The Monitorial Role of Crowdsourced Journalism: Audience Engagement in Corruption Reporting in Nonprofit Newsrooms

ABSTRACT

Nonprofit digital new organizations, which are proliferating all over the world, are praised for their innovations in audience-focused interventions in journalism. Drawing on direct observation and in-depth interviews, this case study explores audience engagement practices within nonprofit newsrooms in South-East Europe, in order to elaborate on the impact of professional norms on such engagement in a complex media and political environment. This analysis explains how two nonprofit organizations in Kosovo have reinvented engagement by adopting a digital crowdsourcing platform that facilitates bottom-up storytelling and a public service model that transcends traditional journalistic roles. Unlike previous engagement models observed in societies with traditional professional culture, this study reflects how nonprofits with flexible professional boundaries find ways to expand engagement by also practicing advocacy and accountability.

KEYWORDS:

• Audience engagement
• nonprofit news
• participatory journalism
• digital news
• media accountability
• corruption
• qualitative method

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Faik Ispahiu, executive director of Internews Kosova, interview, Pristina, 27 May 2019.

2 Mato Mayer, UNDP’s Chief Technical Advisor for SAEK 2, interview, Pristina, 28 May 2019. Arben Sejdaj, Project Manager for Support to Anti-Corruption Efforts in Kosovo. United Nations Development Programme, interview, Pristina, 28 May 2019.

3 Shaip Havolli, director of the Kosovo Anti-Corruption Agency, interview, 28 May 2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Houston.