Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers

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Christensen has written extensively about how innovation within large companies with established practices is hard: Innovation is doing things that you haven't done before, but if you want to do things in a new way, you might compete with your existing products. When you have a separate online operation that almost has the start-up mentality, they have a lot of more freedom because they're not thinking, 'How do we protect our core product?

And it has been guided strongly by a business rationale. So in the more competitive markets, more audience participation was evident.

What Is Participatory Journalism, Anyway? | The Tyee

Similarly in Israel, we saw very competitive markets, lots of audience participation. Whereas in Canada you don't really have the same level of competition: We have a very concentrated media space with a few big media conglomerates.

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So the drive to innovate or experiment is less driven by competition and far more by 'How can we make money out of this; how does this tie into a bottom line? And yet, it seems like lately Canada has seen itself as competing with a global market, and that affects how they adopt participatory strategies.

I think that's really become apparent in the newsrooms in the past two to three years, that particularly in the online space, the competition is truly international.

Is that a response to pressure from an international market? They don't force journalists to question what it is they do and how they do it, because their job remains unchanged.

They decide what the news is, they decide who to speak to, they decide what voices to include, how to structure it, how to publish it. Only then does the audience get to talk about their work. That doesn't mean that comments aren't important, because they open up the media space.

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But they don't challenge the hegemony of the journalists in deciding what is news. If you said 20 years ago to the public, 'You know, you're going to be sharing links to news stories and commenting on news stories and telling your friends about them,' or 'You're going to be taking photos of that train crash or that fire, and sending them to Global and to CTV,' they would have responded, 'Why would I ever want to do that? And we have a legal system that's based on looking at who owns the means of production, and what they are liable for what they produce and disseminate on the media.

Thus, in a lot of places it's unclear if media outlets are liable for comments on their websites.

What Is Participatory Journalism, Anyway?

So what you have is newsrooms trying to negotiate a legal environment where there is a great deal of uncertainty. There's no clarity -- legal clarity -- on the rules, and there's very little case precedent in terms of potential liability. And that uncertainty causes a certain degree of caution and conservatism, because you're not quite sure where those legal boundaries are. When subscribing to a newsletter edition you'll also get early notice on Tyee events, news, promotions, partner messages and special initiatives.

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Hiswidely published research includes studies on online journalism,media evolution, network communication and computer games. Her research explores digitaljournalism, including changing roles, perceptions, norms andpractices. Before earning a Ph.

She also has worked as a newspaper reporterand editor. Zvi Reich , Ph. His book, Sourcing theNews , was published by Hampton Press in 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. He is a member of the editorial board of Journalism Practice.

Marina Vujnovic , Ph. Her primary fields of research areparticipatory journalism and new media studies, media history andgender, critical political economy, and cultural studies. The Impactof Participatory Journalism""; ""Chapter 2: How audience options shape the conversation Alfred Hermida""; ""Chapter 3: Managing Change"" ""Chapter 4: Practices, workflows and strategies David Domingo""; ""Chapter 6: Issues and Implications""; ""Chapter 7: Legal and ethical issues in participatory journalism Jane B.

Participatory Journalism in the Marketplace: Economic motivations behind the practices Marina Vujnovic"" ""Chapter 9: Understanding a New Phenomenon:

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