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ARS13
Participation, Credibility, Hybrid Patterns of News Consumption and Engagement in the Acceptance of Contemporary
Journalism
L. Llamero
1
1
Faculty of Communication and International Relations Blanquerna- University Ramon Llull, Journalism, Barcelona, Spain
This panel explores how participation of audiences in the digital public sphere has introduced a diverse range of uses and perceptions that mark a dis‑
continuity between legacy journalism and online media. Before the advent of the Internet, journalism was legitimated under professional values that in
Western European countries highlighted the notions of factuality, neutrality and pluralism. Professional journalists often shared an ideal vision of their
job constructed around the role of watchdog of sectors of power, particularly political and economic power. Besides, traditional journalism benefited from
a privileged position in the communication chain, playing the role of gatekeeper and constructing the credible narratives of current events out of well es‑
tablished practices of information gathering and verification.These professional procedures made the world understandable for the lay public, organising it
in different spheres (politics, economy, culture, sports…). Nowadays, this position of journalism in society is blurred. The authors argue that the openness
of the Internet and the proliferation of information sources, along with the algorithmic architecture of the Web put tension on the role of journalists as in‑
termediators. Audiences are acquiring new habits of content consumption that demand a reflection on processes of meaning-making regarding news credi‑
bility, engagement and agency. Social networks are one of the developments shaping emerging habits of news consumption (Reuters Institute Digital News
Report 2015). Twitter and Facebook have become privileged platforms for disseminating news and for commenting on it. Consequently, under the pressure
of the digital conversation, media outlets have reacted by seeking for audience engagement. However, this notion (engagement) presents a great diversity
of definitions and practices. Participation of audiences is one of the most prominent dimensions of engagement and has effects on the quality of debate
and the reputation of the profession of journalism. But the nature of this participation remains as an open question. For some scholars, participation
offers opportunities for a rich debate (Bruns, 2005; Gillmor, 2004; Bakardjieva, 2012), whereas for others it leads to closed interpretive communities and
a personalization on the consumption and debate among like-minded people (Sunstein, 2002, 2003, 2009; Pariser, 2011). Although recent years have seen
an effort to better understand the participative audience (Livingstone, 2013; Schmidt & Loosen, 2014), we still lack knowledge on why citizens prefer some
formats over others. In order to discuss how the activity of audiences is impacting the role of journalism, this panel proposal presents four papers of em‑
pirical research and one paper of theoretical reflection. Firstly, we examine how news users found credibility issues in contemporary journalism, dissenting
between ideal values and skeptical perceptions. We also analyze several patterns of use of social media: one paper focuses on reading habits of young
people; another explores cross-media uses of Facebook newsfeed, and a third one evaluates how public conversations on Twitter question both journalists'
procedures and ethical behavior. Finally, a paper provides context to the reaction of the media industry to these by providing a socio historical-analysis
of the notion of "engagement".
PN 251
Ideal Values and Skeptical Perceptions of the Participative Audience Regarding the Credibility of Journalism
L. Llamero
1
, P. Masip
2
, D. Domingo
3
1
Faculty of Communication and International Relations- University Ramon Llull, Journalism, Barcelona, Spain
2
School of Communication and International Relations Blanquerna. University Ramon Llull, Journalism, Barcelona, Spain
3
Univérsité Libre de Bruxelles, Journalism, Brussels, Belgium
This paper focuses on the social construction of news credibility in the participative environment of contemporary journalism. Existing literature on cred‑
ibility presents this notion as a subjective judgement based on perceptions about the dimensions of expertise and trustworthiness (Choi & Stvilia, 2015).
Before the Internet era, those judgements relied on traditional notions of expertise and source’s honesty cues, but the networked media landscape has
introduced major changes into both dimensions. Consequently, new values and strategies for legitimating information have arisen. Journalism directly
experiences these major changes. On the expertise dimension, the new value of “open knowledge” puts into question the traditional gatekeeping role
of journalism, as technological affordances make it possible to connect primary sources with their publics. The reputation of journalists as generalists-qual‑
ified intermediaries is in crisis and their credibility suffers due to perceptions of inaccuracies in their reporting and a major reliance on specialists. On
the trustworthiness dimension, journalism holds the core values of maintaining a neutral position, preserving pluralism and watching for the public interest
(Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2014). As in any other professions, the compliance with the values is enforced by self-regulation, which it is not always in the best
interest of the general population (Freidson, 1978). Perceptions of bad praxis lead the audience to call into question the autonomy of journalists, opening
the practices of journalistic accountability to actors beyond the newsroom (Domingo and Heikkilä, 2012). Participation is considered as a key activity to
foster better quality of the narratives of public affairs based on principles as the“wisdom of crowds”(Surowiecky, 2004) or“gatewatching”(Bruns, 2005). But
empirical research shows constraints in achieving a fruitful participation. On the one hand, media outlets have usually adopted participation as a marketing
strategy to make users more loyal to their brand (Vujnovic et al., 2010) and journalists are reluctant to engage in a dialogue with the audience that would
foster accountability (Lasorsa et al. 2012). On the other hand, audiences have proven to practice a selective exposure and performmedia hostility (Arcenaux,
Johnson & Murphy, 2012; Melican & Dixon, 2008; Johnson & Kaye, 2014). This state of the art calls for addressing how participation mediates the credibility
judgements of news. Based on qualitative data gathered from twelve focus group discussions (N= 109 participants with different degrees of civic and media
engagement), we present a preliminary analysis of perceptions of the credibility of online media outlets in connection with participation. We conducted
thematic and interpretative analysis to identify how credibility is constructed as a social process. Audiences expressed a great deal of skepticism and think
that participation does not increase credibility because news and audience contributions are clearly separated onmedia websites. Besides that, they distrust
journalists due to political biases and demand for recovering the ideal values of factuality, neutrality and pluralism. Other relevant result is that the second‑
ary gatekeeping role of friends in social media does not strongly influence credibility judgements.