Media Credibility and Journalistic Role Conceptions: Views on Citizen and Professional Journalists among Citizen Contributors

Abstract

This study identifies citizen journalists' role conceptions regarding their news contributing activities and their perceptions of professional journalists' roles. Specifically, the ethical criterion of media credibility was assessed to identify predictors on their perceptions of roles. Analyses reveal citizen journalists perceive their roles to be generally similar to professional journalists and even rated certain roles more prominently for themselves. Further, their perceptions of media credibility were found to function as a core belief in how they assessed their roles and also those of professional journalists, which has implications for a system of open ethics.

Notes

This project was supported by the University of Kentucky, College of Communication and Information, College Research Activities Award.

Note. 1. **p ≤ .01

*p ≤ .05, Sig. (2-tailed); 2. PJ = Professional Journalist, CJ = Citizen Journalist.

Note. 1. **p ≤ .01

*p ≤ .05, Sig. (2-tailed); 2. PJ = Professional Journalist, CJ = Citizen Journalist.

^# p ≤ .10

*p ≤ .05

**p ≤ .01

***p ≤ .001; 3. PJ = Professional Journalists, CJ = Citizen Journalists; 4. Parentheses indicate total cases analyzed.

1. The keyword search yielded the following five websites:

1.	http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=List_of_citizen_journalism_websites [source: sourcewatch]
2.	http://www.dmoz.org/News/Media/Participatory// [source: open directory project]
3.	http://www.kcnn.org/citmedia_sites/ [source: kcnn, new voices]
4.	http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/002226.php [source: cyberjournalist.net <http://cyberjournalist.net>]
5.	http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Top-citizen-journalism-sites-to-upload-video-34626.htm

2. The Bivings Group. The use of the Internet by America's newspapers. Retrieved from http://www.bivingsreport.com/campaign/newspapers06_tz-fgb.pdf

3. The task involved searching through 1,042 sites in which 102 were duplicate listings, 425 were not functioning or not qualified for the study (e.g., news aggregator), and 107 did not list contact information.

4. On two occasions, participants asked if they could circulate the survey on a citizen media listserv. We allowed these participants to forward the survey link.

5. As the total individual contacts to citizen journalists other than the extensive list that had been developed are unknown, calculation of the exact response rate was not possible.