scholarly journals Citizen videojournalism in professional online news media as a vehicle for democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Lai
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Depth Information ◽  
New Journalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Participatory Journalism ◽  
News Organizations

"Citizen journalists have reconstructed the traditional means of journalism practice by being their own eyewitness reporters, producers, and news information distributors; they self-advocate for citizens' voices, analyze news, debate, and construct news stories from citizens' perspectives. The internet has created an open system that encourages free press and enables the mobilization of the rights and practice of public free speech. Deliberative democratic goals are significant in participatory journalism, and these challenges mainstream news journalism in their traditional roles as conveyors of journalism standards, professional practices, and ethics mediation. As new media's momentum picks up, the journalistic space between public and professional journalists will need to be shared, and the practices of journalism will have to shift their models for this new form of democratic platform. Through new media and new journalism practices that encourage citizen involvement, journalism is evolving in setting a different standard of what is newsworthy. It is shifting editorial and political agendas to make use of wider content from the public, which could possibly infer the approval of using new journalism models to encourage citizen participation in news making. This research examines how the democratic practice of citizen participation in news content submissions affect news standards, by which the quality of news journalism is evaluated. This paper assesses how news organizations obtain content from citizens, how they make decisions to print and broadcast the content, and asks whether journalism has progressed into a model that involves citizens and professionals in an effective news production process. This study focuses on the implication of acquiring contributions of citizen journalism from the distinctive perspectives of news practices, participatory journalism, and the deliberation of democracy of citizens' press. This paper focuses on how the integration of user-generated content (UGC), in news stories as a vehicle that provides voices for citizens in a democratic movement. The usage of UGC in news institutions has changed traditional journalistic practices in terms of their news value, standard and quality. Essentially, editors of the news media determine which images captured by citizen journalists will be used, and they also decide the messages that they want to send to the public through framing and editing techniques. Previous research on editorial practice has identified various standards about newsworthiness that serve as selection criteria. However, there is a limited amount of research available on how UGC has changed the traditional journalism model. Through qualitative interviews with seven image editors, five news companies, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, Macleans, Rabble and The Toronto Star, this study sheds light on the editor's perceptions about citizen journalist videos and images in news content online. Three Canadian case examples are examined for their visual content analysis: the immigration ex-judge sex bribe case, the Vancouver police tasering of a Polish man, and Victoria police manhandling two young men at a nightclub. Through analysis of the interviews and case studies, this study finds that editors feel that UGC has not altered their traditional news standards. However, upon closer examination of news report cases, it does appear that UGC, which often consists of low quality videos with information entertainment content, has in fact affected the practices of quality journalism. The news media have adopted UGC content styles, which tend toward being more sensational, graphic, raw; these styles can make "hard news", which conveys investigative in-depth information, appear similar to "soft news", such as sensational infotainment. Notwithstanding that professional news organizations use public content in their news stories, they have not provided a platform of partnership to allow citizens to have a democratic voice through their media"--From Abstract.

scholarly journals Citizen videojournalism in professional online news media as a vehicle for democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Lai
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Depth Information ◽  
New Journalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Participatory Journalism ◽  
News Organizations

