Participatory journalism, also sometimes called citizen journalism, is a branch of modern journalism in which average citizens who are not journalists participate in the newsgathering process. Participatory journalism opens up the traditional pathway of journalism—created by a journalist and distributed to an audience—to allow more potential roles (and more active roles) for members of the public, including their involvement in gathering, analyzing, reporting, and sharing information.
There are many different types of audience participation in this branch of journalism. Common forms of participatory journalism include independent and informational websites run by people who are not professional journalists; professional journalistic websites that feature user-generated content and other work from non-journalist citizens; personal social media dissemination of information; and other audience-driven efforts to bring non-journalists into the processes of news production and distribution.
For example, BuzzFeed’s website features the work of online community members who generate their own content under a user-driven branch of the site. Other sites, like Slate, prioritize and curate user-generated comments to drive engagement to existing stories. Journalists also occasionally crowd source reporting questions to audiences on social media, who can help them document incidents of an event or track a source through time and space. Notably, Washington Post White House reporter David Fahrenthold repeatedly collaborated with citizens through his Twitter profile to track and document different issues throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, and citizens have helped journalists to sort through enormous spreadsheets and other sources of data to find the most important stories. And journalistic coverage of police brutality in the United States owes much to citizens who used their cell phones to document the violent events they witnessed.
This democratization of journalism has been substantially shaped by the internet era, when average citizens gained the same access as journalists to certain types of information and digital fact-gathering tools. These include smart devices with which to collect and record information, as well as social media and other sites where people routinely share user-generated content such as their own photos, perspectives, and other types of information. It also includes free content management platforms (like WordPress) and lower costs for promoting content, including free word-of-mouth promotion on social media. Simply put, thanks to the internet, it is much easier for people to find, publish, and share information to a range of potential audiences.
Participatory journalism has complemented traditional journalism in documenting a number of important stories in recent years, particularly in cases of political turmoil or environmental challenges that encouraged citizens to document their own experiences and others'. A few examples include citizen documentation of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the so-called Arab Spring demonstrations in the early 2010s, during which average citizens regularly shared breaking developments as well as photos and stories of their own experiences. More recently, the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have also provided examples of participatory journalism in which non-journalists shared their own stories (and those of others) with audiences, without the need for (and limitation of) journalistic gatekeepers. Participatory journalism has been especially prominent and important in countries with more restrictive press freedoms, as it provides an opportunity for documentation of events and topics that may not otherwise receive professional coverage.
Participatory journalism has both benefits and drawbacks, though. Because participatory journalism gives voice to non-journalists, it can expose audiences to a greater diversity of information and perspectives while simultaneously filling potential gaps in coverage that result from a financially challenged media industry. It can also empower people by encouraging them to take a more active role in newsgathering and dissemination.
However, participatory journalism can also pass over many of the journalistic norms, such as fact-checking and transparency, that lend credibility to reporting and encourage audiences to trust the news they consume. Put another way, it can also introduce a lot of noise into the media ecosystem, and can easily be exploited to promote disinformation under the guise of grassroots reporting. Indeed, there are today multiple examples of semi-professional websites and computer-generated social media profiles being used to generate dishonest content to generate profit and sow confusion. Even when it is driven by a positive motivation, this type of journalism can sometimes blur the boundaries of journalism as it, by definition, involves lifting up and legitimizing non-journalistic storytellers, who do not receive the same training and institutional education as professional journalists. That, in turn, can confuse audiences who may not be able to evaluate how rigorously the news they are consuming has been vetted.
Participatory journalism opens up the traditional pathway of journalism—created by a journalist for an audience—to allow more potential (and potentially active) roles for members of the public, including their involvement in gathering, analyzing, reporting, and sharing information.
Participatory journalism has been deeply shaped by modern digital technologies, which decreased the gap in access to information, information-gathering tools, and the costs of reaching large audiences.
Participatory journalism has both benefits and drawbacks. While it can empower people by encouraging them to take a more active role in newsgathering and dissemination, it can sometimes blur the boundaries and standards of traditional journalism produced by professionals with shared and specific training, education, and ethics.