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In the beginning, there was the email

By 1995, internet was a reality to many citizens in the United States and Europe, and a great part of

newspapers1had already found their way online. As Barnhurst (2013:3) explains, by that time most

of these webpages reproduced mainly the content available on the printed versions of the

newspapers a procedure known as shovelware. In which concerns to the relationship with the

public2, by that time, email was the main channel with feedback function on these pages. It was

revolutionary, since the tool has put audience and journalists in dialogue with no mediators. The

audience was empowered to suggest reportages, state about what was written as well as also help

with new facts or advices that could enrich or rectify the news published or broadcasted by the

mainstream media institutions.

Nevertheless, internet and other Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have evolved a

lot since then, giving new roles and empowering even more both the audiences and journalists - as

well as creating new challenges for this last group (Barnhurst 2013:4). Nowadays media companies

can no longer be meaningfully studied in the absence of an understanding of how they relate to their

consumers (Jenkins and Deuze 2008:2). In the same proportion, audiences need to be perceived in a

holistic way, since those who traditionally consume news, now can not only interact more - and in

more complex ways - with the mainstream media but also can produce content and publish online in

social media, blogs or websites that promote independent news-related content3.

For this reason, this essay makes use of several studies and surveys addressed to research (1) what is

like the relationship between journalists/media and their audiences nowadays as well as (2) to what

extent Journalism practices have changed from what they used to be before the possibilities brought

by the new ICTs. These comprehensions are important to prove the premise of this paper, which

considers that the User Generated Content (UGC) does not consist in a threat to the future of the

profession of journalist, but on the contrary: it has showing to be a complement.

Influence of the new ICTs on the relationship between news organizations and their audience

In his article The Impact of Technology on Journalism, John Pavlik (2000:9) has identified four areas in

which the ICTs influence journalism: (1) how journalists do their job; (2) the content of news; (3) the

1 Even though this essay starts highlighting how newspapers went online during the 90s, it will also cover other mainstream media when

going deeper on the impact of the UGC in some companies like BBC.2They can also be called audience, users or consumersor even prosumers (Toffler 1980) or produsers (Bruns 2008), as cited by

Pierson & Mante-Meijer (2011:1).3These practices are known by many different names, as explained by the ProfessorAnthonyR. Curtisathttp://bit.ly/1dCpgWU.

Participatory journalism andcitizen journalism are the most frequent in this essay.

http://bit.ly/1dCpgWUhttp://bit.ly/1dCpgWUhttp://bit.ly/1dCpgWUhttp://bit.ly/1dCpgWU

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structure of the newsroom and the news industry; and (4) the relationship between news

organizations and their publics. Unquestionably, it is easy to observe how the new empowered

public is linked to all these areas in countless ways.

In recent years, news organizations rushed onto social media on a clear endeavour to win followers,

increase traffic on their sites and most importantly: to establish relationships with their public.

Metykova discovered that European journalists interviewed in 11 countries perceived a substantial

difference in their relationship with their audience (Metykova 2008). These professionals pointed out

that the use of new technologies allowed editors to know which stories were generating most

interest among the audience (Metykova 2008:49). This feedback influences on the agenda setting of

the media and pushes the professionals on the creation of a more appealing content - in a clear

signalization that market pressures and competition had a major influence on their work, as

described by this journalist:

Low culture can now also be published front page once in a while. In the past you only

had the acronyms of the trade unions in the headlines on the front page. We think most

readers are interested in that [light news] even if they would not admit it to

themselves. Research shows this. The culture of we [journalists] determine what is

interesting, whole page articles about boring subjects is gone. Today we think more

about: Do people actually find it interesting? Can they understand it? Is it presented

accessibly enough? The newsrooms now think about all this. This is in my view an

improvement and they have to. (Metykova 2008:50)

News organization have being doing more than just encouraging the participation in order to get a

better knowledge of their audiences expectations and interests. Now they also publish their stories

and give them the status of citizen journalists when they have the chance to be witnesses to news.

The coverage on the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, for example, would have been

completely different without the role played by the audience in reporting, analysing and

understanding the related events occurred that day. The same happened in 2004 at the occasion of

the 9.1-magnitude earthquake in Indonesia and the Indian Ocean that produced a devastating

tsunami. For at least a week after the tragedy, the traditional media was fed by photos, videos and

on the scene descriptionspublished by local bloggers whom covered the news in real-time. Being

witnessed by ordinary people that were in the right time, in the right place, occurrences like that gain

new angles and narratives capable to enrich the content to be published by the mainstream media.

