Chapter 1: Introduction

Journalists strongly held the view that the system of non-moderation of comments was damaging for the newspaper company brand, as also found by Reich (2011) and Hermida and Thurman (2008). This is recurring theme throughout this research and was previously discussed in Chapter 6 and is explored further in Chapters 9 and 11. Again the extent to which this is the case in reality may be less substantial than journalists and editors believe, due to the ‘damaging’ comments being limited to a small percentage. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter which turns to the value of audience participation.

Despite the reservations made about comments and the challenges they bring editorial staff, not a single journalist thought the ability to comment should be removed. They all argued that the comments were an important democratic right and the reward of an increase in online users outweighed the risks. As Reich (2011) reasoned journalists viewed reader comments as a “necessary evil” with both positive and negative impacts (p.103). Indeed at the Bournemouth Daily Echo where comments raised the most concern, it was also evident that the comment function had increased their active audience figures the most. In line with the results of Chapter 5, the content analysis further revealed that audiences were more active at the Bournemouth Daily Echo than at the Leicester Mercury.

Chapter 9: Value of participation

9.1 Introduction

The previous three chapters outlined why audiences participate and why journalists are encouraged by a combination of economic pragmatism and sometimes professional altruism to enable participation (Chapter 6); the nature of this participation (Chapter 7); and an in-depth look at the nature of this participation with regards to comments on stories (Chapter 8). The pattern emerging from the data is that readers are mostly motivated by public incentives of being informed, being able to take part in debate and being able to interact with others but news organisations are motivated by economic factors which is a pressure keenly felt by journalists. There is potential for harnessing democratic debate to a greater extent but this is currently restricted by organisational factors and journalists’ sceptical attitudes towards participation which in turn is creating an environment where there is a lack of two-way interaction between readers and journalists.

Having identified the types of participation and the motivations of audiences and journalists this chapter now looks toward the question of the value of audience participation for both readers and journalists. The research recognises that value can have both economic worth (Miller, 2008; Blaug et al, 2006; Mulgan et al, 2006) and non-monetary subjective worth (Miller, 2008) whilst public value can be the morals, principles or ideas that serve as guides to action (Mason, 2002).

Therefore as discussed in Chapter 2 this study aims to measure value from the perspective of audience members and journalists, whilst also taking into consideration the value of participation to news companies. As discussed in the literature review, journalists are caught between social and economic obligations meaning the value of participation to journalists is potentially one that holds both public and economic value.

In order to measure the value of participation to audience members this study has developed three gauges from public sphere theory, which are set out and justified in detail in Chapter 2, section 2.5.

To recap, for Web 2.0 audience participation in local British newspapers to be valuable to readers it must:

1. 
   enable anyone with internet access to participate
   

2. 
   allow a variety of communication channels to offer alternative arenas to dominate and subordinate groups
   

3. 
   contain moral, ethical, political or community communication irrespective of whether it is a matter of public or private interest
   

As argued in Chapter 2 accessibility and inclusivity must exist in order for the public sphere to operate effectively as a space for rational critical deliberation (Habermas, 1989). Without inclusivity the public sphere cannot represent public opinion. But in order for this to occur the contemporary argument is that multiple public spheres (Gitlin, 1998), counter-publics (Dahlgren, 2001; Fraser, 1999) and deliberative online forums (Coleman and Blumler, 2009) must exist via a variety of communication channels to offer alternative arenas to both dominant and subordinate groups.

Furthermore if the three gauges set out above are met then participation can be a valuable form of deliberation. As Eriksen and Weigard (2003) reason, through participation democracy can enlighten and educate its citizens and enable them to reach mutual understanding of the common good. This participation often takes the form of deliberation which enables citizens to find out if political decisions are correct by hearing counter arguments which are freely voiced. The news media fulfil an important function for democracy by providing a public forum in which these views and opinions can potentially have an influence on the decision of politicians or at the very least have an influence on the voting decisions of other citizens (Ross and Nightingale, 2003). This public forum or public sphere is where private citizens come together to form a public and deliberate politics through rational critical debate in order to reach a common judgement and influence political decision-making (Habermas, 1989). The mass media play a vital role in the public sphere as journalists “help citizens learn about the world, debate their responses to it and reach informed decisions about what courses of action to adopt” (Dahlgren, 1991, p.1). Furthermore within the context of Web 2.0 Wessler and Schultz (2007) maintain that the mass media have become the most important forum for truly public deliberation. As Jackson (1971) indicated four decades ago the local press have a series of important functions one of which is to provide a platform for debate, a function which is still relevant in the post Web 2.0 era. Therefore the findings of this chapter seek to understand whether audience participation meets the three gauges set out above and whether it can be classified as deliberation.

