There is much confusion over the hype vs. reality of collaborative news and interactive technology’s impact. What is out there? How should the emergence of these innovations be analyzed? How do they differ from the communication and knowledge offered by traditional news formats? How do they change the engagement of citizens to each other and to societal issues? And following from any resolution to this confusion, how can they be used to improve news media for the future? The scope of this paper cannot fully address all these questions, but it will provide a starting outline on some.

Many in the news industry have been fretting over the emergence of bloggers. Nervous headlines tinted with fear and loathing raised the common question of who qualifies as a legitimate journalist, (the subtext, of course, being would the profession of journalism survive). While some have relegated bloggers to the sidebar, concluding that the old news giants with their resources (and own reporters now blogging too) would continue to reign, bloggers were just the beginning. A scaleable, next generation of We Media has emerged. While traditional news media are finally dipping their toes in the waters and paying attention, most are still far from understanding and adopting what is happening at the edges. In the growing mass of voices, the key players who will organize the clutter and engage the voices (now also the eyeballs) are still being determined. Those who figure out how to best aggregate and distill the cacophony will win a loyal base. Those who also figure out how to create sustained conversations among the distilled sound will win a potentially powerful base.

The news industry is undergoing a period of transformation. Some academics have been looking at recent initiatives by traditional news media that incorporate blogging and other forms of interaction. This study focuses on the other end, at emerging collaborative news organizations where the degree of innovation is most dramatic. Primary examples include (but are not limited to) OhMyNews, Wikinews, Global Voices, Digg, Slashdot, Newsvine, and Now Public. These models offer a basis for interesting comparisons between innovative structures and formats. As predominately online entities, they also offer useful inferences about the entry of Internet goliaths such as Yahoo and Google that are increasingly playing in the space of news content. Moreover, unlike Technorati and other algorithm based news aggregators, these sites offer an interesting view of the human dynamics at play in what is too often seen as a 0s and 1s programmed sphere.

During the past few months, I've been attempting to understand the successes and challenges of these collaborative news sites and their structures. Through the rest of this paper, I attempt to make more concrete the manner and degree to which these emerging models alter the nature of news/information, the creation of community, and the role of individuals beyond that of a spectator. In short, the extent to which any of this hype is true and matters.

Study Components

In Part I, the background context that’s feeding the emergence of these websites is briefly described. Next, conceptual frameworks are introduced to provide one way of analyzing the structure of collaborative news engagement and community. This is followed by a rudimentary format analysis of a few key examples and feedback from real world practitioners on some of the challenges currently faced.

In Part II, discussion of a large-scale survey adds texture to an often un-examined piece of the puzzle -- how and why people value and use these collaborative sites. Mapping those cited behaviors and values against alternative site structures provides useful inferences on the strengths and weaknesses of recent innovations. While time did not allow a detailed dive, an overview is established from which to discuss how the sphere of news and conversation has shifted.

To recap, there are three main pieces to this study on which discussion is based.

I) Establishment of a conceptual framework

II) Format analysis of key examples

III) Large-scale survey of users (3,167 responses), interviews with website executives (8)

The Limitations of Popular Anecdotes

There is much hype in every direction about the potential promises and problems in the next generation of participatory news and interactive technology. While some focus on the prospects for public empowerment, others focus on the veracity of information, and still others focus on the benefits of community. Three short stories exemplify these popular assertions:

Anecdote One: “Every Citizen Is A Reporter”

Oft-credited with balancing the political debate and altering the course of the 2002 presidential election for underdog, Roh Moo-hyun, the website OhmyNews has changed the news media ecology in South Korea. [1] Since its humble, but ambitious beginnings in 2000, OhmyNews now mobilizes 41,000 citizen contributors.[2] Capturing the enthusiasm of 20 to 30 year olds, OhmyNews registered 20 million hits a day in a country of 42 million during that rough and tumble election period. [3] Aside from its political and journalistic accolades (ranked 6^th most influential news organization by Sisa Journal), this year OhmyNews also heard a loud “cha-ching” from investors -- a note sounding to the tune of $11 million from Softbank, which will contribute to the enterprise’s international expansion.[4] Aptly the poster child for citizen journalism, excitement is brewing as its founder Oh Yeon Ho proclaims, “The traditional paper says ‘I produce, you read’ but we say ‘we produce and we read and we change the world together.’”[5]

Anecdote Two: “Who Killed J.F. Kennedy?”