In many occasions, these circumstantial news gatherers/reporters can even change completely the

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way some events were initially perceived4. Hence, citizen journalists must be accredited by news

organizations as well as the public in general, since they contribute largely to report important news

and can fill the gap where professional journalists are absent. On the other hand, a question raises

up: how to safeguard professional standards and to assure the veracity and credibility of the

contributions?(Pierson and Mante-Meijer 2011)

The importance of verifying UGC before publishing

Even though often criticized by their agenda or bias, the mainstream news organizations are one of

the most powerful and influential industries in the world. Being highly professionalized and

suffering pressure by advertisers or governments as well as other stakeholders -, there would be no

space for amateurism in the newsrooms. Despite the fact the increasing participation of the audience

in the processes may have given the impression that journalistic work is not too complex for non-

journalists to perform (Lowrey and Anderson 2005: 4), special skills, training and experience are

imperative in this field.

Therefore, big companies operate in function to guarantee the quality and neutrality of its

journalism, with a special effort when making use of UGC. Even in case of a scoop coming from the

audience, journalism ethics and standards request journalists to verify the information as well as the

reliability of the sources before publishing anything. In times of internet and countless technological

devices, these professional practices became even more important, taking into account the volume

of information arriving on the newsrooms. For the same reason, it is even more difficult than before

to distinguish between what is true and what is false.

By 2011, for example, a fake image showing a dead Osama bin Laden was published widely for

many news channels and tabloids around the world, in a clear lack of awareness on how to check and

publish UGC. Consequently, companies like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) are investing

on professionals to work in this field. Since 2005, the BBC maintains a Hub to cope with UGC.

According to Trushar Barot5

, assistant editor of the Hub, rapidly changing user behaviour has meant

the team has had to be agile and constantly rethink the way it works, as well as test and adopt new

tools to help us (to verify UGC). This encounters the findings of Metykova, when professional

assured that technology-driven changes tended to be seen as empowering journalists to do their

jobs better rather than blurring the distinction between content producers and content

consumers (Metykova 2008:56).

4As in the case of the chemical weapons in Syria, that was first reported by the population, as mentioned by the Secretary of State John

Kerry in his speech on 30th

of August 2013.http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7

5As seen on http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/blogcollegeofjournalism/posts/UGC-Source-check-and-stay-on-top-of-technology

http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7http://1.usa.gov/1jTMRD7

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Conclusions

According to Moretzsohn (2006), not everything published on websites or blogs can be considered

journalism even when it claims to be. It is a mistake to consider that the new possibilities for the

citizens to exercise their freedom of speech has become a thread for professional journalists. Even

though some breaking news firstly shows up on the social media sites, it is fair to say that these

contents per se are not real journalismthey are more likely to be circumstantial news sources. UGC

will always rely on news coverage from mainstream organizations to produce their value which

comes on further professional analysis, commentaries, and investigation. Besides, people will keep

crossing news from these blogs or pages with mainstream news organizations to make sure the

information is reliable.

Thus, it is reasonable to assure that UGC does not replace the mainstream news organizations or

journalists, on the contrary. The new ICTs and their users helped these companies by increasing the

diversification of content, as well as giving alternative readings for what they have been published.

Bibliography

Barnhurst, K. G. (2013). Newspapers experiment online: Story content after a decade on the

web. Journalism, 14(1), 3-21.

Jenkins, H., & Deuze, M. (2008). Convergence culture. CONVERGENCE-LONDON-, 14(1), 5.

Lowrey, W., & Anderson, W. (2005). The journalist behind the curtain: Participatory functions on the

Internet and their impact on perceptions of the work of journalism. Journal of ComputerMediated

Communication, 10(3), 00-00.

Metykova, M. (2008). Drifting Apart? European Journalists and their Audiences. Westminster Papers

in Communication & Culture, 5(2).

Moretzsohn, S. (2006). " Citizen Journalism" and the Myth of Redemptive Technology. Brazilian

journalism research, 2(2), 29-46.

Pavlik, J. (2000). The impact of technology on journalism. Journalism Studies,1(2), 229-237.

Pierson, J., & Mante-Meijer, E. (2011). New Media Technologies and User Empowerment. E. Loos

(Ed.). Peter Lang.

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