Civic and Citizen Journalism 2009 Abstracts
Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group
What’s Journalism Got to Do with It? Political Blogs and Bloggers • Tom Bakker, University of Amsterdam; Klaus Schoenbach, University of Amsterdam; Claes de Vreese, University of Amsterdam • This article reviews studies on political blogging. While citizen journalism advocates had high hopes that blogs would lead to more diverse and broader coverage, produced by all types of citizens, data shows that political bloggers resemble traditional journalists (white educated males) and that bloggers do little original reporting and mainly publish opinion based on news by mainstream media. More systematical empirical research is needed to assess the journalistic contribution of political bloggers.
New Media’s Contribution to Presidential Debates • Pamela Brubaker, The Pennsylvania State University • Web 2.0 technologies add a new dimension to political campaigns whereby citizens can view and listen to political messages and well as produce and distribute the messages themselves. This study examines the debate questions aired during the Republican and Democratic CNN/YouTube presidential primary debates, whereby citizens had the opportunity to submit video questions through the video sharing website YouTube.
Reporting By the People: A Case Study of Citizen Journalism During the 2008 Election • Rebecca Coates-Nee, San Diego State University, JMS; K. Tim Wulfemeyer, San Diego State University, School of Journalism and Media Studies; David Dozier, San Diego State University, School of Journalism and Media Studies • This case study examined a year-long, citizen-journalist project that focused on the 2008 presidential campaign. Six bloggers were recruited, trained, and contributed weekly posts to a group blog hosted on a public radio/television station’s Web site. In this study, participant observation, interviews, and project reports were used. Findings indicate that managing blogger motivation is key, training bloggers is important, and bridging the gap between professional journalists and citizen bloggers is difficult.
How Citizen Journalists Conceive of and Practice Community in One Midwestern City • Cathy DeShano, University of Wisconson-Madison; Sue Robinson, University of Wisconson-Madison • This research examines how citizen journalists in one city conceive of and engage in communities, drawing from theories about social capital, public sphere, communicative integration, and community to consider the implications of virtual contribution for democratic governance.
Interacting is Believing?: Examining bottom-up credibility of blogs among politically interested Internet users • Daekyung Kim, Idaho State University • This study examines how politically interested Internet users perceive blogs as credible sources of news and information. More specifically, this study aims to identify a new possible factor that has an impact on blog credibility assessment in the collaborative nature of digital media circumstances. It was found that blog credibility was predicted by the interaction between blog reliance and online news activity. Implications of the findings were discussed for future research.
The Blogger as Journalist • Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University School of Journalism • This is a secondary analysis of Pew Internet data from a 2006 survey of bloggers. The bloggers were analayzed by cohorts, with particular attention to those who view their blogs as journalism. Using journalistic standards such as fact-checking and source attribution correlated significantly with levels of audience attention reported by those bloggers. This finding tempers enthusiasm about journalistic characteristics of bloggers as a whole that stem from the failure to distinguish between types of bloggers.
Frequency Of Links To Primary Source Material In The Hyperlinking Patterns Of Political Blogs • Mark Leccese, Emerson College • Political bloggers claim to be a crucial source of information in American elections and public policy debates, usurping the role of mainstream media. This study coded more than 2,000 hypertext links on the World Wide Web on six widely-read political blogs during seven consecutive days in January 2008. It found that fewer than about 15% of hyperlinks directed readers to primary sources.
“Anyone can know:” Citizen journalism and the interpretive community of the mainstream press in a Mid-Western city • Sue Robinson, University of Wisconson-Madison; Cathy DeShano, University of Wisconson-Madison • Online citizen writers are forming a loose community that is alternatively collaborating or at war with journalists’ own interpretive community. Interviews with bloggers and professional journalists revealed convergences and tensions within these communities according to framing values of socially responsible missions, access to information, entitlement to knowledge and informal notions of professionalism.
Sustaining Hyperlocal Media and Citizen Journalism: In Search of Funding Models • David Kurpius, Louisiana State University; Emily Metzgar, Indiana University; Karen Rowley, Louisiana State University • As traditional media operations struggle to find their footing in a world of rapidly evolving interactive technology and economic turmoil, media innovators are exploring new ways to identify, collect, and disseminate information. One innovation that is attracting attention is the development of hyperlocal media.
The Future of News? A Study of Citizen Journalism and Journalists • Brad Schultz, University of Mississippi; Mary Lou Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi • A survey of citizen journalists was conducted to assess what, if any, impact they are having on traditional news values such as balanced reporting, double checking facts and ethical reporting. Citizen journalists at three different news/sports sites took part in the study.
Is Blogging Journalism? Analyzing the Blogosphere’s Perspective • Michael Sheehy, University of Cincinnati; Hong Ji, The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism • This content analysis identifies bloggers’ perceptions of the relationship between blogging and journalism through framing theory. The study found bloggers generally do not perceive blogging as journalism, even though many see a connection between the two. The study also found growing blogger sentiment that blogging is journalism, that bloggers identify work processes as best characterizing the similarities or differences between blogging and journalism, and that bloggers typically rely on other blog sites as sources.
Discourse in The Malaysian Sociopolitical Blogosphere Amidst Racial Politics • Jun-E Tan, Nanyang Technological University; Indrajit Banerjee, Nanyang Technological University • ‘The Chinese are only squatting here’, remarked Ahmad Ismail, a Malaysian politician during a political rally in August 2008, drawing flak from numerous parties within the multicultural country. This paper examines the sentiments at the grassroots level in the Malaysian sociopolitical blogosphere after the incident by performing content analysis on 10 prominent blogs.
Sniffing Out Sleeping Dogs: Web 2.0 and Reconceptualizing the Public Sphere and Guard-dog Media • Ryan Thomas, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University; Mary Grace Antony, Washington State University • In this paper, we synthesize literature on the media’s role in the public sphere with work on the agenda-setting and guard-dog functions of mass media. We argue that citizen journalism has reinvigorated notions of the public sphere while posing significant challenges to agenda-setting and guard-dog theories. We highlight the Oscar Grant shooting on New Years Day, 2009 and the subsequent response as a lens through which the emancipatory potential of citizen journalism can be realized.
Online and Offline Citizen Journalism News: Which do our Young Adults Believe in? • Charlene Wee, National University of Singapore; Julian Lin, National University of Singapore • This study compares perceived credibility of online and offline citizen journalism news, with controls placed on the news stories, authors and publisher. A survey of over 300 young adults — deemed to be more familiar and frequent in their consumption of online and citizen journalism news — indicates that contrary to beliefs that newspapers are increasingly made redundant by the Internet, readers see offline news versions as being more credible. The findings contribute to research and practice.
Practicing Place: Sharing, Collaboration, and Collective Action in an Online Urban Forum • Patrick Wehner, University of Pennsylvania; Dana M. Walker, University of Michigan • Increasingly, research is demonstrating how internet-enabled technologies are not separate from, but actually embedded in, our everyday and localized practices. If the internet is becoming “more local,” as some scholars have claimed, how can we understand the role of citizen-produced information, news, and discussion within the media landscape of news and information about the city?
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