Internet Uses, Socialmedia, Citizen Journalism

The Syrian revolution has brought about the creation of a pop-up news ecology, an entirely new, oppositional news system fueled by citizen activists’ use of social media to report on the conflict. Drawing on Castell’s Network Society, this essay assesses the ways such a system came into being, finding a dearth of professional journalism, rapidity of its formation, and assistance by external “connectors” as key factors. This case study provides a potential model for the ways pop-up news ecologies may form in other authoritarian countries.

In the world of technology-mediated communication (TMC), the involvement of audiences with media texts takes very diverse forms. The participation is shaped by multiple factors ranging from the genre of the media text (e.g., the news article as opposed to the radio phone-in program), the general participatory situation (e.g., before/after a story or event and within/outside of the text), to the interactive affordances of the individual media platforms (print, radio, TV, online).
Adopting a combined media linguistic and socio-pragmatic perspective, this chapter explores the types of interactivity and interaction that occur in the media. Focusing on online news media, it explains how media interactivity can translate into actual interaction with the recipients, thereby affecting the overall participation framework of the media discourse event. Finally, the chapter outlines several current trends (customization of content, remediation, dispreferred participation, etc.) and points out some potential problems associated with these participatory phenomena.

Der Autor gehörte bis Mitte 2020 zu den Verantwortlichen für Social Media in der Bundeswehr. In die Kritik geriet er, als das NDR-Magazin Panorama im Juli 2020 über seine Social-Media-Aktivitäten eine anscheinende Nähe zu rechtsradikalen Nutzern aufgezeigt hatte.

Bohnert distanzierte sich von „allen Rechtsradikalen“, er habe mit diesen Menschen und diesem Gedankengut nichts zu tun, er sei schlicht unaufmerksam gewesen.

Den Journalistinnen von Panorama wurde in der folgenden medialen Debatte unter dem Schlagwort #Panoramagate Gesinnungsschnüffelei, eine Diffamierung des Offiziers und eine verzerrte Recherche vorgeworfen.

Im Februar 2021 trat Bohnert als Kopf hinter der Online-Initiative #WirGegenExtremismus in Erscheinung, die positive Reaktionen im Bundesministerium der Verteidigung hervorrief. Ihr schlossen sich in den folgenden Monaten nationale sowie unter #WeAgainstExtremism internationale Soldatenverbände an.

[QUELLE: Wikipedia]

#Panoramagate #Bundeswehr #SocialMediaDivision

Collaboration among mainstream media and citizen journalism is not new, neither is the tension that have existed among them. What is interesting is the hydra-headed nature of their relationship. After over two decades of coexistence and co-optation, it is anticipated that a robust mutually beneficial relationship has been forged. This is not the case however, as some mainstream media still view citizen journalism as a threat and vice versa. This paper is an attempt to revisit the notion of collaborative reporting and x-rays the inherent benefits that accompany such healthy relationship. Through the lenses of the communitarian theory, the paper provides the Collaborative Media Octopus as a model that explicitly relays the outcomes of a positive and negative citizen-mainstream journalists relationship. The paper further argues that in a digital era, journalists from mainstream media and user-generated platforms must view themselves as friends rather than foes due to the immense positive consequences that far outweighs the negative.

Over the past decade, particularly with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, we have seen an increase in the popularity of social media such as forums, weblogs and wikis and social media applications and services such as Facebook and YouTube along with the proliferation of open publishing initiatives and social news websites. This vibrant upsurge of participatory values and practices can be understood as a sign of a general cultural trend whereby audiences increasingly become active media producers. This participatory culture challenges the top-down model of journalism by allowing anyone to post and upload content without formal editorial moderation or filtering processes, while the boundaries between professional journalists and their audience begin to blur as audiences actively increase their control and involvement over their news consumption, becoming both consumers and creators of media content. Citizens are no longer passive receivers but rather are actively engaged in (re)creating, challenging, questioning, correcting, and personalizing news media.

