In a digital world, journalists increasingly integrate user-generated content (UGC) in their coverage. Journalists use coping strategies to dispel the audience’s supposed concerns about the reliability of this new type of sources and to maintain the audience’s confidence in such coverage. Transparency, in particular, is often considered as a means to preserve journalism from accusations of being biased and untrustworthy. We focus on the audience’s perception and evaluation of two transparency strategies: transparency about the origin of UGC and transparency about verification attempts. Based on semi-structured interviews with German users (N = 26), this study analyzes recipients’ perceptions of transparency strategies journalists use when integrating UGC. Most of the respondents rarely perceive transparency about source origin or verification in their everyday media use. Even when noticed, transparency efforts barely seem to increase journalistic trustworthiness.
Integrating user-generated content (UGC) has become an everyday practice in online journalism. Previous research suggests this can have both a beneficial and detrimental effect on a recipient's perception of online journalism's trustworthiness. We conducted an online experiment that, on the one hand, examined the overall influence of integrating UGC in an online news article compared to leaving it out altogether. On the other hand, we also analyzed how two specific modes of integrating UGC, namely its verification and visualization, influence trustworthiness. Controlling for different news topics, our results show that UGC is not a way to boost journalistic trustworthiness. In general, the journalistic use of UGC has a negative but overall weak impact on recipients' perceived trustworthiness of a news article. Regarding the mode of integration, the verification of UGC to some extent positively increases trustworthiness, while visual integration has no substantial impact. Overall, the study sheds light on the hitherto somewhat neglected recipients' perspective on UGC and lays the groundwork for future studies focusing on the reasons behind the uncovered effects of UGC on trustworthiness.
Themen journalistischer Berichterstattung durch maschinelles Lernen identifizieren oder Nachrichtendiffusion automatisiert messen: Die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten der automatisierten Inhaltsanalyse in der Journalismusforschung scheinen vielfältig. Aber wie wird die computerbasierte Methode bisher eingesetzt - und welche Konsequenzen hat der „Computational Turn“ der Kommunikationswissenschaft, besonders im Hinblick auf Interdisziplinarität? Dieser Beitrag fasst auf Basis eines systematischen Literaturüberblicks zusammen, wie die automatisierte Inhaltsanalyse im Forschungsfeld der Journalismusforschung genutzt wird. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die zunehmende Nutzung der Methode ein Indikator für methodische Interdisziplinarität in der ohnehin interdisziplinären Kommunikationswissenschaft ist. Gleichzeitig finden sich kaum Hinweise auf eine Zunahme theoretischer Interdisziplinarität, z. B. Rückgriffe auf fachfremde Theorien. Auch im Hinblick auf praktische Interdisziplinarität, z. B. Kooperationen mit anderen Disziplinen, wird unser Fach keineswegs interdisziplinärer. Vielmehr findet eine Verschiebung zugunsten technischer Disziplinen statt. Der „Computational Turn“ der Kommunikationswissenschaft ist daher zumindest bisher nur teils als „interdisziplinärer Turn“ zu verstehen.
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