Last year, John Siegenthaler Sr., found himself on the pages of Wikipedia (the world’s biggest encyclopedia written and edited by the public), implicated in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The former special assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and founder of the First Amendment Center, was put in the awkward position of tracking down the prankster who posted the false entry.[6] Around the same time Digg.com, a website also open to public posting, experienced a similar incident. Someone calling himself 'KoolAidGuy' gamed their system. Using multiple accounts, he succeeded in promoting false stories, such as “Google acquiring Sun Microsystems” onto the front page.[7] Both incidents were eventually identified and flagged, however critics sounded the alarm bells, predicting that scammers would manipulate stock prices and spread misinformation. As Digg and Wikipedia offshoot, Wikinews, seek to establish themselves among a larger public, the shadow of these stories continue to cast a cloud on their credibility.

Anecdote Three: “Who Wants to Know about Life as a Rubber Man?”

On October 28, 2005 a seventeen year old from Indiana wrote a 565 word post on CurrentTV’s discussion board about his life with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. “Long story short I have joint hypermobility and skin-hyperplasticity. Long words meaning that my body is about as flexible as rubber.” Wanting to reach collaborators for producing a story about living with this condition, he asked “Any rubber men or women out there in cyberspace right now?”[8] Based on the post, someone emailed Current TV, an online and cable channel started by former Vice President Al Gore that airs viewer created content, asking for an introduction. CurrentTV connected the two through email, and they are now working together on a pod about the disease.[9]

Which anecdote is the relevant beginning to the larger narrative about the future of the public’s relationship with news and information? The future usually defies prediction, but we can be fairly certain that these anecdotes are only parts of the story. The current reality is that these storylines are still being drafted. A review of current collaborative websites makes evident the inaccuracy of characterizing these spaces as forums where all voices necessarily have the chance to become equals. Also premature is the presumption that participation when offered is readily taken. On the more promising side of the coin, rampant misinformation without the watchful filtering of professional reporters and editors is far from the status quo. In the eyes of current users, differentiated, accurate, and valued news is being shared and discussed. In the process, a sense of loyalty and community within these sites is taking shape. Parts I and II detail this more nuanced reality.

Part I:

What’s Out There? Mapping A Corner of The Landscape

Writing this section is like stepping onto a shifting floor of landmines. Opinions and passions run strong. Little consensus exists, even among the website creators as to whether what has emerged can be defined as journalism, news, or merely opinionated conversation. Equally challenging is the fact that this infant space is a moving spectrum rather than static spot. Sites continue to evolve as a growing number of new sites enter the field. However, it is also exactly because of this complex seeding that making sense of what is out there proves useful for both those trying to evolve the wheel and those trying to create new wheels from recycling broken ones.

Focusing on a few key examples, the following section briefly outlines some basic models.

Backing Up: Understanding The Context

Onto the Pages of Traditional News Media

A quick Lexis search on the term “blog” over a month long period yields a sizable number of articles mentioned in traditional news media: 81 in the New York Times, 75 in the Washington Post, 123 in The Guardian, 57 in the LA Times, 21 in USA Today, and 16 in Newsweek.[a]

A Blogosphere that’s Big and Getting Bigger

Technorati currently tracks 27.2 million weblogs. According to them the blogosphere doubles about every 5.5 months and is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago.[10] On the consuming side, Pew Research found that 27% of Internet users (32 million Americans) say they read blogs. That represents a 58% jump from earlier in 2004.[11]

[12]

Thus, one can cut the data several ways, and take it with a grain of salt, but across the board, evidence points to a world where blogs (and interactive tools) are growing and attracting the attention of both the public and mainstream media.

A Lesson in Economics: “The Long Tail”

Several trends work to temper the revolutionary rhetoric about these burgeoning numbers. In particular media experts note the existence of a “long tail.” While a few superstar blogs (colored red on the graph) such as Boing Boing, Engadget, and Daily Kos have risen above the crowd, most blogs remain in relative obscurity.

[13]

Slept Through/ Never Took Econ101

Regardless of economics, perhaps people don’t care about being in that long tail. The number of posts keeps rising – creating a noisy but interesting and potentially powerful dynamic of occasional group attention, engagement, and information exchange across a wide scope of topics.

[14]

Social Networking and Tagging: the Rise of MySpace, Flickr, RSS, and del.icio.us

Controversial in its own right, MySpace has been characterized[b] as rivaling Google in page hits, helping some unknown bands make a few fans along the way.[15] Increasingly relevant in the future are the growing set of tools taking hold to broadcast and better organize those at that far end of the tail to at least a few people they care about (and a few new “friends”.)