The notion of value must be explored within an economic context however, as this underpins the business model of UK regional newspapers and their websites. Chapter 6 strongly indicates that journalists and newspaper organisations are being motivated to enable participation for economic reasons and indeed Chapter 8 suggests that true democratic deliberation is being held back in part due to commercial concerns about damage to the brand of a news organisation. Habermas (1992) argued that the public sphere was in decline in the 19^th century due to the commercialisation of newspapers yet contemporary scholars (Hermida, 2011a; Coleman and Blumler, 2009; Dahlgren, 2001; Poster, 1995) argue that the media of the 21^st century represent the public sphere ideal more accurately due to the diversity of voices contributing and the ability for the public to participate via the internet. Yet there still remains constant friction between the political realm of readers as citizens and the economic realm of readers as consumers outlined by Garnham (1986) more than two decades ago. The question is whether the two can co-exist or whether the internet runs the risk of equating democracy with populism (Goode, 2009).

This chapter therefore seeks to explore RQ2b: What is the value of Web 2.0 audience participation in British local newspapers? in relation to contemporary conceptualisations of the public sphere and deliberative democracy set within the context of the commercial media market.

This chapter aims to draw on the perspectives of both readers and journalists and therefore a variety of methods were deployed to gather data. The first section of results entitled access, inclusivity and topic, draws from the findings of the comment content analysis discussed in Chapter 8 together with findings from Chapters 5 and 7. The second section entitled learning and debating, deals with results from the questionnaire of online users from both case study websites. There were three questions specifically relating to the value of participation including an open question to extract qualitative responses. The full list of questions can be viewed in Appendix 1a. The responses to the questionnaire were analysed in conjunction with reader interviews as outlined in Chapter 4. Readers were asked about the value of participation and then more specifically about the value of comments on stories. The responses were mostly based on predetermined answers devised from the literature but the open questions in the questionnaire and questions in the interview allowed for a broader range of responses which were coded qualitatively.

The third section, economic value, draws from interviews with journalists. The interview guide included a section on the value of participation including questions such as, ‘Is readers participation valuable? Why? How? For whom?’ The interview checklist also included subjects such as: empowering citizens, resources, debate, scrutiny, personal interest, and social. Both can be seen in full in Appendix 2a. The results were analysed and coded organically with the use of priori codes rather than predetermined categories.

9.3 Results

The results in this chapter specifically refer to the question of value and draw on all of the methods outlined in Chapter 4 including observation, interviews, questionnaire and content analysis. This chapter draws together the findings of Chapter 5, 6, 7, and 8 as well as new data analysed specifically from the reader and journalist interviews together with sections of the online reader questionnaire.

The findings are divided into three key areas to explore all the aspects surrounding value and notions of the public sphere as outlined in Chapter 2. The first section, access inclusivity and topic, explores whether the three gauges of value described above have been met in the two case study sites. The second section, learning and debating, focuses on whether audience participation can be defined as democratic deliberation. The final section, economic value, explores the commercial context and whether audience participation has a journalistic value as well as an economic one.

Access, inclusivity and topic

In order for audience participation to have value the first criterion that must be met in this study is that the case study websites must enable anyone with internet access to participate. Via observation and journalist interviews at both the Leicester Mercury and Bournemouth Daily Echo it quickly became apparent that access was not universal. Although anyone with internet access could send in user generated content, or participate via social media websites, there were restrictions on who could participate in commenting on stories. Anyone could initially register an account to comment as long as they had an email address but the newspaper had the power to ban users. Figures disclosed by the Bournemouth Daily Echo showed that there were 9,400 active users registered and 11,300 active, non-active or banned users registered. This would indicate that there were up to 1,900 banned users, although this figure is mostly likely to be made up of non-active users. The Leicester Mercury was not able to disclose comparable figures. As discussed in Chapter 8 the banning of commenters was a somewhat arbitrary process at both case study sites. Banning users together with turning off some comment threads, preventing readers from commenting on certain stories altogether and a lack of a measured approach to moderation meant that access to participation was being curtailed at the whim of journalists. Organisational constraints and legal anxieties meant that with regards to comment threads the gauge that newspaper websites should enable anyone with internet access to participate was not being met. Live blogging was another area where journalists restricted readers from participating as they had control of which posts to publish as this was a fully moderated system.

