The scion of public journalism

Case Study Evidence of a Link between

Public and Social Journalism and the

Potential for an Atomized Public Sphere

Mark Poepsel

Loyola University New Orleans

Assistant professor & journalism sequence

head**Soon to move to Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville

Public journalism•a.k.a. “citizen journalism”•1988 – 200?, per Merritt and Rosenberry &

St. John•Practical applications

• Involving audience members in setting agendas

• Making practices transparent• Hope: Communicate structural

functionalism with an eye toward progressive change

Public journalism• Theoretical implications

• Flew (2005): Open, collaborative, distributed• Denton & Thorson (1998) took interest in

research involving collaboration; took issue with theorists making assumptions about content

• Per McCombs (1997): “pro-active agenda setting”

• Merrill (1997) called it: Communitarianism's Rhetorical War Against Enlightenment Liberalism.

Altschull’s retortAltschull offers a counterpoint: “I would

like to agree with [Merrill], for I admire his cheerful optimism and his belief that

somehow America’s journalists will yet arrive at the sunny uplands that he sees

as still within their reach. I used to believe that myself, before I had come to recognize that individual tilters at

windmills are simply unable to challenge Money” (1997, p. 145)

the social journalism cms & how it follows public journalism

• Built on Ellington• Social media functionality added (creator equates

social networking with public journalism)• Create groups• Follow individuals and groups to create a news feed• Re-post

• Increased collaboration between journalists and users• Journalist expected to lead, encourage conversation• Users had access to the same publishing platform with

most of the same tools

• CMS design process was collaborative, iterative

WE HAVE A SCION, STFW?!

Public sphere?•Space between public power actors

and private power sources for rational-critical debate

•Habermas argues it has been “re-feudalized” by “manufactured publicity” (1989).

•Papacharissi (2002) and many others point out this is not a search for the panacea promised in the mid-90s

NO HOPE?“The problem is that this entity, this public which is deemed to exist somewhere at the end of the communication process…often

do[es] not seem to embody the qualities of the ‘enlightened citizen’ at all” (p. 133).

2004

THE LAND OF LIMITED EXPECTATIONS

Gitlin (1998) describes two-tiered media system with functioning “sphericules” rather than a broad-based

public sphere.

GOT TO START SOMEWHERE

potential

This paper looks for potential:

• Is there space for discourse?

• Could it be rational and critical?

• Could there be cultural change, edification?

SPACE“The other sites had really, really snarky commenters, and the way that this was

designed that you had to verify that you were a real person and you had to present as yourself with a name was very very very important in

the site taking off at all.

I had the feeling that had the HealthSite been launched without the real name commenting, it might have just crashed and burned with how

some participants on [the newspaper’s website] use the site.”

(ad_marketing2, the social media manager)

Space II“We got to the point later where the same advisory group that was all worried about

nobody’s getting in unless they’re approved and everyone in their real names actually asking for more, easier ways for people to

interact, which is a pretty awesome step for them mentally to come from where they

were when we started.”

(design1, web developer)Downside: health topic

Rational-critical?• Less evidence of critical debate than of reasonable

discussion and dissemination of information.• Regarding advertisers, debate was welcomed:

“These conversations, they’re happening, and we’re letting you know, and we’re trying to train you how to respond to them, so you can go in and have a discussion as part of a community because it’s the content providers, the audience, and then the businesses. They’re all part of the community, and that’s a very natural sort of conversation to have.” (ad_marketing1, project’s ad sales manager)

Cultural change?“The [key] experiment with the HealthSite was getting the advisory board together and taking these different

people from the community that work in the same health industry to sort of work together on this project, and there’s the potential for lots of interesting things

to happen there as far as getting news out in your community.

I’ve read lots of things that I didn’t realize just by looking at the site, and it doesn’t just come from

[news1], so I think that that’s probably a slow process, I would say, but yeah I think things like that have

changed.” (design2, web developer)