Sourcing practices in online journalism: an ethnographic study of the formation of trust in and the use of journalistic sources

Abstract

Sourcing practices in online journalism: An ethnographic study of the formation of trust in and the use of journalistic sources Arguably one of the most important factors of journalistic quality is careful source selection. Studies on online journalism have revealed working conditions which may lead to poor sourcing practices. This article seeks to answer the following questions: What sources do online journalists use, and how do they rationalize their sourcing practices? A total of 17 Finnish online journalists in 7 newsrooms were observed and interviewed over their practices of source searching, evaluation, and use. The study revealed five distinctive rationales of source use, which I call trust discourses: the ideological, the pragmatic, the cynically pragmatic, the consensual, and the contextual trust. Different trust discourses are associated with different source types, influences, and forms and degrees of source critique. The results reveal-among other things-the online journalists' largely unquestioned trust of official sources and the cynical re-purposing of content from other media. The study provides accurate first hand observations on the sourcing practices and the results thereof of online journalists, and provides a viable framework for the further study of sourcing practices in online journalism.

The Recycling of News in Swedish Newspapers: Reused quotations and reports in articles about the crisis in the Swedish Academy in 2018

“…A conclusion to be drawn from the study is that the newspapers used other media extensively and often combined new interviews with recycled statements attributed to other media. Also of note is that DN was the most popular source for reports and quotes attributed to other media, followed by SvD and TT Nyhetsbyrån, and that press releases were used more often than social media as sources; that is, the Swedish print articles showed a similar pattern to Finnish and Greek online news media, preferring content from other (mainstream) media, news agencies, and press releases (Manninen, 2017;Saridou et al, 2017).…”

“…The increased reliance of newspapers on recycling strategies, especially in online news production, has been widely discussed. Most recent studies either describe journalists' own conceptions of changed journalistic practices (from interviews, surveys, and ethnographic studies; e.g., Boczkowski, 2010;Manninen, 2017;Phillips, 2010;Thurman & Myllylahti, 2009), analyse quantitatively to what extent news are recycled, or both (e.g., Cagé et al, 2019;Erdal, 2010;Hendrickx, 2019;Lewis et al, 2008b;Lund et al, 2009;Saridou et al, 2017;Vonbun-Feldbauer & Dogruel, 2018;Wheatley & O'Sullivan, 2017). The overall picture emerging from these studies is that of more news being produced over time, but largely because more recycling is taking place.…”

“…Recycling increased in Greek online news media during the period 2013-2016, and the most common sources for recycled content in an analysis of 100 articles from 2016 were the national news agency, press releases, and other mainstream media websites (Saridou et al, 2017). Moreover, a study of online pieces in Finnish media shows that about half of the 113 analysed texts were based on press releases or other media only, and most pieces using several sources combined preproduced and new content (Manninen, 2017).…”

If Only They Knew: Audience Expectations and Actual Sourcing Practices in Online Journalism

“…Let us consider, for example, verification. When interviewing a veteran journalist as part of the 2013 round of observations (Manninen 2017), I was told that their work would become "impossible" if they had to verify every bit of information. Implementing universal verification would require (lacking additional resources) drastic cuts to the volume of output, leaving much unreported.…”

“…This data covers the production of 36 journalistic items (26 in 2013 and 10 in 2017). It originates from two separate studies, which utilized similar methods to study the production of online journalism (Manninen 2017(Manninen , 2018. Only comparable data from the two studies have been used, i.e.…”