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The rise in use of social media platforms as tools of communication has presented journalists with an abundance of opportunities and challenges in equal measure. These platforms have enabled journalists to engage directly with their readers and develop new forms of interactivity, both pertinent and banal in nature. By analysing the content of multiple social media profiles at two daily regional newspapers in the United Kingdom, it has been possible to determine how interactivity between journalists and readers is being shaped. This article has identified a spectrum of interactivity, which indicates that individual journalists are engaging with their readers in an informal, personal and reciprocal manner via social media platforms. This is in contrast to the formal approach being taken by their associated media companies that are transferring traditional top–down forms of communication from the offline world to the online world. Research for this article was conducted via interviews and content analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Web 2.0 has opened the gates to journalism for online audiences which increasingly participate in the production, dissemination and response processes of news. Comment threads in particular have grown exponentially in recent years as readers have embraced the opportunity to bypass the Letters' Editor and publish their opinions directly to a newspaper website. This rise in participatory journalism has led to new challenges for journalists as they have strived to negotiate the often murky waters of user-generated content. To date, research in this field has been mostly limited to national and international news websites despite local news providers having a close connection and engagement with their communities. This paper therefore seeks to fill this gap partially by analysing the content of comment threads on two British local newspaper websites via a content analysis, while also exploring the experiences of journalists via news room observation and interviews. A contradictory picture emerges whereby journalists accept with some reluctance that comment threads possess a democratic function but one which is potentially damaging to the brand as well as resource intensive. This is juxtaposed by more positive findings that reveal buoyant levels of interactivity between readers in comment threads together with a thirst for engagement in public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]