"Citizen journalists have reconstructed the traditional means of journalism practice by being their own eyewitness reporters, producers, and news information distributors; they self-advocate for citizens' voices, analyze news, debate, and construct news stories from citizens' perspectives. The internet has created an open system that encourages free press and enables the mobilization of the rights and practice of public free speech. Deliberative democratic goals are significant in participatory journalism, and these challenges mainstream news journalism in their traditional roles as conveyors of journalism standards, professional practices, and ethics mediation. As new media's momentum picks up, the journalistic space between public and professional journalists will need to be shared, and the practices of journalism will have to shift their models for this new form of democratic platform. Through new media and new journalism practices that encourage citizen involvement, journalism is evolving in setting a different standard of what is newsworthy. It is shifting editorial and political agendas to make use of wider content from the public, which could possibly infer the approval of using new journalism models to encourage citizen participation in news making. This research examines how the democratic practice of citizen participation in news content submissions affect news standards, by which the quality of news journalism is evaluated. This paper assesses how news organizations obtain content from citizens, how they make decisions to print and broadcast the content, and asks whether journalism has progressed into a model that involves citizens and professionals in an effective news production process. This study focuses on the implication of acquiring contributions of citizen journalism from the distinctive perspectives of news practices, participatory journalism, and the deliberation of democracy of citizens' press. This paper focuses on how the integration of user-generated content (UGC), in news stories as a vehicle that provides voices for citizens in a democratic movement. The usage of UGC in news institutions has changed traditional journalistic practices in terms of their news value, standard and quality. Essentially, editors of the news media determine which images captured by citizen journalists will be used, and they also decide the messages that they want to send to the public through framing and editing techniques. Previous research on editorial practice has identified various standards about newsworthiness that serve as selection criteria. However, there is a limited amount of research available on how UGC has changed the traditional journalism model. Through qualitative interviews with seven image editors, five news companies, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, Macleans, Rabble and The Toronto Star, this study sheds light on the editor's perceptions about citizen journalist videos and images in news content online. Three Canadian case examples are examined for their visual content analysis: the immigration ex-judge sex bribe case, the Vancouver police tasering of a Polish man, and Victoria police manhandling two young men at a nightclub. Through analysis of the interviews and case studies, this study finds that editors feel that UGC has not altered their traditional news standards. However, upon closer examination of news report cases, it does appear that UGC, which often consists of low quality videos with information entertainment content, has in fact affected the practices of quality journalism. The news media have adopted UGC content styles, which tend toward being more sensational, graphic, raw; these styles can make "hard news", which conveys investigative in-depth information, appear similar to "soft news", such as sensational infotainment. Notwithstanding that professional news organizations use public content in their news stories, they have not provided a platform of partnership to allow citizens to have a democratic voice through their media"--From Abstract.

scholarly journals Are Experts (News)Worthy? Balance, Conflict, and Mass Media Coverage of Expert Consensus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Expert Consensus ◽  
News Production ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Thematic Context

Overlooked in analyses of why the public often rejects expert consensus is the role of the news media. News coverage of expert consensus on general matters of policy is likely limited as a result of journalists’ emphasis in news production on novelty and drama at the expense of thematic context. News content is also biased towards balance and conflict, which may dilute the persuasiveness of expert consensus. This study presents an automated and manual analysis of over 280,000 news stories on ten issues where there are important elements of agreement among scientists or economists. The analyses show that news content typically emphasizes arguments aligned with positions of expert consensus, rather than providing balance, and only occasionally cites contrarian experts. More troubling is that expert messages related to important areas of agreement are infrequent in news content, and cues signaling the existence of consensus are rarer still.

scholarly journals Alternative news on social media in Norway

2022 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Thomas Wold
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Public ◽  
Small Organizations ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Participatory Journalism ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
News Sharing

Alternative news media in Norway have become visible in public debates. Partly because of news sharing on social media. Social media has become an arena for news, information, and public debate, and has also become a place to fight for the news agenda. The present study examines news sharing in social media in Norway and how right-wing alternative news outlets use social media to impact the news agenda. These are small organizations with only a handful of employees, but they have very proactive readers and feature a considerable amount of user-generated content. They are critical of immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, and of the political elite. They mimic traditional media in the way they organize and label their content, but their reporting is more subjective. The present study uses quantitative content analysis to reveal which topics are the most shared on social media, and from which news type of news organizations they come. It also looks at how news sharing differed in the days following a series of terrorist attacks and how the pattern changed during the course of a normal day. This leads to a discussion on participatory journalism and how news sharing can be seen as a part of the public debate.

Lügenpresse: The lying press and German journalists’ responses to a stigma

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 146488491989408
Author(s):  
Michael Koliska ◽  
Karin Assmann
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online News ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Institutional Strategies

The term Lügenpresse, ‘lying press’, was used by the German National Socialist Party before and during the Third Reich to discredit the news media and to undermine public trust. By 2014, reports of verbal and physical attacks on journalists and news organizations by individuals calling them Lügenpresse, had again become a frequent feature of the public discourse in Germany. While the term ‘fake news’ is used to similar effect and intent in the United States, Lügenpresse is a historically and politically charged expression of distrust in news media on an institutional level. This research examines the responses and institutional strategies of 27 news editors and executive editors in Germany’s leading broadcast, print and online news organizations to the accusations that they are lying to their audiences. Findings indicate that the reemergence of the term Lügenpresse, has led to considerable self-reflection within institutions, in an effort to counter the lack of trust and to demonstratively better serve the public. The main focus across newsrooms is on improving established processes and on making professional standards and practices more visible to the audience.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese News Media

