Gatekeeping, Gatewatching, Real-Time Feedback: New Challenges for Journalism

Gatekeeping, Gatewatching, Real-Time Feedback: New Challenges for Journalism
Assoc. Prof. Axel Bruns
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au – http://snurb.info/ – @snurb_dot_info
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/

(Image by falling.bullets)

Challenges for the Journalism Industry
Gatekeeping:
Multiplication of available information channels
Declining control over information flows
Potential for bypassing journalism altogether
Gatewatching:
Increasingly active, selective audiences
Citizen journalism alternatives to mainstream media
Direct communication between news makers and news users
Real-time media:
Acceleration of news processes beyond 24-hour news cycle
Constant circulation of news and rumours through social media
Always-on ‘ambient news’ channels (Hermida, 2010; Burns, 2010)

Producing the News
Traditional news process:
(from Bruns, Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, 2005)

The End of Gatekeeping
Gatekeeping depends on:
Scarcity of information:information difficult to access for average citizens
Scarcity of channels:need for careful selection of what news is ‘fit to print’
Scarcity of qualified professionals:specific skillset required for journalism, training necessary
The end of scarcity:
Information abundance:digitisation of information leads to greater accessibility
Channel abundance:institutions and organisations provide first-hand information online
Proliferation of expertise:domain experts and ‘professional amateurs’ share their knowledge

An Industry in Denial?
The Australian erupts:
sheltered academics and failed journalists who would not get a job on a real newspaper
we understand Newspoll because we own it (12 July 2007)
statistical bloggers forever complain … and essentially want polls to be banished from newspapers and public debate except during an election (21 February 2008)
No more than amateurs?
Dan Gillmor: “my readers know more than I do” (2003)
professional journalists vs. amateur journalists, but also
professional psephologists vs. (very) amateur poll interpreters
Science (psephology) beats craft (journalism)

Produsing the News
Gatewatcher news process:
(from Bruns, Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production, 2005)
Variations on the process are possible

Implications of Gatewatching
Potential new roles for ‘open news’:
‘bottom-up’ instead of ‘top-down’ reporting
multiperspectival news coverage (Herbert Gans)
democratic, dialogic, deliberative journalism(Dan Gillmor: ‘from lecture to conversation’)
Implications for mainstream journalism:
journalists and editors can be bypassed
corrective and critical observer of mainstream news(Herbert Gans: a ‘second tier’ of news organisations)
removal of clear distinctions between producers and consumers

Open News and Open Source
Translating the open source definition to ‘open news’:
The basic idea behind open source is very simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the Software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.We in the open source community have learned that this rapid evolutionary process produces better software than the traditional closed model, in which only a very few programmers can see the source and everybody else must blindly use an opaque block of bits.(Opensource.org)

Decline of the traditional production value chain:
Producer  Distributor  Consumer
(market research  producer  distributor  consumer)
(consumer input  producer  distributor  consumer)
Beyond ‘Production’

A New Value Chain?
(as user)
produser
(as producer)
Content
Content

(http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/capitalism1.htm)

Common Characteristics
shared across these environments:
Open Participation, Communal Evaluation – the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified
Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Governance – produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds
Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process – content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths
Common Property, Individual Merit – contributors permit (non-commercial) community use and adaptation of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital gained through this process

Social Media and Real-Time News
Key news-related uses of social media:
First-hand news reports:
Hudson River emergency landing; Abbottabad raid; crises and disasters
Continuing news discussion:
Information sharing, commentary, story curation
‘Ambient’ news coverage (Hermida; Burns):
Early indicator of breaking stories; trending topics, themes, URLs, etc.
Ad hoc formation of online communities:
Drawing on available tools and platforms
Driven by current themes and problems
Quasi-journalistic research and commentary
User-driven data journalism

Twitter and the Japanese Tsunami

‘Working the Story’ through Social Media
Journalism as a distributed effort:
Large number of contributors performing ‘random acts of journalism’
Network of ‘sleeper sources’, on the scene well before journalists
Collaborative curation of stories, ad hoc but self-organising
Journalists and news organisations participating as equals with users
Journalism in the open:
Information sourcing, sharing, verification, curation as it happens
Separate, uncontrolled, third-party spaces for ambient journalism
Sharing of individual news items, disembedded from the brand
No scoops, no embargoed knowledge, no controlled releases
Journalism as a participatory sport:
“the news may be too important to leave to the journalists alone” (Gans, 1980)

Image by Yea I Knit

#eqnz: @replies + Manual Retweets
mainstream news
authorities
utilities

Challenges for Journalism
No more information monopolies
Gatekeeping has become impossible
Gatewatching creates new competitors
Self-righteousness is inappropriate
Active, productive users
Clear distinctions between amateurs and professionals have disappeared
Journalists are often amateurs in relation to the themes they cover
Collaborative produsage can lead to professional quality
Ambient information environments
Declining product loyalty in complex media environments
Information subscriptions  information search  ‘information will find me’
Subscription models (e.g. iPad apps) only successful in special cases

Opportunities for Journalism
Engaging with active news users:
Specialisation:
Personal and organisational specialisation
Individual journalists as personal brands
Curation:
Journalists and news organisations as expert news curators
Provision of advanced news crowdsourcing platforms
Facilitation:
Focus on journalistic core business: research, investigation
Partnership with users as critics, commentators, and curators

Produsage and the News Industry
Engaging with social media communities:
Be open.
For users (access) and with users (transparency).
Seed community processes by providing content and tools.
Model desired behaviour, assist productive participation.
Support community dynamics and devolve responsibilities.
Engage promising community leaders as they emerge.
Don’t exploit the community and its work.
Making money is fine, but you don’t own your users.
Adapted from Axel Bruns and Mark Bahnisch. "Social Drivers behind Growing Consumer Participation in User-Led Content Generation: Volume 1 - State of the Art." Sydney: Smart Services CRC, 2009.

Image by Maproom Systems

Viral Marketing
Axel Bruns
Associate Professor
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Australia
a.bruns@qut.edu.au
@snurb_dot_info
http://snurb.info/
http://produsage.org/
http://mappingonlinepublics.net/
Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond:From Production to Produsage (Peter Lang, 2008)
Uses of Blogs, eds. Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs (Peter Lang, 2006)
Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production (Peter Lang, 2005)

http://snurb.info	1583
http://www.snurb.info	39
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	8
http://dev2.snurb.info	1
http://admin.totalmarketing.com	1

Gatekeeping, Gatewatching, Real-Time Feedback: New Challenges for Journalism

by Axel Bruns on Oct 08, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

5 Embeds 1,632

Statistics

Gatekeeping, Gatewatching, Real-Time Feedback: New Challenges for Journalism — Webinar Transcript