“We’re no playground for maniacs”: Local newspapers and users’ participatory practices

Olsson, T., Borgström, J., Öberg, T. (2011). “We’re no playground for maniacs”: Local newspapers and users’ participatory practices . Zagreb conference: "New challenges and methodological innovations in European media audience research". 7-9 April 2011.

Abstract: During the last decades the world of media has been reconfigured. One area that has received particular analytical attention with reference to new, converging and interactive media, is the prerequisites for user and/or audience participation. In terms of technological capability internet based media offer a great deal of such opportunities. They enable, for instance, new forms of civic participation within the public sphere (Butsch 2006; Dahlgren 2010; Miegel & Olsson 2010), and offer new participatory opportunities within the sphere of cultural production (Jenkins 2006a; Jenkins 2006b; Burgess & Green 2009). This paper approaches and analyses participatory possibilities, practices and policies within a related, but also distinct sphere – the sphere of local newspaper production. Within the Swedish context, local newspapers have a strong tradition. Several of the papers that dominate contemporary markets are around 150 years old and have also often been understood as pillars of local democracy. At this point in time, however, they are facing a new challenge of learning how to deal with the new paradigm of user participation within both online and offline editions. The new situation provokes a number of questions: What editorial practices and policies are evolving concerning users’ participation? What happens as amateur users’ participatory practices interplay with journalists’ professional values? The paper presents data and analyses from a recent (autumn 2010) study of three local Swedish newspapers. The empirical material consists of interviews with managing editors and journalists concerning their views of and practices concerning user participation in local newspapers. Among other things, the paper reveals tensions between professional, journalistic norms and the appropriation of user generated content. It also illustrates how user participation is variously framed by managing editors as “democratically desirable” and “economically valuable”. *The research reported in this paper is part of the research project “Organised Producers of Young Net Cultures: Actors, Practises, Ambitions”, funded by the Swedish Knowledge Foundation’s research program Young Net Cultures (March 2009-February 2013).