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 

scholarly journals Social engineers and myth-busters: A comparative research on Lithuanian, Norwegian and Serbian language experts

2020 ◽  
pp. 292-344
Author(s):  
Vuk Vukotić
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Online News ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

This article compares the language ideologies of language experts (both academic and non-academic) in online news media in Lithuania, Norway and Serbia. The results will reveal that language is understood in diametrically opposed ways amongst Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts on the one, and Norwegian academic experts on the other hand. Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts are influenced by modernist ideas of language as a single, homogenous entity, whose borders ideally match the borders of an ethnic group. Norwegian academic experts function in the public sphere as those who try to deconstruct the modernist notion of language by employing an understanding of language as a cognitive tool that performs communicative and other functions. On the other hand, non-academic experts in all the three countries exhibit a striking similarity in their language ideologies, as the great majority expresses modernist ideals of language.

scholarly journals Public Opinion Polls and Experts in Election News

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Guðbjörg Hildur Kolbeins
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Online News ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Election News ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

By employing the theoretical framework of framing, the present paper attempts to examine the Icelandic media’s coverage of the 2013 parliamentary election by paying particular attention to coverage of public opinion polls and the policies of the political parties, i.e. the “horse-race” frame and the issue frame, and to examine media’s reliance on experts for interpretation of election news. Seven online news media, two newspapers, two radio stations and two television channels were monitored for 25 days prior to Election Day, i.e. from April 2 to April 26, 2013, - resulting in 1377 election news stories. The findings show, for example, that 29.8% of all the election news stories had public opinion polls as their primary angle while 12% of the stories were primarily issue-oriented. In addition, the media rely on experts for interpretation of the polls; five of the 10 most interviewed or quoted sources on public opinion surveys were political science experts who were affiliated with universities. Finally, news coverage of polls was generally amplified as media outlets had a tendency to report on public opinion polls that were commissioned by other media.

Sacrificing Credibility for Sleaze

2016 ◽  
pp. 1267-1282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽  
Erica Bailey
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Credibility Scale ◽  
Act Utilitarianism ◽  
Traditional Stories

This chapter uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalists' use of sensationalized or tabloid-style writing techniques affect the credibility of online news. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Soft news stories written with a tabloidized style were rated more credible than hard news stories that also had a tabloidized style. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. The authors conclude by utilizing act utilitarianism to argue that tabloidized writing is an unethical journalistic technique.

scholarly journals The Production of Information in an Online World

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 2126-2164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Cagé ◽  
Nicolas Hervé ◽  
Marie-Luce Viaud
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
High Reactivity ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Commercial Viability ◽  
Incentive Problem ◽  
News Event

Abstract News production requires investment, and competitors’ ability to appropriate a story may reduce a media’s incentives to provide original content. Yet, there is little legal protection of intellectual property rights in online news production, which raises the issue of the extent of copying online and the incentives to provide original content. In this article, we build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identifies each news event, trace the timeline of each story, and study news propagation. We provide new evidence on online news production. First, we document high reactivity of online media: one quarter of the news stories are reproduced online in under 4 min. We show that this is accompanied by substantial copying, both at the extensive and at the intensive margins, which may constitute a severe threat to the commercial viability of the news media. Next, we estimate the returns to originality in online news production. Using article-level variations and media-level daily audience combined with article-level social media statistics, we find that original content producers tend to receive more viewers, thereby mitigating the newsgathering incentive problem raised by copying.

Viability of Alternative Online News Media Organizations in Developing and Transformation Countries

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
News Media ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Online News ◽  
Development Cooperation ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Media Development ◽  
Economies In Transition ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Journalistic Quality

Media development cooperation is based on the assumption that free and independent media are a precondition for good governance and thus the effective functioning of democratic societies. In order to holistically approach the area of media development a concept that combines media sustainability and journalistic quality is needed – this call laid the foundation for the concept of media viability. This publication is one of the firsts that reveals general characteristics that shape, enhance and restrict media viability of online news organizations in developing countries and economies in transition. Further, the comparative approach serves to highlight the challenges and chances alternative online news media face with regard to media viability in the developing world and thus is a first step in the search for clues on how to best promote media viability. This analysis focuses on five countries within different world regions: Ecuador, Uganda, Cambodia, Ukraine and Tunisia.

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