Furthermore with user generated content the journalists still acted as gatekeepers, as discussed further in Chapter 10, selecting which reader content to publish and which to spike. Therefore not everyone with an internet access was able to participate. The only place where access was completely open was on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, although journalists still had the ability to remove reader posts, although due to a lack of interaction from journalists this rarely or never happened. There was less anxiety about these websites due to the content not being the legal responsibility of the newspaper or its website. As explored further in Chapter 7 social media platforms such as Twitter were the only participatory channel used by the two case study websites for two way communication between readers and journalists, without moderation, that potentially enabled readers to participate in newsgathering, production, dissemination and responding.

The second value gauge that the two case study websites were measured by was whether they provided a variety of communication channels to offer alternative arenas to dominant and subordinate groups. As Table 7.1 and 7.2 in Chapter 7 illustrate both case study sites provided a range of participatory channels with seven at the Leicester Mercury and 13 at the Bournemouth Daily Echo. As has been shown throughout this study the Bournemouth Daily Echo had higher participation rates and encouraged participation to a greater extent, therefore it met this second gauge more fully than the Leicester Mercury - at least on its website. However as Chapter 12 explores the Leicester Mercury has more participatory channels in the traditional printed product due to its partnership with community reporter organisation Citizens’ Eye. The range of Web 2.0 participatory channels at both case study sites meant that readers who might be subordinated by other users on comment threads for example, could participate via social media networks or live blogs instead and were also able to send in user generated content via a variety of means such as email, social media platforms or mobile phones. Indeed some readers in the interviews indicated that they preferred to comment on the newspaper’s associated Facebook page rather than on the website comment threads because it was “safer” (BR1) whereas the comment threads were “a small pool of people dominating the space which excludes a lot of people” (BR1). With the range of participatory channels on offer it was possible for audience participation to meet the requirements of a valuable public sphere and be inclusive to all. These various participatory channels allude to Fraser’s (1999) multiple public spheres which create a “parallel discursive arena where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities interests and needs,” (Fraser, 1999, p.123).

However, although the potential for inclusivity was in evidence, this did not mean that these participatory channels attracted an inclusive audience. Results from Chapter 5 show that at both case study sites the diversity of the public sphere was limited and therefore not inclusive. Those that participated tend to be male and more highly educated than the national average. However age and salary appeared to be less of an exclusivity factor with questionnaire respondents at both case study sites representing the average population in their local area. It should also be noted that the diversity of the participatory audience was broader than suggested by journalists, as demonstrated in Chapter 8. However the results of Chapter 5 and 7 do show that it was still the minority of the audience that was participating albeit in growing numbers. Therefore it would be reasonable to suggest that this participating public is not yet representative of public opinion.

The third gauge of value in this study is that audience participation must contain moral, ethical, political or community communication irrespective of whether it is a matter of public or private interest. The results of the comment content analysis discussed in Chapter 8 supported this gauge although it did not take into consideration other forms of communication such as posts on social media platforms, live blogging or submitting user generated content. However given that commenting on stories was the most popular form of audience participation it gave a good indication of this third gauge. At both case study sites it was found that on average 90 per cent of comments were relevant to the story or another comment and did not contain a personal attack on another user. This might suggest that these comments were therefore responding to the article and contained some form of moral, ethical, political or community communication usually in the form of an expression of an opinion or debate with another user. More significantly the majority of the most commented upon stories were news stories rather than sport or entertainment. Furthermore the news stories were mostly hard news stories containing content about local government, crime and health. For example the headlines of most commented stories included: ‘Street lights off after midnight in bid to save money’, ‘Question mark over revamp of surf reef’, ' “There were no cots free for our premature twins” ', ‘Leicester councillor 'is sorry' over scathing attack on former PM Brown’ and ‘Man barred from every pub and club in Leicester city centre’. This would re-enforce the argument that comments on these types of stories were political or community oriented in nature as most of these stories were centred on local issues and public affairs. A story about a local student protest over the rise in university tuition fees received 49 comments on the Bournemouth Daily Echo website, most of which discussed and debated the political context. One commenter wrote:

Good to see a bit of militancy. Show Clegg and his lot their promises haven't been forgotten. At least the Tories were honest whatever people think of them. The lib dems sold their souls for a sniff of power.

