In this article, we present a cross-national comparative analysis of which online news users in practice engage with the participatory potential for sharing and commenting on news afforded by interactive features in news websites and social media technologies across a strategic sample of six different countries. Based on data from the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, and controlling for a range of factors, we find that (1) people who use social media for news and a high number of different social media platforms are more likely to also engage more actively with news outside social media by commenting on news sites and sharing news via email, (2) political partisans on both sides are more likely to engage in sharing and commenting particularly on news stories in social media, and (3) people with high interest in hard news are more likely to comment on news on both news sites and social media and share stores via social media (and people with high interest in any kind of news [hard or soft] are more likely to share stories via email). Our analysis suggests that the online environment reinforces some long-standing inequalities in participation while countering other long-standing inequalities. The findings indicate a self-reinforcing positive spiral where the already motivated are more likely in practice to engage with the potential for participation offered by digital media, and a negative spiral where those who are less engaged participate less.

In this article, we develop the concept of small acts of engagement (SAOE) in a networked media environment as a conceptual framework to study specific audience practices and as an agenda for research on these practices. We define SAOE, such as liking, sharing, and commenting, as productive audience practices that require little investment and are intentionally more casual than the structural and laborious practices examined as types of produsage and convergence culture. We further elaborate on the interpretive and productive aspects of SAOE, which allow us to reconnect the notions of a participatory culture and a culture of everyday agency. Our central argument is that audience studies’ perspective allows viewing SAOE as practices of everyday audience agency, which, on an aggregate level, have the potential to become powerful acts of resistance.

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This article contends that not only journalism but also journalism studies can benefit from a stronger commitment to the public. While the bodies of literature on "popular journalism", "public journalism" and "citizen/participatory journalism" have, in different contexts and from different angles, made a strong case in favour of a public-oriented approach to journalism, it is remarkable how few of the empirical studies on journalism are based on user research. As the control of media institutions over the news process is in decline, we should take the "news audience" more seriously and try to improve our understanding of (changing) news use patterns. Besides this rather obvious theoretical point, there are also societal and methodological arguments for a more user-oriented take on the study of journalism. Starting from a reflection on the key trends in news use in the digital age-participation, cross-mediality and mobility-this article attempts to show the theoretical and societal relevance of a radical user perspective on journalism and journalism research alike. Furthermore, we look at new methodological opportunities for news user research and elaborate on our arguments by way of an empirical study on changing news practices. The study uses Q-sort methodology to expose the impact a medium's affordances can have on the way we experience news in a converged and mobile media environment. The article concludes by discussing what the benefits of a radical user perspective can be both for journalism studies as for journalism.

This chapter develops a set of findings around audiences' small-scale acts of engagement with media texts. We identify and discuss three distinct emanations of these small acts: 1) one click engagement, 2) commenting and debating and 3) small stories. In contrasting them with more structural productive practices, we further conceptualise them in relation to two main dimensions: effort and intentionality. Lastly, we suggest to develop a conceptualisation of the influence which we have labelled interruption. Content flow can be challenged if not transformed due to the volume of these acts, which is realised by the producing audiences as well as by mainstream media. Profound changes in the way information is produced and distributed are fuelled by small acts of engagement rather than by more laborious practices.