Title: The active recipient: participatory journalism through the lens of the Dewey-Lippmann debate
Abstract: News outlets are providing more opportunities than ever before for the public to contribute to professionally edited publications. Online news websites routinely provide tools to facilitate user participation in the news, from enabling citizens to submit story ideas to posting comments on stories. This study on participatory journalism draws on the perspectives of writer Walter Lippmann and philosopher John Dewey on the role of the media and its relationship to the public to frame how professional journalists view participatory journalism. Based on semi-structured interviews with journalists at about two dozen newspaper websites, as well as a consideration of the sites themselves, we suggest that news professionals view the user as an active recipient of the news. Journalists have tended to adopt a Deweyan approach towards participatory tools and mechanisms, within carefully delineated rules. As active recipients, users are framed as idea generators and observers of newsworthy events at the start of the journalistic process, and then in an interpretive role as commentators who reflect upon professionally produced material.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
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Cited By Count: 37
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