So where does this context leave collaborative news models? The quick answer: with a growing opportunity to highlight and connect in new ways.

Circling Back: Some Definitions

The ubiquity of blog publishing software, especially with their adoption into popular social networking sites such as MySpace, makes blogs the obvious first thought in connection with We Media. Despite their growing ubiquity, this study is not examining blogs (at least not directly).

Think of Google as an Analogy

What made Google rise to power was its ability to make sense out of the vast information pit on the Web. Similarly, individual blogs can be viewed as the beta version of Web 2.0 We Media. The next generation is stepping up to pick out the relevant gems and organize the growing clutter of voices. Harnessing the voices of bloggers (and others netizens) along with new technologies, emerging collaborative news websites are moving beyond the beta version and mashing together alternative sources of content. In various degrees they are allowing the public to define and create what is news while simultaneously establishing a mechanism to organize, interact with, and sort through the noise.

Defining Participatory Media

Outside of blogs, in the new media ecology there are numerous ways for citizen’s to engage in the production, distribution, and discussion of news and information. Bowman and Willis provide a useful taxonomy of platforms for participatory media including discussion groups, user-generated content (via web-based forms, emails, feedback systems), peer-to-peer applications, weblogs, XML syndication, and collaborative publishing.[16] This paper narrows in on this last group (which increasingly encapsulates the others).

Defining Collaborative News Models

Axel Bruns provides a short and sweet definition of collaborative news websites as “news sites which largely rely on their users as information gatherers, editors, or commenters.”[17] He further notices that collaborative online news production falls on a continuum including meta-blogs, blog network channels, group blogs, and individual blogs.

All of this terminology is dizzying, however to avoid confusion, I will further specify. The collaborative news sites I follow in this study have the following characteristics:

Allows the public to contribute in content sourcing, production, distribution, and/or discussion (this includes writing/posting, commenting, flag/tag/rating, and/or editing).
Is a central place where content is aggregated, managed, published, and/or supplemented (regardless of whether all content is hosted on the site server or not.)
As opposed to algorithm based meta-blogs and aggregators, the filtering is driven by human decisions (perhaps aided by programming.)

This is a narrowed yet still broad sub-category. More significantly, this corner of the news media ecology has implications for both offline and online, purely human and purely technology-driven models. These websites create what Howard Rheingold called virtual communities and provide rich material for discussion on the implications of group engagement with the news.

Reassessing What is “News”

One last housekeeping note: I remain hesitant to apply any labels, but it is hard to talk about a subject without giving it a name. Thus, a final caveat to the word choice of news rather than journalism. Bowman and Willis define “participatory journalism” as “the act of a citizen or group of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.”[18] J.D. Lasica notes the very slippery, contentious, and multi-faceted nature of any definition of that phrase.[19]

While some of the websites this study examines characterize their efforts as citizen journalism, others do not. In fact, the landmines are largely over this debate of roles and definitions. For the purposes of this work, whether the information exchanged and engaged with through these collaborative sites possesses all those qualities of participatory journalism as outlined by Bowman and Willis is open to examination and evolution. The idea that the end result is information that a democracy requires to be free and self-governed is one of the hopes some enthusiasts envision for these new media platforms. In my working definition, news is fresh information (whether social, political, or cultural). Part of delving into an examination of these collaborative communities is to better understand their own sense of what if anything that information and interaction means in relationship to journalism and society.

Developing a Conceptual Framework

Some Ideas Borrowed

In analyzing participatory journalism models, Bowman and Willis note that one key factor impacting the nature of participation is the degree of openness.[20]

Axel Bruns uses a slightly different set of categories, also loosely based on the idea of openness, in classifying collaborative online news production. He identifies seven criteria:

Participation at Input Stage (ability to contribute material)
Participation at Output Stage (ability to edit “to be published” material)
Participation at Response Stage (ability to comment, extend, filter, or edit published content)
Centrality of Gatewatching[c] (focus on original news vs. commentary of gatewatched news)
Fixed roles (extent of specific roles in the production process)
Mobility of Peers (the ability for participants to rise or fall in status depending on their contribution behavior on the site)
Centrality of the Organization (centralized vs. decentralized technological and institutional setup supporting the site)

Using these criteria he points out a continuum between approaches on collaborative news websites: Closed Gatewatching, Supervised Gatewatching, Editor-assisted Gatewatching, and Open News.[21]

An Expanded Framework

Adapting these ideas, collaborative news websites can be analyzed on two broad dimensions:

(1) The features structuring participation & production, and

(2) The features structuring community

Framework

Features Structuring Participation and Production

Aside from the presence or absence of staff editors, other features that determine the structure of participation and production (aka. openness) are the submission system, the ratings system, and the commenting & feedback system. Not every site has these feature systems/interfaces and those that do vary in design. As the diagram illustrates, with the added overlay of these website features, the structures of participation and production fit fairly neatly into the continuum of categories that Axel Bruns outlines.

