Citizen Journalist or information source: an exploratory study of public’s role in

participatory journalism within the main Brazilian web portals

Profa. Dra. Elizabeth Saad Corrêa – bethsaad@gmail.com

Francisco Madureira – francisco.madureira@gmail.com

The study

At the beginnings of 2006: major Brazilian Internet portals released channels for its users participation as news providers.

To analyze this scenario we present preliminary data about the status of participatory journalism initiatives undertaken by the main portals of the Brazilian web.

Our main assumption is that the major portals in the country have not still been able to adopt participatory journalism in depht and breadth of the experience reported by the original participatory concept.

Brazilian Scenario A strong concentration of information in digital

environments originally created to access the web - the so called portals

Portal news: Traffic atractor Sources: international agencies feed, proprietary newsrooms and

connection to a journalistic traditional brand

Web use in Brazil shows, as studies conducted by Ibope / NetRatings, that, primarily, the users get information through the portals, to then browse on newspapers websites

The reader's engagement on information production is difficult.

Genneraly, the vehicles use the material sent by internet users as a source of information;

The news processing is performed by professional journalists responsible for websites, a practice that tends to discourage the "old reader" to become the protagonist of news process, or making this a conversation

Top 10 Search Engines / Portals And CommunitiesPageviews and Unique Audience, Feb. 2009

Brand/ChannelUnique Audience(000)

Pageviews totals (000)

Google 22,151 5,884,229

MSN/Windows Live 20,604 1,704,680

Orkut 17,446 16,105,346

UOL 15,637 1,613,627

iG 13,512 737,966

Terra 13,157 718,252

Globo.com 12,666 1,208,134

Yahoo! 10,937 847,609

Blogger 9,149 152,432

Abril 4,843 81,228

Main concepts

Cultural Studies Reception

Social media phenomenon

Participatory Journalism Dan Gillmor, Bowman & Willis, Bruns, Brambilla

the action of a citizen or group of citizens who have an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysis and dissemination of news and information

New media studies

Methodological procedures

Main hypothesis the major portals in the country have failed to adopt participatory

journalism in the depth and breadth of international experience reported by other authors

Exploratory field study, content analysis The sample – Brazilian Portals

Audience Specific area to display forms of UGC

Terra portal – VC Reporter Globo.com portal – VC no G1 UOL and iG out of sampling criteria

Observation and collection participatory journalism pages from these portals during the period of March, 1st/2009 to March,15th/2009

163 published materials were collected and analysed.

Content analysis categories

Editorial area

Content localization – hyper localism

Level of user’s engagement: Simple flagrant

Source quotation

Use of multimedia: photos, videos, audio

Narrative aspects

Editorial area 105 stories related to metro news (daily events)

32 stories related to culture and entertainment (higher focus on concerts)

12 stories related to sports (as a local event)

Hyper localism

93% of stories covered events that took place in the physical surroundings of citizen reporters

Flagrant x news construction 56% (92 stories) were not identified as mere striking of

reality

44% (71 stories) of the published material were identifies as flagrant

a simple record of an event in photo or video, without contextual information, or check with official sources of data and / or witnesses, case of

Narrative aspects 51% (83) of stories with no citation of any source.

In 34% (55) of the cases, only one source of information is mentioned - in some cases, the source is the individual citizen reporter, paradoxical practice for the purpose of participatory journalism that will be addressed forward.

In 14% (23) cases two sources are mentioned, and in only two subjects, or 1% of cases are cited three or more sources.

Differences between portals

Portal Terra: 35% (27) of stories were considered a mere flagrant

Good mix: the work of the citizen reporter to the journalist contribution

Portal Globo:75% (44) is characterized as flagrant Newsroom enrichment of news before publishing

Snapshot journalist The newsroom practice is to quote, sometines, the citizen reporter

information The citizen reporter does not develop activities of investigation, but

believes that being at relevant events, book them soon either by pictures or videos, and refers them with small essays on the major portals

Citizen’s news are an additional channel for receiving information as well as a single source or of the advisory press

Credibility: possible presence of commercial and marketing content in the mainstream news

Final remarks

The participatory journalism in Brazil would not arouse the reader's engagement with the production of information - much less the vehicles show this concern, to use the material sent by Internet users as mere starting point for a process of investigation.

Assigning the channels of UGC evaluated in the main Brazilian portals as the label of citizen journalism becomes dangerous, especially within the theoretical frame of reference outlined by Bruns

Brazilian web users that are involved in these services the title of citizen reporter in conceptualization of Bowman and Willis, as practice involves a former "reader" as the protagonist of news process, not only as adjuvant.

Final remarks

Further discussion for the study progress: the degree of editorial intervention exercised by the portal, partly

weakened the concept of citizen journalism; the effects on the portal brand credibility facing the collaborative content

which it provides; the characterization of "news" within a space of participatory journalism

and how this concept should reflect the characteristics of traditional news process, and

differentiated characterization in between citizen journalists and the "citizen-source" that seems to emerge that study.

Inclusion, as a comparative data, of the well succeeded independent initiatives

Independent Media Center Brazil Wiki Garapa Overmundo