Table of Contents

Notes on Authors vii

Acknowledgements x

Authors’ Note xii

Chapter 1: Introduction: Sharing the Road 1

Part I: The Impact of Participatory Journalism 11

Chapter 2: Mechanisms of Participation: How audience options shape the conversation 13
Alfred Hermida

Chapter 3: The Journalist’s Relationship with Users: New dimensions to conventional roles 34
Ari Heinonen

Part II: Managing Change 57

Chapter 4: Inside the Newsroom: Journalists’ motivations and organizational structures 59
Steve Paulussen

Chapter 5: Managing Audience Participation: Practices, workfl ows and strategies 76
David Domingo

Chapter 6: User Comments: The transformation of participatory space 96
Zvi Reich

Part III: Issues and Implications 119

Chapter 7: Taking Responsibility: Legal and ethical issues in participatory journalism 121
Jane B. Singer

Chapter 8: Participatory Journalism in the Marketplace: Economic motivations behind the practices 139
Marina Vujnovic

Chapter 9: Understanding a New Phenomenon: The signifi cance of participatory journalism 155
Thorsten Quandt

Chapter 10: Fluid Spaces, Fluid Journalism: The role of the “active recipient” in participatory journalism 177
Alfred Hermida

Appendix: About Our Study 192

Glossary 203

References 209

Index 220

About the Author

David Domingo is a senior lecturer in online journalism atthe Department of Communication Studies of Universitat Rovira iVirgili in Tarragona, Spain. Domingo, who has a Ph.D. in Journalismfrom the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, was a doctoralfellow at the University of Tampere (2004) and visiting assistantprofessor at the University of Iowa (2007-2008). His researchinterests include online journalists' professional ideology andwork routines, as well as the dynamics of innovations such asparticipatory journalism and convergence. He is co-editor, withChris Paterson, of Making Online News: The Ethnography of NewMedia Production (Peter Lang, 2008). Ari Heinonen, Ph.D., is journalism teacher and researcherin the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at theUniversity of Tampere, Finland. A former newspaper journalist, hehas focused his academic research on explorations of the changingnature of professionalism in journalism, concepts of journalism inthe new media era and journalistic ethics. He has directed andparticipated in a number of national and international research anddevelopment projects in these areas. Alfred Hermida is a digital media scholar, journalismeducator and online news pioneer. Since 2006, he has been anassistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at theUniversity of British Columbia, Canada. Hermida was aKnight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2005 and anIBM CAS Canada Research Faculty Fellow in 2010. An award-winningjournalist who served for four years as a Middle Eastcorrespondent, Hermida is a 16-year veteran of the BBC and was afounding news editor of the BBC News website in 1997. He has alsowritten for The Wall Street Journal, The Times ofLondon, The Guardian and NPR. Steve Paulussen, Ph.D., is a part-time lecturer injournalism studies at both the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and theUniversity of Antwerp, as well as a senior researcher at the IBBTresearch group for Media & ICT (MICT) at Ghent University,Belgium. In recent years, he has participated in a number ofprojects on different aspects of today s digital mediaculture. His main research interests lie in the field of journalismstudies, where he has published on developments in onlinejournalism, newsroom convergence and the sociological profile ofprofessional journalists. Between 2006 and 2010, he also wasinvolved in a multi-disciplinary strategic research project ondigital news trends in Flanders, Belgium (FLEET). Thorsten Quandt, Dr. phil. habil, is a professor inCommunication Studies / Interactive Media and Online Communicationat the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He has served as chair ofthe Journalism Studies Division in the German CommunicationAssociation (DGPuK) and as an officer in the Journalism StudiesDivision in the International Communication Association (ICA). Hiswidely published research includes studies on online journalism,media evolution, network communication and computer games. Jane B. Singer is an associate professor in the School ofJournalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa, USA,and a visiting professor in the School of Journalism, Media andCommunication at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. From2007 to 2010, she was the Johnston Press Chair in DigitalJournalism at Central Lancashire. Her research explores digitaljournalism, including changing roles, perceptions, norms andpractices. Before earning a Ph.D. in journalism from the Universityof Missouri, Singer was the first news manager of ProdigyInteractive Services. She also has worked as a newspaper reporterand editor. Zvi Reich, Ph.D., is a former journalist and a researcherin journalism studies at the Department of Communication, BenGurion University of the Negev, Israel. His book, Sourcing theNews, was published by Hampton Press in 2009. Reich's researchinterests focus on online news, sociology of news, the relationsbetween reporters and sources, authorship in journalism and the useof communication technologies in journalism. Two of his papers havewon the top three papers prize of the Journalism Studies Divisionat ICA. Other research has appeared in Journalism Studies,Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly andJournalism. He is a member of the editorial board ofJournalism Practice. Marina Vujnovic, Ph.D., is an assistant professor atMonmouth University, USA. Her primary fields of research areparticipatory journalism and new media studies, media history andgender, critical political economy, and cultural studies.Additional research interests include international communicationand the global flow of information, as well as ethnicity and themedia. She is the author of Forging the Bubikopf Nation:Journalism, Gender and Modernity in Interwar Yugoslavia (PeterLang, 2009).

Reviews

"The authors do an excellent job situating their study and theconcept of participation within the broader body of research andtheory on journalism, but also offer useful insights into thepractical realities of how journalists are addressing anincreasingly active audience in the newsroom today." (Journalism,23 February 2012) "Like its authors, half of whom are both journalists andscholars, the book is also a hybrid - on the one hand, it serves asa robust piece of empirical research and, on the other, it is anexcellent textbook for journalism students. This is evidently adeliberate device by the authors who wish to make a contribution toknowledge without alienating potential readers. The book is writtenin clear, familiar English resembling more of a journalistic stylethan an academic one, and each chapter ends with questions invitingthe reader (or lecturer) to discuss and probe issues. There is alsoan effective glossary which explains terms which may be unfamiliarto those starting out in the field." Intended primarily as a textbook - each chapter concludes withdiscussion questions - the volume provides an excellent startingpoint for examining the implications of new ways of collecting anddisseminating what we call news." (Choice, 1 October 2011)