Editor-Based Models

Sites such as Global Voices, OhmyNews, Slashdot, and Greensboro101 rely on editors to filter and publish both original and gatewatched content. The definition of editing varies. While OhmyNews works to fact and style check, especially in the case of Global Voices, the definition of editing focuses on picking out the important stories[d] whose content remains in the hands of the source.

Submission systems: While Global Voices has its 10 trusted regional editors scouring the blogosphere to find and point to the best and brightest voices, OhmyNews, Slashdot, and Greensboro101 have submission bins for individuals to propose particular stories.[e] Greensboro101 also allows direct RSS feeds into its local blogs section.
Rating/Feedback systems: On the response end, all have basic commenting features. Greensboro101 also allows community ratings of articles, where those ranked below 6 are hidden. Slashdot, perhaps the benchmark of the industry, has a very elaborate ratings system tied to comments (versus articles) and a member reputation system in which individuals are granted “Karma.”[f] These moderation systems influence the prominence of comments published. In this respect, especially for Slashdot, the moderation system extends the editor role (for comments) beyond the small staff and to the community.

Community-Based Models

While administrators (usually the site creators) still exist to address website issues (such as problematic accounts that may require blocking), community-based models devolve the editor role more completely from the staff to the user community.

Submission systems: Moving down the continuum, sites like Digg, Newsvine, CurrentTV, NowPublic, and Metafilter allow submissions direct to publishing (for those who register with a login/account).[g] Wikinews is the exception in also allowing for anonymous posting.

Rating/Feedback systems: On Digg, Newsvine, and CurrentTV there are multiple views to allow users to see the latest stories, however in general stories rise to prominent placement based on user votes. These sites, similar to Slashdot, offer various systems for rating articles and comments (indirectly authors). In fact Newsvine is even sporting a new term “newsonomy” to describe its vote-based system of classifying and promoting content.

Taking a less electoral approach, NowPublic, Metafilter and Wikinews leave off the explicit rating/ranking system. Especially on Wikinews, individuals are offered greater initial leeway to post where they please. This is not to say however that feedback mechanisms are absent. All of these sites provide mechanisms for user comments, and even discussion. Wikinews, in particular, also invites users to tag/flag problematic articles. Similarly, while not based on direct voting, tagging an article’s “meaning” on NowPublic indirectly enables public expression of community preferences.[h]

Tradeoffs

Depending on the size of the community, editors can be a bottleneck, slowing down the pace and overall volume of coverage. A quick look at the number of articles published per day on Digg compared to Global Voices can testify to that scale dynamic. Close to traditional media models, editor-based structures of production also face similar criticisms of more censorship (limited perspective unavoidable in being individuals rather than a diverse mass). Some of these editor-based models are becoming hybrids (perhaps in recognition and response to these criticisms). For example Greensboro101 has a newswire section on the right hand bar that side steps the editor filtering. Similarly, Slashdot introduced Journals where the community members’ postings are automatically listed.

Interestingly, aside from OhmyNews, the editors on these websites do not provide an additional fact-checking mechanism, the major criticism levied against open community-based models. The editor-based sites rely on the same theory that multiple eyeballs will catch and fix the mistakes, and that greater perspectives increase, rather than decrease, the awareness of bias and misinformation. Again more will be discussed later, but as a starting thought, in part how prone a site is to misinformation and how fast inaccuracies are identified and corrected goes back to the conceptual framework, the features of the moderation system and the activeness of the community.

Features Structuring Community

This brings us to the second dimension raised, the structure of community. The features that influence the sense of community on the website is worthy of further dissection, especially as “social news websites” becomes yet another buzzword.

Robert Putnam provides several ways of thinking about social capital and its formation. In general the idea is that social capital is a public and private good that encourages reciprocation and trust.[22] While reputation systems (akin to Ebay) are one way of conveying and establishing trust, there are multiple ways to build a community.

