Journalists who boycott User-Generated Content
(2010) Communication au DCRC Symposium Access All Areas on User-Generated Content — Location: Bristol (21.May.2010)
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- The management of the Belgian national news agency Belga created an interface called “I have news”. This was intended to allow citizens to broadcast their own information to journalistic customers. However it serves as a good example of the lack of quality in user-generated content. Amandine Degand and Christine Hambursin On the 14th November 2009, the Belga news agency opened a new service entitled "I have news". It allowed anyone to send information straight to the list of current information agencies. Two days later, Belga announced the death of the Belgian Queen Fabiola to all its media customers. This story was a complete fabrication. How did this blunder occur? The initial goal of "I have news" was to send breaking news to all Belga’s customers as quickly as possible. Belga’s management did not consider it necessary for the Belga newsroom to act as a gatekeeper for citizens’ information. However, after the Queen Fabiola incident, Belga’s management immediately decided that the "I have news" service should be filtered before being released. But the journalists at Belga were still dissatisfied, even with an editorial filter in place. Belga’s initiative is interesting for scholars because it throws new light on citizen-participation issues. We choose to analyse this case in two different ways : the viewpoint of journalists, through an ethnography of newsrooms, and the viewpoint of users, through the analyse of forum about the user-generated content initiative of Belga. First, Using ethno-methodology, this paper considers the opinions of Belga’s journalists on their internal crisis. Why is this alternative news-production channel so unacceptable to journalists? What are the ethical implications of this kind of service? Could this alternative channel replace traditional media informants? What might make user-generated content useful to journalists? More generally in the journalistic field, we explore how journalists adapt their practices to participatory cultural production. How do journalists evaluate the quality of any content produced by non-professionals? This study is based on a period of immersion lead by Amandine Degand, in the newsrooms of the Belgian French-speaking media, including approximately a hundred interviews with managers and journalists from print, audiovisual, online and cross-media organisations. Secondly, we choose to analyse the concept of trust in this case study. This concept is interesting for two reasons. On the one hand, trust is essential between an organisation and its public. Ledingham (2003) identifies trust as one of the 11 dimensions present in this relationship. On the other, trust is entwined in a tight relationship with truth (Parsons, 2004). It is for this reason we believe this concept to be essential in this case study. By deciding not to filter coming information, Belga’s management did not ensure that the information diffused was based on true facts. Thus putting their stakeholders’ trust in peril. Trust is based on past experiences and is constructed over a period of time. It evolutes simultaneously with distrust in a zone of approval (Welch, 2006). Using content analysis we will explore how users react to user generated content in forums and online newspapers. Do users conceptualize the difference between information produced by users or by professionals? Did this incident affect the trust that external stakeholders had in Belga? Did Belga’s error and its consequent reaction keep users in their zone of approval? How did Belga try to restore its trust-based relationship with its stakeholders? The empirical data is considered in the theoretical framework of the economy of conventions (Amblard and Gomez, 2003; Gomez, 1994). Participation issues illustrate some different views of normality in journalism and raises the question of trust in the generated content. User-generated content can be seen as one of the factors leading to the transformation – or non-transformation – of the journalistic field.
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Hambursin, C., & Degand, A. (2010). Journalists who boycott User-Generated Content. Communication au DCRC Symposium Access All Areas on User-Generated Content, Bristol. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/201458