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Friday, November 11
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CDE14
NewsMedia, Democracy and Participation
PP 475
Engaging the Audience: The Democratic Potential of Slow Journalism
L. Knaudt
1
, R. Siebe
1
, F. Harbers
1
, T. Graham
1
1
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Media Studies and Journalism, Groningen, Netherlands
The rise of the web 2.0 has deeply affected journalism: Promoting a culture of speed, accessibility, collaboration and interaction, it challenges both
the self-understanding and capacities of traditional quality journalism as a top-down practice with a monopoly on the dissemination of newsworthy infor‑
mation. As static patterns of news consumption disappear, news is accessible anytime, anywhere, not only to be read, but also to be shared, commented
on, or discussed. This emerging participatory culture within journalism emphasizes the role of the audience as a source of information and commentary,
enriching journalism’s function as facilitating democratic deliberation. Traditional quality newspapers however seem reluctant to move beyond their top-
down reporting process to make full use of the potential participatory practices hold for deliberative civic engagement. In comparison, online-only ‘slow
journalism’ startups like De Correspondent in the Netherlands or Krautreporter in Germany explicitly embrace transparency, crowdsourcing, interaction
and collaboration as integral to their professional practice. This paper examines to which extent slow journalism constitutes a re-negotiation of journal‑
istic practices as means of democratic deliberation, especially with respect to the roles of journalists and citizens on journalistic platforms. Our analysis
will have a two-tiered focus: We will look into the deliberative behavior of the audience as well as into the interaction between journalists and citizens.
The paper seeks to illuminate how the bottom-up approach of the aforementioned two outlets reshapes the democratic role journalism plays in society,
and whether slow journalism offers possibilities for more civic engagement and increasing the deliberative quality of public debate. Our research will
be based on a quantitative content analysis in combination with a textual analysis of the comment sections of De Correspondent and Krautreporter. Our
corpus consists of all the comments on the articles published in the contributions from April 2016. The sample will consist of 100 to 150 articles contain‑
ing 1000 to 2000 comments per platform. As a measure of the nature of debate and journalists-audience interaction, each comment will be coded for
the type of interaction (with the content, journalist, and/or participant). The function of the comments (e.g. arguing, providing/requesting information/
sources, degrading, acknowledging/thanking, requesting reader input, criticizing/defending journalism, updating/correcting the story) will be identified
– the function of the comment can be specific for the roles of user or journalist but they may also overlap. Finally, its influence is coded (e.g. receiving
replies, changing the tone of debate). Though an increasing number of studies investigated readers’comments, most of them focus on the experiences and
perceptions of journalists in traditional news media. Few empirical studies have analyzed how audiences and journalists interact and behave in comment
fields. The few projects investigating this issue often find that there is little actual interaction, for example due to restrictive moderation policies or a lack
of time on the part of journalists. Because of the explicit emphasis on the democratic role and participatory ideals of slow journalism, we expect our cases
to show a significantly higher level of participation as well as a higher degree of deliberative quality during discussions.
PP 476
Towards a Democratic Citizens´ Perspective. What participants take away from eParticipation
D. Frieß
1
, P. Porten-Cheé
1
1
University of Duesseldorf, Social Science, Duesseldorf, Germany
During the last 20 years, governments across the world have spent considerable capacities to push forward e-participation services. While citizens demand
new opportunities for participation, politicians and administrators expect that public participation could increase the legitimacy, acceptance of policies, and
further fosters democratic qualities of citizens. This paper evaluates how the intensity of individual online participation affects users’ perceptions of dem‑
ocratically valuable effects. While the evaluations of online participation can focus on various dimensions and stakeholders of participation processes,
we focus on a democratic perspective from the citizen’s point of view. We argue that this ‘democratic citizen perspective’ is particularly relevant to answer
the more general question whether online participation is the right pill to cure democratic malaise. The criteria for evaluating e-participation from a dem‑
ocratic citizen perspective are extracted from the literature on deliberative and participatory theory, which claims that participation is going to have demo‑
cratically valuable effects on participants (e.g., Fishkin, 2009; Pateman, 1970). Drawing on this literature, we extract six potentially perceived participatory
effects: political efficacy, knowledge gain, common good orientation, tolerance, acceptance and legitimacy. Furthermore, we test a set of factors drawn
from previous empirical participation research (e.g., Barnes & Kaase, 1979; Almond & Verba, 1963) in order to explain how the judgment of democratic
success is may moderated by certain cognitive predispositions. By investigating such factors, we aim to contribute to the ongoing debate about whether on‑
line participation reinforces the existing inequalities in political participation, provoked by different degrees of knowledge, interests or action (e.g., Wright,
2012; Norris, 2001). Drawing on online survey data from 670 citizens engaged in public budgeting online consultations, we found that intensity of online
participation seemed to foster the perception of common good orientation and tolerance by the surveyed individuals. In contrast, other effects were not
induced by participation intensity. Findings on moderating factors indicate that the beneficial effects of online participation are distributed unequally,
depending on whether citizens feel politically empowered or are already satisfied with politics. Although the findings are limited, the theoretical conception
of perceived participatory effects from a democratic perspective may serve to inspire and stimulate further research, which should shed further light on
how different forms of online participation can improve democracy. References: Almond, G. A. & Verba, S. (1963). The civic culture : political attitudes and
democracy in five nations. New Jersey : Princeton University Press. Barnes, S. H. & Kaase, M. (1979). Political action : mass participation in five Western
democracies. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, Inc. Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak. Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cam-bridge: Cambridge Uni‑
versity Press. Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and democratic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wright, S. (2012b). The Participatory Jour‑
ney in Online Consultations. In S. Coleman and P. M. Shane (Eds.), Connecting democracy: Online consultation and the flow of political communication (pp.
149–171). Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press.