Applied to this online world, stronger bonds between certain individuals can lead to the suppression of smaller dissident voices or a narrowing of what news is viewed / shared / discussed despite the presence of a larger community. More generally the extent to which people are tied to the site can have various implications on continued growth and sustainability.

Given the implications of community, two social dimensions on which to examine website features is the extent to which they contribute to People-based versus Site-based community.

Site-Based features

Part of what differentiates collaborative news models from traditional news media are features that create transparency and conversation with the website. For example, Digg and Wikinews have blog and/or wiki sections (digg theblog and wiki Watercooler) where administrators fairly openly discuss development problems and progress. On Wikinews, the Watercooler allows community members to join (or start new) discussions about policies and technical issues. In some circumstances, community members can even vote on new directions the site should take.[23] Some of this exchange may also happen offline. Greensboro101 board meetings are held before monthly MeetUp sessions, where members of the hyper local site can go and speak to each other in person.[24]

While the laundry list of platforms will not be discussed in detail, aside from creating transparency, these features enable the entire community to “meet” each other as a group. As will be elaborated on in the survey discussion, far from the whole user community participates in and/or even views these features, however these mechanisms are known and available options for members to feel a sense of group ownership and belonging.

People-Based features

A related dynamic is the degree to which these sites allow users to establish an identity (and others to find it). Personal profiles make visible particular individuals and their track histories (success or sheer number of articles read, submitted, commented on, and even tagged). These profiles create the potential for peer-to-peer connections. On Digg, if members chose to leave personal details, others can contact them or visit their website. More commonly, the profiles play into the nature of news dissemination and conversation.[i]

Although, not quite analogous to Kristof, Koppel, and other traditional star reporters, these profiles can shape air time and draw attention to the most prolific and popular individuals. Case in point, Digg provides a ranked list of its top users. Observation over a month long period suggests that certain profiles such as “Albertpacino” consistently appear among the top.[j] In a similar fashion, association features such as Slashdot’s “Friends” and “Foes” narrows the larger public forum by enabling people to choose and pay particular attention to a smaller set of key people.

These features serve important functions of reputation building that benefit the entire community. Moreover, beyond the collaborative filtering, they provide a secondary mechanism (borrowing from the viral “Amazon recommends” concept) for finding the crème of relevance. However, it is important to note the inaccuracy of characterizing these spaces as forums where all voices necessarily have the chance to become equals.

Strategies From the Real World: A Bit More on Why Communities Matter

For all the enthusiasm over the success of OhmyNews, and the explosive growth of sites such as Digg, signs of sputtering also exist. Kuro5hin.org, a collaborative site that broke off from Slashdot never sustained the degree of traction that its predecessor enjoys.[25] Dan Gillmor’s experience with Bayosphere also hinted that attracting a community is far from guaranteed.[26]

Getting a Critical Mass

When asked if a critical mass was required for a site to be sustainable, most executives agreed that a base of dedicated members was crucial, but need not be a large percent of the underlying community.[k] In the view of Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices, “The simple math is however much to have at least one interesting piece of content per day... It’s also pretty rare in group blogs that all people are hitting equally. The truth is the critical mass is smaller than you think.”

However something must help spark their coming. As Mark Potts, Executive Director of Backfence, a network of hyperlocal sites notes:

“You HAVE to be in the community, every day. This is not a "build it and they will come" situation... We have part-timers and advisory boards in every community helping us do outreach, and other members of our staff are talking to member/contributors every day to get them to post about what they know is going on around town--I call it being a virtual city editor.”

Most other sites are not taking the same active recruitment approach (using primarily awareness marketing instead), however some are trying a different strategy, easing the barriers to entry. CurrentTV has focused on detailed online training in its “Survival Guide” as a means to widen the set of contributors beyond the film-trained. As their Online Studio Director shares, “Current is predicated on the idea that equipment and editing software costs have come down, however the skill level to produce a fully edited, flushed out piece is still not something that everyone can do yet.” Similarly, Newsvine CEO, Michael Davidson notices,

“For as much talk as there is about participation and the new web, consumption of media will always outweigh production of it.... The brain activity required to quickly scan a blog or post a news article is orders of magnitude less than coming up with a thoughtful, accretive response. For this reason, it's important to allow and foster levels of interaction that fall far below that of leaving a comment or writing an article. The act of voting, for instance, requires a simple click… The key to Newsvine's success, moving forward, is allowing the full spectrum of interaction to occur…”

In short, when thinking about these websites, even if a community is attracted, site features influence how many and who’s voices get raised.

