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As an interdisciplinary field, data-driven journalism integrates the intellectual origins of investigative journalism, computer-assisted reporting, and the emerging paradigm of computational social science. Studies of news production have revealed, however, that news professionals are reinforcing existing power structures via an interpretive community, where homophily-evoked social interactions—even in the social media context—create echo chambers and discussion fragmentation. Is the representation of data-driven journalism in the electronic public sphere breaking boundaries among people from different domains or does it resemble the existing power structure? This study adopts a network analytics approach and constructs a representational network among actors who joined the public discussion of data-driven journalism in the Twittersphere—the co-retweeted network—such that two accounts are connected if their tweets are retweeted by the same user. Public tweets containing search queries related to data-driven journalism published from February 2017 to February 2018 were collected with Twitter real-time streaming application programming interface (API). A co-retweeted network with 1,148 accounts was derived from verified accounts' retweeting posts. Results found that several communities emerged, and news organizations, nongovernmental and nonprofit professional organizations, and academic institutions were in the crucial positions of the network. The exponential random graph models (ERGMs) based on this network revealed the extent to which gender, geographical location, and institutional type of the users were associated with the tie-formation. This study documents the major actors who are discussing the subject of data-driven journalism and raises critical reflections toward the interdisciplinary collaboration in the production of public knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between online commenters and journalists has been challenged as frustrated journalists pull back on commenting and introduce rules to make it more difficult to participate. As new rules and policies emerge, journalists engage in a public campaign to change how commenting and journalism are perceived. This study seeks to understand how journalists attempt to frame commenting and its role alongside journalism. Boundary work was used to consider how journalists use public statements about commenting to establish appropriate roles for both the journalist and the commenter. But these statements also represent philosophies about strategies, policies, and practices related to commenting. Journalists take three philosophical approaches to online comments based on whether they willingly welcome commenters, see the commenter as a threat, but recognize their role, or take action to keep the audience at a distance. Along with these three roles, strategies and professional responses to commenting are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arab spring of 2011, the Indian Civil Society campaign for Lokpal 2012, and the ongoing campaign for capital punishment to the Delhi gang rape accused, are among a thousands of events, worldwide, which have demonstrated the power of new media in galvanising the masses for a cause. The advent of high speed communication channels like broadband, optical fiber, and Web 2.0 services coupled with the ubiquitous multitasking devices like smart phones and other handhelds available in multitudes of forms have tremendously increased the scale of messages output and sharing. The pull of modern technology, push of business, and most importantly the search for new ways to satisfy the self expression needs and ambitions of the new generation have made the domain of new media grow beyond expectation. The technology savvy new generations, have learnt to explore constantly expanding opportunities for communication and self expression presented by the Internet and the Web. The interactive nature of the new media technologies have significantly altered the dynamics of journalism in the cyber space to an extent of blurring the distinction between producers and consumers of messages and transformed them into pro-sumers. This paper analyses the impacts of new media technology on professional journalism and the responses of the old media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of professional journalism to democratic citizenship is well-established, but the proliferation of online user-generated news begs the question of whether citizen journalism plays a similar role. Use and trust of both professional and citizen journalism were investigated for their associations with political knowledge and participation. User-generated journalism was negatively related with knowledge of national political figures, but strongly and positively associated with higher levels of online and offline participation; professional news media produced gains in knowledge and offline participation. Trust in user-generated news amplified the link between citizen journalism and online participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing prevalence of new media technologies and the rise of citizen journalism have coincided with a crisis in industrial journalism - as the figure of the 'journalist as hero' is fading, new media forms have facilitated the production of news content 'from below' by citizens and 'pro-am' journalists. Participation in an action-research project run during the 2007 Australian federal election, youdecide 2007, allowed the authors to gain first-hand insights into the progress of citizen-led news media in Australia, but also allowed us to develop an account of what the work of facilitating citizen journalism involves. These insights are important to understanding the future of professional journalism and journalism education, as more mainstream media organizations move to accommodate and harness user-created content. The article considers the relevance of citizen journalism projects as forms of R&D for understanding news production and distribution in participatory media cultures, and the importance of grounded case studies for moving beyond normative debates about new media and the future of journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether information about a writer and hyperlinks on a citizen journalism Web site affected the perceived credibility of stories. Participants read stories from a popular citizen journalism Web site and rated the stories in terms of perceived credibility. Results show that hyperlinks and information about the writer do enhance perceived story credibility. Credibility is enhanced most greatly when both hyperlink and writer information are included and, to a lesser extent, when just hyperlink or writer information is present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the comparison of user and professionally developed online content, readers did not consider the source as significant when they assessed the fairness, believability or quality of an opinion piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]