Another argued:

Where are our Nurses and Teachers and others in low paid vocational jobs going to come from in the future. Who is going to go into these jobs which will be demanding a £40,000+ entry fee in the future. Add the higher fees to the removal of maintenance allowance to poor families to allow their children to stay on at school and a picture is emerging,. Cut higher education for those from low and ordinary income families, bring in skilled immigrants to do the skilled jobs that they otherwise would have done. The new immigration "cap" is a sham, it excludes inter Company transfers. As for the Lib Dems they face annihilation when they next face the electorate. As Mr Cable says a promise is not a promise when you aren't elected - but he was! He really meant a promise is not a promise when you are a politician!

Indeed many of the comments were also made up of moral or ethical discussion particularly on stories based around issues of beliefs, conduct, or complaints. A health story on the Leicester Mercury website about parents complaining that their premature twins were moved to a hospital 50 miles away, promoted a variety of comments and a debate over whether the parents had a legitimate complaint. This contained moral and ethical arguments about the parents and the National Health Service. One commenter wrote:

This young couple should be grateful that their babies are being well cared for! It is simply not possible to plan for how many babies will be born prematurely each day and to have a large number of cots standing empty 'just in case' is not realistic. When my sister suffered a massive brain haemorrage some years ago, she was taken to Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. When we made the daily journey to and from Nottingham, we did not complain; we were just eternally grateful that she was being helped by a dedicated team of professionals. Thanks to them she made a full recovery. That was all that mattered. This rationale should be applied here too.

At the Leicester Mercury 58 per cent of comments in the content analysis sample were on news stories and 37 per cent on Letters to the Editor, which again were responses to news stories. That meant only five per cent of comments were on sports stories. At the Bournemouth Daily Echo the entertainment factor was higher with 40 per cent of comments on sports stories and 60 per cent on news stories. However comments on sports stories could be classified as containing community content as all of the sports stories involved local sports clubs. However stories of a humorous nature, categorised as news stories, did receive a lot of comments when they were published on the websites, but these types of stories were not published often and made up less than 10 per cent of each of the comment thread samples. A similar pattern could be seen with user generated content, as discussed in Chapter 7, in that readers generally sent in photographs from breaking news stories but when an unusual or quirky event happened on a rare occasion, such as heavy snowfall, readers participated in high numbers. Again this supports the findings of Chapter 7, Table 7.7, which indicates that readers generally prefer to participate in news stories over any other kind of content.

The results in this section consider whether audience participation is valuable in light of Dahlgren’s (1991) description of the extent to which mass media facilitate the public sphere by helping “citizens learn about the world, debate their responses to it and reach informed decisions about what courses of action to adopt”, (p.1). It should be noted that most readers in the questionnaire and interviews equated participation primarily with commenting on stories rather than broader participatory channels such as submitting user generated content or participating in social media platforms.

Graph 9.1 illustrates results from the reader questionnaire and indicates that readers marginally thought that their participation added value to the newspaper website, although it was not a strong consensus.

Graph 9.1: Do readers think their participation adds value to the newspaper online (shown as percentage)

Overall the results were largely ambivalent with 53 per cent of Leicester Mercury readers and 54 per cent of Bournemouth Daily Echo readers answering Yes, Maybe or Don’t Know, and all other respondents answering No, to the question: Do you think your participation adds value to the newspaper online? This indicates that audiences are still not sure of the value of participation and opinions are very mixed. This may be due to the infancy of comments on stories on local newspaper websites and the limited feedback or interaction readers receive from journalists making it unclear what the significance of these contributions are.

The questionnaire included an open question asking readers how participation added value. Many readers left responses including details about why participation did not add value. The reasons why participation was viewed as valuable centred on the enabling of people to take part in democratic discussion. Leicester Mercury respondents commented “it helps with public issues” and “it’s a useful media to source local grassroots opinion” whilst a Bournemouth Daily Echo reader said “yes it makes people think and contributes to the debates”.