Involvement in Baby Steps

Debate exists about whether the mass-scaled, group-based collaborative news efforts of Digg and Slashdot will translate into the non-techie world and other news subjects. The broader public and later adopters may not be as eager to take on cumbersome tasks with unfamiliar names like “meta-moderation”. As Davidson implied, newer sites such as Newsvine and NowPublic address this challenge by offering a range of tools such as the Newsvine’s “Seed Button,” which makes it literally a push of a button to add one’s perspective. Users drag a button onto their browser toolbar and, when they see something that they like, can “point to” the article which then gets pulled back to the website for the community to supplement with their own comments and links. Another strategy has been to provide a starting point. Rather than launching with a blank slate, Newsvine opened its doors to the Associated Press and ESPN content feeds.

“It is very important, however, to fill your site up with great content before you have this critical mass... I think this is one of the most common mistakes citizen media sites make: the thought that the average news consumer will be satisfied by a purely user-generated body of content... especially at such an early stage. As the quality and quantity of our user- contributed content increases, you will likely see the overall news mix on the site adjust to reflect this.”

It is worth noting that many of the models looked at in this study do not use these strategies to attract audience and encourage participation, yet a community has still emerged.[l]

A Rough Map: Identifying what is Distinct about a Given Model

Thus with these real world perspectives and the conceptual framework in mind, the identification of certain features help to differentiate and broadly group the growing number of collaborative news websites dotting the digital landscape. More practically relevant, whether and how features (indirectly the structures of participation, production, and community) correlate to site activity and user values can have implications for where to direct innovation and improvement.[m]

Part II:

What Do They Think? Surveying the Community

A good deal of guesswork surrounds media accounts of who this community is and why it is growing. In the debate over the merits vs. dangers and importance vs. insignificance of participatory media, ironically, a deeper look into what the community itself thinks about the websites and what they seek from that involvement is often glossed over. While VCs and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) are rushing to Web 2.0 conferences, and, to their forward-thinking credit, brainstorming Web 3.0 (MySpace + Del.icio.us + Ebay + Wikipedia +…), for who and what purpose are they investing?

In part, the survey findings serve to put some concreteness around the merits of characterizing these communities as wanna-be-journalists trying to springboard from their pajamas or anarchists seeking to overthrow all order. (Sneak preview: they are not.) More importantly, the surveys’ intent is to provide an initial sweep at understanding how users value these collaborative news sites and the current motivations and barriers to involvement. Indirectly, it perhaps also sheds some light on what is missing but valued about news and associated public discourse.

Methodology

Online surveys were conducted in two waves. In the first wave[n], after obtaining agreement from website operators, tailored surveys were posted as sustained links on the websites’ front pages or distributed once through community listserves. In the second wave, links to a general survey[o] were posted on several prominent/popular websites. (See Appendix, Exhibit A for survey questions and design details.) Cumulatively, 3,167 responses were collected. Depending on the question, responses were pulled from the analysis set due to sampling issues, duplication, or entry error.[p]

Several notable weaknesses to the survey limit the ability to conclusively generalize from the results:

The largest methodological issue is its non-random sampling. Given the lack of any existing, comprehensive name/email lists, convenience samples were taken. This self-selection raises concern that the sample does not reflect the underlying population. Indeed, the respondents were high-involvement, over 89% visited the website at least daily. On a broader level, there is also the question of how applicable early adopters are to later adopters (the general population). Despite these issues, given the developing stage of many of these websites, the sample population still reflects a highly relevant group with a developed opinion on the central research questions.

A second area of concern is the broad nature of the questions. Given time and resource constraints, I was limited in question design and the ability to pre-test concepts and wording. The survey was designed to provide a cursory glance in identifying any large patterns for how and why users value collaborative news sites (and in particular differences between websites). Further research is needed to dig in and qualify the general responses (e.g. the detail of what it means that a respondent “joined an online or offline group to learn more or take further action on an issue” based on his/her experience on the website). For now, I can only supplement with individual anecdotes. In hindsight, there are also relevant, interesting considerations that I missed (e.g. asking about country of origin, who already had an external blog, or who interacted with the website solely via their RSS readers). The open-ended responses filled in some of those blanks, but point to room for deeper exploration.

