[ecrea] Special Journal Issue on Participatory Journalism (WG2 COST Action Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies)

New special issue of the COST Action IS0906: ‘Transforming Audiences, 
Transforming Societies’:
Working Group 2 ‘Audience Interactivity and Participation’

MEDIJSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA/MEDIA RESEARCH (2013, Vol. 19, No. 2):
Participatory Journalism: Possibilities and Constraints for Audience 
Participation

Editor-in-Chief: Nada Zgrabljic Rotar (University of Zadar, Croatia)
Guest Editor of the Special Issue: Igor Vobic (University of Ljubljana, 
Slovenia)

In late modern societies, communication is shaped by concepts such as 
heterogeneity, fragmentation and individualisation. Social networking 
sites, blogs, and micro-blogs have recently joined the billions of 
websites enabling different individual and collective actors that are 
scattered across the locales to participate in public communication in a 
variety of unprecedented ways. These online forms of communicative 
engagement have also facilitated the ideas of the collaborative and the 
collective in contemporary journalism of traditional media 
organisations. The “people formerly known as the audience”, as Jay Rosen 
acknowledged almost a decade ago, have actively started to contribute to 
the on-going processes of creating news websites in mainstream media and 
became variously engaged in participatory journalism.
Despite the fact that the idea of participatory journalism engages 
people both inside and outside the newsrooms to communicate, not only 
to, but also with each other, there have been indications of 
inclusivist, and also exclusivist principles and practices, of 
collective and collaborative news making. The different modes of 
audience participation in journalism have, in some cases, eliminated 
some of the traditional ideals in journalism, such as truthiness, the 
principle of objectivity, and a disinterest in the shaping of political 
life, and have replaced them with alternatives, such as deliberation, 
multiperspectivity, and participation in political life. In this sense, 
the ordinary people have with professional assistance captured and 
published through words, photographic, or video stories of worldwide 
significance, and have shared personal perspectives or particular views 
from their small communities on issues of a larger significance, thereby 
reshaping the dynamics between the global and the (micro-)local in 
public communication.

The authors of the articles that have been included in this special 
issue of Medijska istraživanja/Media Research consider the possibilities 
and constrains of participatory journalism  to be the starting points of 
their explorations. The issue consists of five scholarly articles: one 
theoretical discussion on participatory journalism in the Internet age, 
and four case studies from the Netherlands, Slovenia, Serbia, and Belgium.

Contents:

Editorial
Igor Vobič

Reconsidering Participatory Journalism in the Internet Age
Igor Vobič, Peter Dahlgren
Available at: 
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=165840

“It really is a Craft”: Repertoires in Journalistic Frontrunners’ Talk 
on Audience Participation
Merel Borger, Irene Costera Meijer, Anita van Hoof, Jose Sanders
Available at: 
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=165842

Abuse of Online Participatory Journalism in Slovenia: Offensive Comments 
under News Items

Karmen Erjavec, Melita Poler-Kovačič
Available at: 
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=165843
Co-construction and Deconstruction of Poverty on Serbian News Websites
Jelena Kleut, Smiljana Milinkov
Available at: 
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=165844

Identity, Contingency and Rigidity: The (Counter-) hegemonic 
Constructions of the Identity of the Media Professional
Nico Carpentier
Only available in the printed edition.

MEDIJSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA/MEDIA RESEARCH
http://www.mediaresearch.cro.net/

See also:
Portal of scientific journals of Croatia
http://hrcak.srce.hr/?lang=en
http://hrcak.srce.hr/mediaresearch