“HAVE THEY GOT NEWS FOR US?”

Abstract

The BBC elicits and uses a number of different types of audience material, but the corporation has most wholeheartedly embraced what we call Audience Content (eyewitness footage or photos, accounts of experiences, and story tip-offs). Indeed, when the term user-generated content (UGC) is used by BBC news journalists it usually denotes only this kind of material. Audience material is often described by commentators and practitioners as having revolutionised journalism by disrupting the traditional relationships between producers and consumers of the news. In the main journalists and editors see material from the audience as just another news source, a formulation which is perpetuated by the institutional frameworks set up to elicit and process audience material as well as the content of the corporation's UGC training. Our data suggest that, with the exception of some marginal collaborative projects, rather than changing the way most news journalists at the BBC work, audience material is firmly embedded within the long-standing routines of traditional journalism practice.

Keywords:

• BBC
• participatory journalism
• user-generated content

Notes

1. The principal exception to this in the session we observed was a small final segment of the course in which journalists were encouraged to scan the Internet for useful blogs which could inform future BBC News content. In certain cases this could lead to examples of what we call Networked Journalism. Even this part of the course was mainly framed in terms of very traditional journalist–source relations, however, with the instructor suggesting, “an increasing number of journalists are learning to find the best blogs and to use them as sources … Blogs can be good sources, but remember, they're just sources”.

2. All three of these examples are truly participatory in that they involve significant input from audience members, and necessitate a meaningful partnership and collaboration between members of the public and journalists. Video Nation is a video diary project which encourages audience members to make short films about their attitudes and experiences, and which encourages supervising journalists to be “gate openers” rather than gatekeepers (Carpentier, 2003). BBC's Capture Wales digital storytelling project involved journalists holding intensive training sessions in local communities enabling members of the public to tell their own stories using a distinctive multimedia narrative form incorporating text, music, and photographs or video. School Report is an annual collaboration between the BBC and pupils in hundreds of UK schools in which young people take the lead, create their own content, and participate as journalists across the BBC's news operation. Although there are significant differences between these projects, they are all united by an emphasis on participation, collaboration, and facilitating public involvement.