A related issue was the requirement to pick a particular site. As noted earlier, the rationale was for subsequent cross-comparisons between websites. However, some users visit more than one site, and the survey did not provide a neat avenue for people to convey that behavior. That data would have been useful in evaluating responses, especially on the general survey, for those who may have had difficulty limiting their answers solely around the site they specified.

Finally, one last issue worthy of note was the uneven response volume across websites. Partially that was expected and inherent to the differing community traffic sizes. However, it did make statistically significant comparisons across sites (required margins of error) hard to meet. For most of the analysis and discussion, the websites are aggregated into groups: ALL, Just_Tech, Just_News, ALL_exceptTech, and Hyper-local.

Those caveats given, the survey offers some revealing data on how and why some of the most active members of these communities participate in and value these collaborative news sites. From a practical vantage point, to match the rhetoric of any revolution, for the construction of virtual spaces that can attract, empower, and sustain community, these opinions matter.

Summary of Survey Results

Is it about the soapbox? the toolbox? the information? or the company? Rarely are desires black and white, but the series of survey questions attempted to pinpoint the shade out of that spectrum of gray, the primary benefits these websites provide.

Even online, these attributes exist on other platforms. What is it about these particular soapboxes? toolboxes? information? and company? In what ways are they perceived as different from alternative platforms to provide added-value? In particular, with regard to information, whether these websites are primary vs. supplemental and didactic vs. discursive sources of information have implications on how they fall into the current news media ecology.

Who Are We Talking About: Some Demographics

Heavily male, especially for tech-related news. 87% of the respondents were male. However there was a significant difference[q] between the tech-news sites and other news sites in that ratio, an average of 94% compared to 74%.

Across the board younger (than traditional media), but site-specific (rather than content-specific) differences. Overall, 25% were aged 0-21, 52% aged 22-34, 20% aged 35-55 and only 2.5% were 55+. Again, demographics varied by site. Driving up the youthful average was the technology news site Digg, with 37% of respondents under 21. In contrast, the hyper-local sites had the least number of respondents, 1%, under 21. However, it would be hasty to ascribe tech news vs. non-tech news as the determining factor to the variations. The two biggest tech news websites in the sample, Slashdot and Digg, had significantly different age breakdowns.

Older women with younger men. While the 22-34 year olds could roughly pair off, there were significantly less women under 21 and significantly more over 34 than men. However, this difference was largely correlated with the large number of young men on Digg. When males from Digg were taken out of the All_Males set, the age differences were no longer significant.[r]

How Committed Are They: Some Notes in Usage Behavior

An active, high-involvement group of respondents.

- Over 89% visited the websites at least daily. This daily exposure was especially high for tech news websites (89%) compared to hyper-local sites (60%). General news websites showed significant variations, suggesting that site structures can produce sizable differences in the particular stories showcased and how people engage with the same categorical subject matter. For example, in the sample 58.6% were daily visitors at Wikinews vs. 90.5% on a composite of Fark, Reditt, and Newsvine.

- Overall, 100% read articles, 94% read comments, 62% posted comments, 56% flagged/tagged/or rated content or users, 25% wrote content, 8% edited content, and 35% read/posted/commented on discussions concerning the site’s development. While the rates of reading were fairly constant across sites, participation in other areas (notably writing and flag/tag/rating) varied across sites. Again, site design plays a role in facilitating certain kinds of participation, as exemplified by the differences in percentage writing content on Digg (26%) and Slashdot (13%), which have slight variations in posting of submissions.[s]

Again some differences between men and women. While the majority of women surveyed visited daily, women were significantly less likely than men to visit everyday, 79% vs. 90%. Although similar in some forms of participation, they were also less likely to post comments (50% vs. 63%), flag/tag/rate (41% vs. 58%), or edit content[t] (5% vs. 9%).[u]

Largely unprompted viewing. The vast majority, 82%, indicated that they check the website regularly. Roughly 7% specified that they visited when prompted by RSS.[v] While barely statistically significant, it is worthwhile to note that a handful of general news sites (in particular Wikinews, OhMyNews, and Global Voices) seemed to have a greater “touch” outside of its regular community, with more people indicating a visit prompted by web search results, online links, or word of mouth.

How Do They Seek

Still going where directed (even if this time guided by the Crowd). Overall most, 72%, browse around (rather than actively looking for specific information) and largely gravitate towards the featured and latest stories, 67%. While directionally similar, reading the latest and greatest holds less true for non-tech news collaborative sites, 56% compared to 75%. (This could also be because of a less good job at spotlighting).

