Tensions in the scholarship on participatory journalism and citizen journalism

ABSTRACT

Previous research has found that much of the scholarship on citizen-engaged journalism cites its democratic potential. This integrative literature review builds on that work by distinguishing how scholars have defined participatory journalism and citizen journalism and by discovering why some scholars have expressed disappointment in citizens’ efforts while others have offered optimism. This study argues that these differences partly result from how researchers have disparately framed their studies and dissimilarly conceptualized how journalism serves democracy. Whereas some scholars have adopted an understanding of journalism as engaging citizens, others have adhered to the more traditional task of expertly informing the public. Prior debates over public journalism can inform these tensions and possibly illuminate future directions for research.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory journalism
• citizen journalism
• public journalism
• democracy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Alice Diebel at the Kettering Foundation as well as her colleagues Jeff Drury, Sara Drury, and Jessica Kuperavage for their help reviewing the manuscript. She is also grateful to the journal’s reviewers for their guidance and recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Twelve articles appeared in the results under both search terms; half of these identified or explored distinctions between the two terms, but half used them more interchangeably. Eleven authors published different articles under different labels, though most actually studied participatory journalism regardless of the label they used, while three (Deuze, Holt, and Karlsson, with the latter two typically co-authoring) studied different phenomena for each label.

2. A few scholars departed from this use of participatory journalism. Some (e.g. Fröhlich et al., 2012; Littau, 2016; Mäkinen & Kuira, 2008) equated participatory journalism with news produced entirely by citizens, similar to how we will later discover most scholars have defined citizen journalism. Other researchers (e.g. Hänska-Ahy & Shapour, 2013; Lewis, Holton, & Coddington, 2014; Singer et al., 2011) used participatory journalism as more of an umbrella term for work produced by citizens that may or may not be submitted to professional outlets, although their studies often focused on professional–amateur collaborations.

3. Shin did not explicitly mention public journalism but did cite Glasser’s (1999) The idea of public journalism when arguing that ‘allowing citizens’ participation in Newstapa’s project can meet a traditional public service obligation of journalism (cf. Glasser, 1999)’.

4. A handful of scholars used citizen journalism as more of an umbrella term to mean work produced by citizens that may be produced autonomously or in collaboration with professional journalists (e.g. Chung, Nah, & Yamamoto, 2017; Nah, Yamamoto, Chung, & Zuercher, 2015).

5. Some researchers, although they identified citizen journalism as a focus in their study and may have defined the term narrowly, actually examined citizens’ collaboration with professional journalists (e.g. Canter, 2013; Chadha & Steiner, 2015; Chung & Nah, 2014; Larsson, 2012; Lewis, Kaufhold, & Lasorsa, 2010). This research was largely congruent with the work on participatory journalism already presented.

6. Veenstra et al. (2015) are really more neutral in their evaluation of citizen journalism. That is, they, like a few other articles I read, provided a more dispassionate description of what citizen journalism does and how it does or does not differ from professional journalism. Most studies, however, were more clearly positive or negative.

7. Kang (2016) pointed out that such concerns occur only in countries that already have professional journalistic conventions in place, such as in Japan rather than Korea.

Additional information

Funding

This manuscript was developed in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.