- About the Action
- Events
- PhD workshop - Ljubljana 2014
- Action Open Conference - Ljubljana 2014
- New Media and Participation conference - Istanbul 2013
- Belgrade meeting 2013
- Media literacy research and policy - Brussels 2013
- ICA Pre-Conference 2013
- Tampere meeting 2013
- Budapest workshop 2012
- Milan meeting 2012
- Brussels PhD workshop 2012
- Brussels Action workshop 2012
- London meeting 2011
- Zagreb Conference 2011
- Lisbon meeting 2010
- Affiliated events
- WG 1
- WG 2
- WG 3
- WG 4
- Cross-WG
- Output
From Grand Narratives of Democracy to Small Expectations of Participation: Audiences, citizenship, and interactive tools in digital journalism
Peters, C., Tamara Witschge (2014). From Grand Narratives of Democracy to Small Expectations of Participation: Audiences, citizenship, and interactive tools in digital journalism. Digital Journalism, forthcoming.
Abstract: This article critically examines the invocation of democracy in the discourse of audience participation in digital journalism. We compare and contrast conceptualisations of the audience found in the grand narratives that traditionally described journalism’s functions for democracy (information source, watchdog, public representative, mediation for political actors), and discuss how digital technologies impact this relationship. We consider how “participatory” transformations influence perceptions of news consumption and draw out analytic distinctions based on structures of participation and different levels of engagement. This article argues that the focus in digital journalism is not so much on citizen engagement but rather audience or user interaction; instead of participation through news, the focus is on participation in news. This demands we distinguish between minimalist and maximalist versions of participation through interactive tools, as there is a significant distinction between technologies that allow individuals to control and personalise content (basic digital control) and entire platforms that easily facilitate the storytelling and distribution of citizen journalism within public discourse (integrative structural participation). Furthermore, commercial interests tend to dominate the shaping of digital affordances, which can lead to individualistic rather than collective conceptualisations. This article concludes by considering what is gained as well as lost when grand visions of journalism’s roles for democracy are appropriated or discarded in favour of a participation paradigm to conceptualise digital journalism.