that the results coming from the samples are not fixed, but are interpretative and are one way to understand, in this study, the way Dutch journalists of different newsrooms deal with user-generated content.
In this chapter, the research design and methodological approach are laid out in detail.
In section 3.2, I discuss the research design and the qualitative method adopted for analysis.
Here, I also mention the main research questions of this study. In section 3.3, the sampling procedures and ethical considerations are given. In this section, I present arguments for
choosing the 12 Dutch case studies and refer to the method used for conducting the interviews with journalists and editors (in-chief). In section 3.4, the methodological approach is mapped out in order to provide a detailed understanding of how the interviews were conducted, collected and analyzed. Section 3.5 provides insights into the validity and reliability of this study. Finally, in section 3.6, I discuss the limitations of this study.
3.2 The research design
The main research question of this research is: To what extent do media organizations in the Netherlands use the input of their audiences for the establishment of their own journalistic product? This immediately gives away that the focus of this study is on the hybridization between journalists and their audiences, instead of viewing UGC as a separate entity from professional journalism. This study also aims at finding out to what extent the Dutch print media have a methodological approach for dealing with audience participation. And also wonders to what extent the media are looking into the ideas and suggestions of the Dutch audience as a contribution to their own news productions. In this study, I analyze whether Dutch journalists consider audience participation or contributions as a valuable source for their own news production, how they deal with UGC during their own working routines and practices and to what extent journalists, bound to a news organization, are stimulating audience participation nowadays.
In order to address this question, a qualitative design was adopted. This method
signifies another approach than quantitative research, because it relies more on text and image data, takes unique steps in data analysis and draws on diverse strategies of inquiry (Creswell, 2003, p.178). In this study, some characteristics of qualitative research come forward. For instance, the interviews took place in natural settings (p.181) in order for the researcher to develop an idea of the existing newsroom practices. Another important aspect is that qualitative research is fundamentally interpretive, which means that the analyzed data has always a personal bias (p.184). Therefore, measures were taken to make this research valid and reliable, which are discussed in the fifth section of this chapter.
UGC, or audience material, is in this study not seen as a tool to, for example, strengthen citizen journalism, but as a public force which could attribute to and in a way strengthen professional journalistic outcomes. In this way, at one level, this study is a
normative analysis whereby the researcher will not only gather facts, but also will point out in which respects the object of study can be improved. In order to carry out the normative analysis, the newsroom practices of journalists and editors at 12 media organizations were evaluated and criticized. In addition to this, a comparable website analysis was provided in order to check how the UGC-portals the interviewees mentioned were implemented online.
The analysis was carried out following on the format analysis of Hermida and Thurman (2008), which has been referred to in Chapter 2. On another level, this study is descriptive in a way of providing a more accurate picture of how the news media in the Netherlands are
dealing with UGC practices. It represents a comparative case study design of in-depth interviews with journalists and editors from the 12 Dutch newsrooms. In this way, the data provide us an in-depth investigation into the phenomenon of UGC and are therefore meaningful in their own rich way.
3.3 Data collection procedures: sampling and ethical considerations
In this section, a detailed account of the data selection process is outlined. The sampling and organizing of the data is explained. Additionally, ethical considerations are discussed.
3.3.1 Sampling within the Dutch media landscape
A purposive sampling technique was used for this study. A dozen Dutch media organizations were selected consisting of six regional and local news media and six national news media organizations. In order to give a broad overview of the Dutch media landscape, media
organizations were intentionally selected from newsrooms from the north, south and west (the so-called Randstad) of the Netherlands. Furthermore, written as well as broadcasting media were selected. In this light, it is interesting to find out whether regional media stimulate audience participation more than national media; or whether there are differences in dealing with UGC between newspapers or broadcasters, and so on.
The news organizations were as follows (in alphabetical order): AT5, Dagblad de Limburger/ Limburgs Dagblad, Dagblad van het Noorden, L1, NOS, NRC Handelsblad, NRC Next, Het Parool, RTV Noord, De Telegraaf, Trouw and de Volkskrant. When sampling, the differences between the audiences the newsrooms are writing or broadcasting for were kept in mind. For example, a regional or local news medium has a smaller audience which is more likely to connect with their local news media.
A purposive sample of the journalists were selected by email addresses and contact numbers from the websites of the media organizations and with the help of a contact list of the Vereniging voor Onderzoeksjournalistiek (VVOJ), the Dutch organization for research
journalists. Respondents were sought who had direct experience with or knowledge about UGC and could give insight in the choices which are made combining audience material with the news making process. Following on this, contact was first made with editors-in-chief from
the selected newsrooms. In half of the cases, when they did not deal with the interviews themselves, these editors-in-chief replied with the contact information of another editor or journalist (from mostly the news agency or the Internet editorial office), who was more specified in knowing how the newsroom deals with audience material. In a few cases, the answer remained forthcoming. After that, contact via telephone was made with the secretarial department of the media organization in question, which connected the call through to the editor-in-chief or another editor who was well informed about the relationship between their journalists and their audience. In one case, at RTL Nieuws, the request to conduct interviews was refused because the editor-in-chief was under the impression that his newsroom had not enough features which would stimulate enough audience participation to talk about.
In the study, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 19
journalists, belonging to the 12 different newsrooms. Eight of the interviewees were editorial managers; three of the interviewees were editors of the Internet editorial office; three of the interviewees had the function of deputy editor; two of them were editors-in-chief; one of the interviewees belonged to the secretary office; another one of the interviewees was an all- round editor; and also one interviewee was a newsreader.
3.3.2 Ethical considerations of the chosen data
Most authors who discuss qualitative research design address the importance of ethical considerations, whereby the rights, needs, values and desires of the interviewees are taken into account (Creswell, 2003, p.201). In this study, this factor has been addressed as well.
Journalists were approached with in-depth interviews in order to receive profound answers, but also to give them the opportunity to give their opinion in a relatively open, not forces sphere. At the start, interviewees were asked if they were fine with the interview being
recorded. Afterwards, the interviewee was asked whether he or she was of the opinion that the information which had been given could be used for this study. In two cases, the interviewees of AT5 and Het Parool responded that they first wanted to take a look at the transcribed interview before it was used in this study. This was carried out accordingly.
Additionally, the editors and journalists interviewed for this study have been made anonymous. Although the interviewees were interviewed in an open setting and were not bothered if their names were mentioned, it is better suited for this study to view them as editors and journalists of a particular news organization.