As a means of combating revenue loss and reconnecting with their audiences, mainstream news media throughout Western democracies have begun tapping into this digital media culture by increasingly adopting participatory forms of journalism. However, these new forms have yet to be study in any great detail. The empirical research that does exist focuses mostly on gauging the opinions, motives and perceptions of editors/journalists, mapping the current trends and forms, and ethnographic studies on newsroom practices. What is needed to take this body of research further is an analysis of the content. This chapter moves in this direction by addressing the question of whether user-generated content within mainstream news media today is improving the quality journalism, i.e. enhancing the public sphere.

One of the most popular forms of user-generated content within mainstream news media is comment fields attached to news articles. Such spaces provide citizens the opportunity to react, debate, and comment on articles (or blogs) written by journalists. The focus of this chapter is on how people are engaging in these spaces. The aim is two fold. First, it is to see to what extent such spaces are facilitating deliberative communicative practices crucial to the public sphere. Are comment fields opening up spaces for citizen deliberation? Second, it is to see whether this type of user-generated content is improving the quality of journalism. Are citizens bringing new ideas, perspectives, facts, and sources to journalistic content?

In order to address these questions, postings from comment fields were examined and assessed within the British online newspaper the Guardian. The sample consisted of 3,169 postings (comments) taken from all those articles/blogs (by Guardian journalists) on the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen during a two week period in December 2009. A case study design with normative and descriptive characteristics was utilized. A content analysis was employed as the primary instrument for examination. The coding scheme focused first on gauging the type and level of interaction. Are participants engaging with the content, journalist, or fellow participants, and are such spaces hosting critical-reciprocal exchange between participants? Second, the analysis identified the purpose of the postings; i.e. are participants providing an opinion/argument, posing a question, providing information, calling for action, and/or degrading or acknowledging another? Finally, the analysis focused on the level to which such spaces bring new and alternative opinions, arguments, facts, and sources to the article, to journalism.

Citizen participation is intrinsic to journalism, but the technologies that have emerged in the last two decades promoted unprecedented transformations that have changed the way the public and the newspaper interact. The present study follows the impact of new media and the different tools of production and dissemination of content that appeared on the internet. This text is chronologically, but deflects in different directions to present current issues, which are listed as each new tool appears: internet, blogs, social networks and mobile devices. Finally, the research examines the latest communication channel adopted by the media, the WhatsApp. First inserted in a in Brazilian newsroom by Extra newspaper, in June 2013, it had a definite impact on journalistic production. Thus, we discuss key issues that refers to some of the major theories of journalism (agenda-setting, gatekeeper), to the practical field, with increased assignments by the professional and the growing participation of ordinary citizens in the press.

This study is a textual analysis of select social media hate speech messages against clergymen in Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to examine the degree of hate speech messages against select clergymen in Nigeria, the frames of hate speech messages against select clergymen in Nigeria and the impacts of social media hate speeches on clergymen in Nigeria. The theory adopted for the study was the social responsibility theory while qualitative textual analysis was the research design. Using the multi-stage sampling technique, Facebook was chosen as social medium for study why Temitope Balogun Joshua was also chosen as the cleric for the study. Findings from the study showed that hate speech is inimical to individual and group rights as well as religious stability and it is an abuse of freedom of the press. The researchers concluded that there are many hate speeches made against clergymen in the social media, especially hate speeches on Facebook directed at late TB Joshua beween January through July 2021. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among others, that all forms of hate speeches with or without evidence should not be made on social media because media do not convict people of their crimes and hate speeches could devalue the hate speech maker.

The improvement of snapshot communication and the access to digital media have contributed to the citizen´s critical training who can also join in the creating, developing and making processes of nowadays journalism. However, it’s up to the journalist to reinforce the sources and amend the colaborative content before publishing it. Therefore, by creating a website, it’s intended to present a web journalism structure and pattern with public interest news and also with a space to scientific disclosure, by editing and publishing the colaborator’s papers in all areas of work and research. Thereby, beyond the bibliographic research, documental and quantitative according to the public and according to the colaborators envolved, it was released reports focused on the process of social transformation published on the site jornalismocolaborativo.com, focus of study in the present paper.

Keywords: collaborative journalism, web journalism, science communication