“Comment Is Free, but Facts Are Sacred”: User-generated Content and Ethical Constructs at theGuardian

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. User-generated content and ethical constructs at the Guardian Jane B. Singer and Ian Ashman Permanent repository linkAbstract: This case study examines how journalists at Britain's Guardian newspaper and affiliated website are assessing and incorporating user-generated content in their perceptions and practices. A framework of existentialism helps highlight constructs and professional norms of interest. It is one of the first data-driven studies to explore how journalists are negotiating personal and social ethics within a digital network.Around the developed world, journalists are producing a steadily decreasing portion of the editorial content on their own newspaper websites. The rapid growth of various forms of "user-generated content," from comments to hosted blogs to "hyperlocal" news stories, means the journalist has far less control over what was once an essentially industrial process of making news. The website has become a shared space, filled with constantly changing content produced by a broad range of individuals and informed by relationships among those contributors.The changes raise not only a host of practical issues for journalists but also a great many ethical ones. What might an optimal relationship between journalists and users/contributors -the people Bruns (2007) This ethnographic case study draws on interviews and a brief questionnaire to examine how journalists at Britain's Guardian newspaper and affiliated website -part of a media organization with a strong and explicitly articulated normative culture --are assessing and incorporating user-generated content in their perceptions and practices. A framework of existentialism, which highlights issues including authenticity and the potentially conflicting constructs of freedom and responsibility, is used to inform a consideration of related professional norms. Although earlier works have offered a conceptual groundwork for exploring these issues, this study is one of the first to collect data indicating how journalists are negotiating personal and social ethics within the digital network in which they now work.

User-generated visibility: Secondary gatekeeping in a shared media space

“…In looking at journalists' perceptions of the ethical issues raised by user-generated content, Singer and Ashman (2009) found credibility and civility to be uppermost in the minds of practitioners. Their study at Britain's Guardian newspaper offers one of the clearest expressions of a perceived differentiation between journalists and users along ethical lines.…”

Journalism as usual: The use of social media as a newsgathering tool in the coverage of the Iranian elections in 2009

“…'He added: 'At the same time, we want to be smarter about encouraging our best commenters, our best contributors, and figuring out how to recognise them on the website' (Frons, cited in Sonderman, 2011b) Comments, while an important part of generating an online community and creating a space in which users interact not only with the content and its creators, but also with each other, remains, in the minds of many journalists, something of a fringe activity to the practice of journalism. Journalists, especially at news organisations still focused on newsprint and broadcast, still tend to treat comments as something after the fact, not relevant to their practice, and tend not to engage with the commenting systems or the users (Singer and Ashman, 2009;Lewis et al, 2010).…”

Prensa online y tipos de lectores. Respuestas del público y lógicas de reconocimiento en los comentarios a las noticias del diario argentino La Nación

“…Con posterioridad, y muy paulatinamente, empezaron a publicarse los primeros resultados de investigaciones que tienen a dicha herramienta de participación como objeto de cavilación. Las mismas, curiosamente, y a pesar de provenir de distintos ámbitos académicos y estudiar los comentarios de lectores en noticias publicadas en diarios de diferentes países, tienen una peculiaridad en común: en la mayoría de los casos (García de Torres, Martínez, Cebrián, Rodríguez & Alhacar, 2009;Singer & Ashman, 2009;Ruiz, Masip, Mico, Díaz Noci & Domingo, 2010;McCluskey & Hmielowski, 2012;Milioni, Vadratsikas & Papa, 2012;Navarro Zamora, 2013) se trata de trabajos que utilizan exclusivamente el análisis de contenido.…”