Civic and Citizen Journalism 2008 Abstracts
Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group
A Study of Journalistic and Source Transparency in U.S. Online Newspaper and Online Citizen Journalism Articles • Serena Carpenter, Arizona State University • The tenet of transparency has been heralded as a journalistic principle that can promote the relationship between journalists and news users. A quantitative content analysis of 480 online newspaper and 482 online citizen journalism articles was conducted to determine the extent to which online information providers are being transparent. Data indicate that significant differences exist between online newspaper and online citizen journalists.
Developing a Citizen Journalism Site at a Small College: Lessons Learned as We Launch We-town.com • Tamara Gillis, Heather Tillberg-Webb, Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College • This paper describes the preliminary implementation and lessons learned during the creation and launch of a citizen journalism converged media project by the communication department of a small college. We-town.com – the interdisciplinary curriculum project within a Department of Communications is designed to create a sustainable model of citizen journalism media within a converged media environment.
Writer Information and Perceived Credibility of Stories on a Citizen Journalism Web Site • Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College • This study examined whether the presence of information about the writer, in the form of a picture and a brief biography, affected the perceived credibility of stories on a popular citizen journalism web site. Participants read three stories from OhmyNews.com and rated those stories in terms of perceived credibility. Results show that including writer information significantly increased the perceived credibility of the story.
Is there an Elite Hold? Mass Media to Social Media Influence in Blog Networks • Sharon Meraz, University of Illinois at Chicago • This study examined the social influence among 18 political, citizen media blogs (6 left leaning, 6 right leaning, and 6 moderate blogs) with that of 11 political blogs culled from the elite mass media entities of the New York Times and the Washington Post across three separate issue periods in 2007.
Youth Make the News: A Case Study of Three Youth-Generated News Websites • Jeffrey Neely, University of Florida • This study showed two contrasting categories of frames emerged in examining online youth-generated news content. In some cases, youth were portrayed as participants in a cooperative process with adults to engage in community-building and social discourse. In other instances, youth are represented as stakeholders in the conflict between their generation and the adult-run establishment. Additionally, the three sites both conformed to and differed from the established norms of mainstream journalism to varying degrees.
Madison Commons in Wisconsin: Experimenting with a Citizen-Journalism Model • Sue Robinson, Cathy DeShano, Nakho Kim, Lewis Friedland, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Citizen use of the Internet is changing conceptions of community, shifting community structures, and redirecting communicative action for both public and private spheres of society. The University of Wisconsin-Madison citizen media project, Madison Commons, sought to explore how community might be rethought (and re-invigorated) under a consideration of the integrated worlds of people, their private, social, and political spheres. This paper examines the mission, implementation and plan for progression of Madison Commons.
Participatory Journalism and the Transformation of News • David Ryfe, Donica Mensing, University of Nevada, Reno • In an analysis of twenty-one web sites, we assess the transformational potential of participatory journalism. We define transformation in terms of the purposes to which journalism is put. Given this definition, we argue that participatory journalism represents a potentially significant break from the “journalism-as-transmission-of-information” model that currently informs the purpose of conventional news.
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