Participatory Journalism 2016 Abstracts
Communicative Antecedents of Political Persuasion. The Roles of Political Discussion and Citizen News Creation • Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu, University of Vienna; Matthew Barnidge, University of Vienna; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • For quite some time researchers have paid attention to how media and interpersonal discussion influence the way people persuade others politically. Recent academic efforts have been geared toward better explaining the mechanisms by which digital media technologies have afforded people new ways to persuade others. Within this context, a vibrant yet less explored area entails not only political discussion, but also the creation of news and public affairs content online. This study seeks to shed more light on how communicative behaviors lead to attempted political persuasion. Using two-wave panel survey data, we find that political discussion and citizen news creation mediate the relation between news use and political persuasion attempts. Furthermore, strength of partisanship moderates the relationship between content creation and attempted persuasion.
Asserting Credibility in a Crisis: How Journalists, Activists and Police/Government Officials Used Twitter During Ferguson • Amber Hinsley, Saint Louis University; Hyunmin Lee, Saint Louis University; Christopher Blank, Saint Louis University; Ricardo Wray, Saint Louis University; J.S. Onesimo Sandoval, Saint Louis University; Keri Jupka, Saint Louis University; Claire Cioni, Saint Louis University • This study examines the validity of Becker’s (1967) classic credibility model in today’s social media landscape. Interviews with activists, journalists and government/law enforcement officials explore how they used acts of journalism to establish their own credibility and assess the credibility of others via Twitter following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson. Though their “truth” often was different, they applied similar measures of credibility. Crises like Ferguson that are influenced by social media necessitate a revised hierarchy of credibility.
A Comparison of Journalistic Roles by Visual Journalists: Professionals vs. Citizens • Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky; Yung Soo Kim, University of Kentucky; Seungahn Nah • Using a Web-based survey targeting visual professionals, this study examines their professional role conceptions along with their views on emerging visual citizen contributors’ roles. While participants’ ratings of the two roles were generally correlated within each group, few correlations resulted between the two groups. Further, visual professionals rated their roles as significantly more important for all five roles. When assessing views on citizen-contributed visuals, it was clear that participants did not welcome citizens’ visual contributions.
News and Local Information on Reddit: An Online Ethnography of Collective Gatekeeping • Frank Michael Russell, University of Missouri School of Journalism • This study explores sharing and discussion of news and information on Reddit from the perspective of gatekeeping theory. Although Reddit is primarily an entertainment platform, “redditors” also use the site to share and discuss news and local information. Although they share mainstream news media content on the site, they vote for higher placement of stories in a way that seems to reflect more libertarian or socially liberal views than those reflected by traditional news media.
Spreading the News – Examining College Students’ Awareness of Their Participatory News Habits • Jennifer Cox, Salisbury University • A recent study of what news items college-age students post on Twitter revealed they largely focus on national/international news topics rather than items that affect them locally. The study also showed these college-age Millennials preferred softer news topics, including sports, entertainment/celebrity, and lifestyle items, as well as topics that contained elements of oddity/novelty and conflict. This study builds on that research to reveal whether students are aware of their preferences when posting news. A post-test survey was administered to students to compare what types of stories students thought they posted with the ones they actually did post. Students’ awareness of their news preferences could help researchers understand disparities in their self-reporting and their perceptions of their own online personas. The results indicate students overestimated the amount of hard news topics and local news items they posted, suggesting the image they think they are portraying online may not be accurate. This study also asked students to assess their news knowledge and habits as a result of tweeting the news. Students reported being more knowledge about news and believed the activity to be valuable in helping them understand their news habits.
To whom are they speaking? The imagined audience of online news commenters • Jisu Kim, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • As the first study examining news commenters’ perceptions of imagined audience, this study attempts to expand the boundary of news commenting research. Through interviews with 12 news commenters, we find that they usually perceive their audience as those having similar backgrounds, journalists, or politicians. News commenters who primarily comment on news websites perceive their audience as public and broader in scope, while news commenters on Facebook consider their audience as being more connected with themselves.
Assessing the impact of citizen publishing on Freedom of Information laws • Jodie Gil, Southern Connecticut State University • This exploratory study looks at proposed changes to Freedom of Information laws in 10 states to explore whether citizen publishing prompts attempts to restrict access to records. Privacy was cited in 69 of 138 law proposals, and a majority of those proposals sought to protect “personal information.” The data in the sample points to clear concerns about personal information being shared, a practice that can more easily happen with unrestricted publishing on the Internet.
Where Did You Get That Story? An Examination of Story Sourcing Practices and Objectivity on Citizen Journalism Websites • Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College • A content analysis of 560 articles from 56 citizen journalism websites based in the U.S. showed more than a quarter of the stories didn’t use sources. When they were used, traditional media and press releases were often cited. More than 90% of the stories did adhere to the traditional journalistic norm of objectivity since many stories were sourced from mainstream media reports and press releases. Stories reported most often included event, political, and business stories.
Metrics, Clickbait, and the Anemic Audience: Audience Perceptions and Professional Values among News Aggregators • Mark Coddington, Washington and Lee University • Journalists have long been dismissive of their audiences, but the rise of online metrics and participatory journalism have challenged that attitude. This study examines that challenge by looking at aggregators’ audience perception, exploring its influence on their news judgment and the role of metrics in their work. It finds that the audience weighs heavily on aggregators’ work, but their conception of it is thin and non-participatory, mediated largely through the professionally contested tool of metrics.
Digital pitchforks: Latent publics and justice-gone-wrong narratives • Nathan Rodriguez • This study examines online discussions of justice-gone-wrong narratives in popular culture. To date, fan studies have not analyzed online collectives that are organized around true-crime narratives. This paper uses grounded theory to approach 8,900 user comments on a highly trafficked website regarding the Netflix miniseries, Making a Murderer. Results from the study contribute to the growing academic discussion of the suasive force of latent publics, particularly within the context of justice-gone-wrong narratives in popular culture.
Networked: Social media’s impact on news production in digital newsrooms • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado • This study examines social media usage by journalists through the prism of actor-network theory and the hierarchy of influences model. Utilizing interviews with 53 digital journalists, it identifies the actors playing a role in producing news through social media. It finds that journalists, opinion leaders, audience and extra-media organizations impact news production. It calls for a revisiting of the hierarchy of influences model to understand on what levels of influence the audience impacts news production.
“It’s like a bar journalists hang out at:” Social Media’s erosion of walls between journalists and their Twitter followers • Rich Johnson, Creighton University • While journalism does not fit the traditional definition of a profession, recent scholars, such as Lewis (2012) and Singer (2003) suggest that professional boundaries may be a reason journalists struggle to engage with their audience on social media. Although journalists often are early adopters of new platforms, they often use them for traditional practices. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and constant comparative analysis, this study identifies three walls that block journalists from engaging in the Internet’s facilitation of personal connectivity, engagement, and a true community forum. Although a wall of objectivity has somewhat been broached by Twitter use, walls of storytelling and routine and traditional news values continue to hold strong.
A hit on American football: Bottom-up framing in op-ed reader comments • Travis R. Bell, University of South Florida; Jimmy Sanderson, Clemson University • Dr. Bennet Omalu, who is credited with discovering chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), wrote a New York Times’ op-ed story on December 7, 2015 and presented reasons why parents should not let their children play American football. This fueled national debate and this research, which used bottom-up framing to examine 114 reader comments connected to Omalu’s story. A mixed methods approach, including linguistic analysis, reveals new conversation points afforded by this new concept of media effects.
Print friendly
