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Abstract
This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organisations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite residual doubts about the editorial and commercial value of material from the public. The study identified a shift towards the use of moderation due to editors’ persistent concerns about reputation, trust, and legal liabilities, indicating that UK newspaper websites are adopting a traditional gate-keeping role towards UGC. The findings suggest a gate-keeping approach may offer a model for the integration of UGC, with professional news organisations providing editorial structures to bring different voices into their news reporting, filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe to be useful and valuable to their audience. While this research looked at UGC initiatives in the context of the UK newspaper industry, it has broad relevance as professional journalists tend to share a similar set of norms. The British experience offers valuable lessons for news executives making their first forays into this area and for academics studying the field of participatory journalism.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 8th International Symposium on Online Journalism, University of Texas, Austin, USA, 31 March 2007; and at the Future of Newspapers Conference, Cardiff University, UK, 12–13 September 2007.
Notes
1. “The five UGC sites that ranked in the top 50 in the United Kingdom (measured by total visitors that month)—Wikipedia, MySpace, Piczo, YouTube and Bebo—generated an average of 4.2 usage days and 79.9 minutes per visitor, according to comScore. By comparison, sites in the top 50 that were not based on UGC saw far less usage” (quoted by Wunsch-Vincent and Vickery, Citation2007).
2. Douglas (Citation2006) described 7 July 2005 as a turning point for the media. He wrote that it was the day user-generated content came into its own in Britain and that when there were four more attempted bombings in London two weeks later, the public knew what was expected of them and photos and videos flooded into the BBC.
3. For example, on 5 March 2007, USAToday unveiled a redesign of its web presence. In an editorial note published on the website, editor Ken Paulson and executive editors Kinsey Wilson and John Hillkirk (Paulson et al., Citation2007) said the newspaper's journalistic mission was to “help readers quickly and easily make sense of the world around them by giving them a wider view of the news of the day and connecting them with other readers who can contribute to their understanding of events”.
4. “Messageboards” are one of the oldest forms of participation, dating back to 1999 at Guardian.co.uk and 2002 at Dailymail.co.uk (Thurman, Citation2008).
5. On the day the popular British radio presenter John Peel died, in October 2004, the BBC News website received 35,000 e-mail submissions—rising to a total of 100,000—to the “Have your say” that had been established in commemoration (Thurman, Citation2008).
6. Not all publications, however, had a rationale for selecting staff bloggers. At DailyMail.co.uk “the disarmingly honest answer is that it's those who stuck their hands up basically”, said Alan Revell. For Revell, the COO of Associated Northcliffe Digital, it was important to have journalists who were willing to commit the time, rather than force people into it.
7. In 2003, the former British Member of Parliament and Secretary General of NATO Lord Robertson sued The Sunday Herald over a posting on a messageboard hosted by the newspaper that he alleged was defamatory. The case was settled out of court (see Thurman, Citation2008).
8. Based on Alfred Hermida's personal experience as a senior member of the BBC News website editorial team from 1997 to 2006.
9. A study by the Readership Institute (Citation2000) found that US newspapers fell into the following culture types: Constructive, 17 newspapers; Aggressive-Defensive, 27 newspapers; Passive-Defensive, 21 newspapers; Mixed Passive-Aggressive, 25 newspapers.