Another factor was the ability for participation to open up the conversation to differing perspectives. One Leicester Mercury reader said “it’s the only way locally that you can have your say especially if your views are opposed to others”. This was even more prominent at the Bournemouth Daily Echo, where several readers articulated the importance of enabling a variety of opinions to be expressed and debated, as these three separate responses exemplify:

Yes it adds value because it allows for a more objective viewpoint from other sources and not just a journalist’s view point. It also helps with preventing any possibility of a journalist being biased towards a topic and tilting the story in favour of it. I have seen this many times in stories and news reports.

It can add a different perspective, provide additional information, balance out extreme views, correct inaccurate data.

I think it is important to the journalists, local community and official figures involved or featured in stories to receive ‘live’ feedback via these pages. Mainly in order to offer another perspective from the public view on stories or blogs. Occasionally the newspaper would be quite empty, boring repetitive and bland without this public interaction.

Other respondents at both case study sites felt the value of participation was variable, commenting that it was “very mediocre” or “sometimes, ignoring the whingers, interesting discussions can be sustained, but not that often” and “certainly some of the comments added are either ‘chattering classes’ rants or downright rubbish – but there are often some good and helpful points”. And a third section of readers were clear that participation had no value stating that “contributions are ill informed and a waste of energy” and “most readers postings appear mad, ill informed”. This re-iterates the concern of some journalists explored in Chapter 8 that readers think “they are becoming more informed when actually they are becoming less informed” (B1).

The questionnaire asked readers specifically about comments on stories and whether they viewed them as abusive, irrelevant, entertaining, informative or thought provoking. As Graph 9.2 indicates opinions were largely positive with almost 60 per cent of readers at both case study sites describing comments as informative or thought provoking. Conversely only a fifth of readers said comments were abusive or irrelevant. Once again the results were very similar at both case study sites making it possible to make broader generalisations.

Graph 9.2: How readers describe comments on stories (shown as percentage)

In reader interviews, participants were also asked specifically about the value of comments. Overall 90 per cent of readers at both case study sites had a positive view of comments. However it was still a mixed picture with 60 per cent of Leicester Mercury readers stating that comments could also be abusive or irrelevant as well as valuable. By contrast this was just 36 per cent at the Bournemouth Daily Echo. This supports the findings of the content analysis analysed in Chapter 8 which showed that irrelevant and abusive posts were slightly more frequent at the Leicester Mercury. More significantly the comment threads at the Bournemouth Daily Echo were longer and more complex signifying a higher likeliness of real democratic deliberation. Therefore readers at the Leicester Mercury may be justified in believing that comments are both positive and negative in value.

The positive value of comments identified by readers in the interviews was the apparent inclusivity and lack of gatekeeping, which enabled everyone to have their opinion published. One Leicester Mercury (LR2) reader commented: “It’s very important that people have a chance to have their say. If you wrote a letter to a newspaper [in the past] it was being sorted by the editor, there is no such selection online, so you get a wider range of views on comment sections on website.” Meanwhile a Bournemouth Daily Echo reader (BR5) recognised the advantages of online participation over offline participation, and said: “It is good for the community. It gives people voice power. With a newspaper you would absolutely not be able to do that.” A range of difference perspectives also enabled readers to be exposed to different views and potentially have their opinions changed, which is an important part of the democratic process (Marcus, 1988). As Leicester Mercury reader (LR3) demonstrated: “My opinion can change if new information I was not aware of is told to me. I will go away and do a little research and if it is valid information I would change my opinion.”

The qualitative results above show that readers believed there was value in participation because it enabled them to express an opinion and have access to a wider range of perspectives, whilst the quantitative data displayed in Graph 9.2 indicates that comments were viewed as mostly informative and thought provoking. Further quantitative data presented in Chapter 8 indicates that comment participation had a fairly high level of interaction - a third of all comments - and this rose to 50 per cent on some subject matters. The combination of these results indicates that participation, in particular comment threads, helps people “learn about the world” by being informed and exposed to differing perspective, and enables them to “debate their responses to it” via interaction (Dahlgren, 1991, p.1). However it does not necessarily follow that such debate will also help people to “reach decisions about what courses of action to adopt” (Dahlgren, 1991, p.1). Results from Chapter 6 indicate that only five per cent of readers said participation empowered them to take part in further political action. Therefore the extent to which audience participation within Web 2.0 represents a fully operational public sphere is still questionable. Furthermore a significant number of readers and journalists still believe that participation is irrelevant, abusive or ill informed which does not reflect the discursive space of rational judgement and enlightened critique that Eagleton (2005) describes as the public sphere.