Analyzing Grassroots Journalism on the Web

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Chapter 3ANALYZING GRASSROOTS JOURNALISM ON THE WEB:REPORTING AND THE PARTICIPATORY PRACTICE OF ONLINE NEWSGATHERINGCHRISTOPHER ANDERSONIntroduction

Over the past six years, beginning with the 1999 protests against the World TradeOrganization in Seattle and accelerated by dramatic global developments during the firstterm of George W. Bush, technological and social advances in the world of online journalism have spurred many analysts to argue that, “we are witnessing journalism’stransformation from a 20

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century mass media structure to something profoundly moregrassroots and democratic” (Gillmor 2004, xii). Many observers have discussed thegrowth of “blogging” and the changes it has wrought within the world of traditionalmedia publishing. Other commentators are increasingly referring to a social practicereferred to variously as “grassroots journalism,” “open source” journalism, or “participatory journalism.” The very newness of these developments, combined with theexcitement brought about by the promise of greater democracy through technology, hasled a number of usually sober and serious-minded people to wax rhapsodic about theimpact of the new practice.Alluding to the growing decentralization and fragmentation of the mainstream press, Orville Schell, dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism, has argued that “the Roman Empire that was mass media is breaking up, andwe are entering an almost-feudal period where there will be many more centers of power and influence” (Bianco, 2005). In an essay in the Online Journalism Review, Mark

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Glasser has pushed the claims of bloggers still further, writing that “newspapers representall that is old and moldy about journalism: printed on dead trees, distributed by underpaidteens, and read by an aging audience. Weblogs represent all that is edgy and hip about journalism: written in a personal voice, encompassing divergent modes of thought, anddistributed on a global platform” (Glasser 2003). Of course, along with the celebrationhas come the inevitable backlash; Steve Lovelady of the

Columbia Journalism Review

has publicly referred to bloggers as “salivating morons who make up the lynch mob”(Lovelady, cited by Rosen 2005).Despite the far reaching claims made by many of the proponents and detractors of grassroots journalism, serious academic study of this social phenomenon remains in itsinfancy. Few scholars of journalism,-- perhaps due in part to the tenuous place of so-called “journalism studies” within the academy (Zelizer 2004)-- have begun to advanceserious theoretical claims about the social impact of grassroots journalism. Even lesscommon are studies that analyze the specific varieties of content produced by various participatory journalism projects. This chapter aims to address these concerns. I begin byunpacking the relationship between “participatory journalism” and common theoreticalunderstandings of “alternative media.” After working through and situating these variousdefinitions of alternative media, I undertake a provisional examination of what we mightcall, following Bourdieu, the boundaries of the participatory journalistic field (Bourdieu1992). I compare the mission statements of three organizational participants in the field— UK Indymedia,Wikinews, and The Northwest Voice and analyze their journalistic outputalong three dimensions: level of participation, adherence to “journalistic” norms, and tiesto radical social movements, as well as the architecture of their websites. I conclude by

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noting some apparent discrepancies between theoretical speculation and my empiricaloverview, and outline avenues for future research.

Grassroots Journalism and ‘Media Power’

Any study of “grassroots” or “participatory” journalism immediately faces a series of definitional hurdles. How do we identify the object of our study? What exactly is participatory journalism? Where do its analytical boundaries begin and end? Thisconceptual confusion if only exacerbated by the ambiguity surrounding the field of “alternative media studies,” an academic field which can both include and excludedifferent participatory journalistic websites, depending on how we define “alternativemedia.” In short, confusion reigns with regard to the analysis of participatory journalism,alternative media, and indeed, journalism itself. This confusion makes it difficult todetermine what exactly it is we should be studying when we look at some of theindependent journalism being produced online.Perhaps the most useful definition of participatory journalism comes from ShayneBowman and Chris Willis, who define it as the practice “of citizens playing an active rolein the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news andinformation” (Bowman and Willis, 2003). Participatory journalists, in this model, push journalism beyond a traditional top-down model of news distribution in which journalistscollect information and transmit it to the public via their editors and bureaucratic newsorganizations. Instead:“what is emerging is a new media ecosystem where online communities discuss andextend the stories created by the mainstream media. These communities also produce participatory journalism, grassroots reporting, annotative reporting, commentary, and