A Clash of Cultures

Abstract

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organizations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite residual doubts about the editorial and commercial value of material from the public. The study identified a shift towards the use of moderation due to editors' persistent concerns about reputation, trust, and legal liabilities; indicating that UK newspaper websites are adopting a traditional gate-keeping role towards UGC. The findings suggest a gate-keeping approach may offer a model for the integration of UGC, with professional news organisations providing editorial structures to bring different voices into their news reporting, filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe to be useful and valuable to their audience. While this research looked at UGC initiatives in the context of the UK newspaper industry, it has broad relevance as professional journalists tend to share a similar set of norms. The British experience offers valuable lessons for news executives making their first forays into this area and for academics studying the field of participatory journalism. Permanent repository link

Examining User Comments for Deliberative Democracy: A Corpus-driven Analysis of the Climate Change Debate Online

“…According to the NRS Digital Print and Digital Data survey, the Guardian had the largest readership of what were termed the "Quality newspapers" (which included the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Independent and the Financial Times) with 6.4 million visitors each month (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/ 12/digital-newspaper-readerships-national-survey?INTCMP=SRCH). the Guardian has enabled readers to make comments online in their "Comment is Free" section since March 2006 and only a week later comments were enabled on all articles across the website (Hermida & Thurman, 2008). From the online archives 30,752 articles were identified through the search term "climate change" however articles making only a passing reference to, for example, "Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change" were excluded and the remainder were ranked by the highest number of user comments.…”

Algorithms for journalism: The future of news work

“…However, with diffusion of new technology comes tension in the newsroom: the division of labour between "traditional" journalists and colleagues more adept at using new technology seems to widen in times of change until the early adopters are joined by others (Garrison, 2001b;Maier, 2000;Singer, 2004). For instance, while multimedia news is already well established, a larger work force of multimedia journalists has been slow to arrive to the newsroom (Hermida & Thurman, 2008;Saltzis & Dickinson, 2008). Now, journalists are facing an even greater transformation: the automation of journalism work (Clerwall, 2014;Kim, Lee, Kim, Kuppuswamy, & Jo, 2007;Latar, 2014;Matsumoto, Nakaya-are discovered, presented, aggregated, monetised, and archived" (Cohen, Hamilton, & Turner, 2011).…”

Hurricanes and hashtags: How the media and NGOs treat citizens’ voices online in humanitarian emergencies

“…show that while there is more widespread adoption of the use of content not created by traditional journalists, there is still a reluctance for mainstream media to give equal credit or space to user-generated content (Hermida 2008;Ornebring 2008;Hermida and Thurman 2008). The majority of journalists talked about how the growth of social media had allowed more diverse points of view to be heard.…”