This paper explores the assumption that user-generated content in mass media websites gives audiences greater power over influencing news making. Employing a content analysis of readers’ comments in various Greek online mass media, the study examines whether commenters assume any of the core journalistic functions regarding news production, in terms of setting the agenda, providing original information, and airing oppositional views on reported issues. From a public sphere perspective, it also examines the degree of diversity of users’ opinions within media outlets. The results suggest that whereas users challenge journalistic viewpoints to some extent, this type of audience participation is not likely to render audiences co-producers of news content in significant ways or offer opportunities for cross-cutting political exchanges.
The ‘participatory web’ creates opportunities for citizen participation in public debate with a potential to influence public opinion. This study examines the ‘empowerment thesis’ regarding audience participation in the media, exploring whether, and in what ways, audiences’ discourses in established media websites challenge or broaden mainstream discourses about immigration. The study employs systematic framing analysis of journalistic articles about immigration that appeared in the most popular Greek online media from October 2010 to February 2011. These journalistic frames are then compared to the frames produced by readers in their comments. The findings show that readers on several occasions challenge the journalistic framing of immigration. Yet, what we witness in this case is the dark side of audience participation, as readers contest journalistic authority not in the direction of a diversified and more open discussion of immigration but towards the ideological entrenchment in essentialist nationalistic and hate discourses. The article concludes by discussing how the ‘out-of-nowhere’ anti-immigrant political discourses in Greece were gradually built, and the role of the media therein.
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