Pulled by the Story, not that Special Person. Aside from featured articles, more people indicated that they read for a specific issue/topic, 31%, then for particular members’ articles, 6%. While overall, the number reading for a specific geography was small, 3%, a handful of sites, most notably those with international general news coverage, indicated a larger percent, ranging from 17% to 55%, reading for coverage of particular areas.

Multiple potential pointers. Although the number choosing “Other” was small, 3.4%, some additional primary seeking behaviors mentioned included reading RSS highlighted articles, reading others’ latest comments, looking for content related to administrative duties, and checking up on their own written material. A handful mentioned socially based selections such as reading what friends were looking at, checking in the chat areas, or reading what a friend had emailed.

Why Do They Seek Here: Primary Uses

For a fix of unique, informative fun. 84.7% stated that their primary use for the website was “personal interest and entertainment”. A majority, 60.1%, also indicated that the website acted as a “primary source of information/news they can’t get elsewhere”.

- While in most cases personal interest and entertainment was still the most popular reason, the JustNews (71.3%) and hyper-local sites (64.5%) composites had less indicating it as serving that primary purpose. The most significant exception was Global Voices where only 30% indicated that reason and other uses held greater relevance.

Also filling in the blanks. A role as a source of “supplemental information on news first learned elsewhere” was indicated by 26.4%. Notably the role as a primary vs. supplemental source of information was stronger for certain sites, in particular tech news sites (with 64.9% reading for primary news and 23.5% reading for supplement) compared to hyper-local news sites (with a flipped dynamic in which 32.9% read for primary information and 47.4% read for supplement). While less extreme in difference and directionally the same as tech news websites, general news websites also had less indicating it as a source of primary (45.9%) vs. supplemental (39.3%) news information.

- Again, any hasty deduction that it is solely about tech vs. non-tech news is premature.[w] There was a 10-point, significant difference between the two major technology news websites in people indicating it as a supplemental source of information. This falls in line with the now familiar refrain: site features encourage certain types of information exchange.

Teaching and sharing come after learning. 17.5% stated a primary use as a “tool for reporting news and information I learn/discover” and 15% indicated a primary use as a “tool for connecting to people with similar concerns.” Again differences existed between individual websites. As a group, the most notable outlier was hyper-local sites, where 27.6% indicated use as a tool for reporting and 34.2% highlighted the connection to people with similar concerns.

Some practical applications. 13.1% specified a primary use as a “research tool for professional or academic purposes.” Among the 2.4% who indicated “Other”, a handful noted practical uses including sparking story ideas, researching for trends, and utilization as an advocacy tools. Consistent with the most frequently mentioned benefit, a few qualified their responses noting usefulness in quickly finding value-added information (including multiple angles and opinions). “It's a filter. I know I'll get a certain type of news that I won't get anywhere…”(2-S, #75)

Trading Off: What Do Users Most Value

charts

Again about the unique information. When asked to rank 7 attributes, “outside of mainstream or under-covered information” (average rank of 2.27) was valued the most.[x]

Access to multiple perspectives (which create that uniqueness). This was followed by “aggregation of various voices on one site” (3.32), “ summary of what various voices are saying” (3.59), and public/citizen first person perspectives (3.68).[y]

Individual learning over group edification. Confirming the primary use identified in the previous question, “Ability to report information I learn/discover” (4.76) and “A community to facilitate becoming more involved in an issue” (4.68) were ranked further down. [z] [aa]

Little gained from the pros. The least valued attribute was “ability to communicate with reporters and editors. (5.70) It is unclear whether this lowest ranked attribute is because people do not want that type of connection, or whether the collaborative news sites just do not offer that type of exchange (well). If it is the former reason, traditional media might wish to take a second look at any online strategy resting largely on giving their reporters a keyboard.

- While still ranking it as lowest out of the seven attributes, relatively higher valuations for conversing with reporters and editors came from OhmyNews, Global Voices, and Wikinews. Given their structure of production, these are also the sites that likely require more exchange during the writing process and before publishing.

Credibility

Legit. An overwhelming majority judged the websites the same (48.6%) if not better (37.9%) in credibility next to mainstream news media. Only 13.5% ranked the websites as less credible. A few general news sites had particularly high credibility ratings.

Not Just Touting Their Own Horns. Obviously, it’s tempting to argue that this is far from earth shattering. After all, the majority of these respondents are active contributors who would otherwise be calling themselves un-credible. Further analysis suggests this is not the case. Taking a cross section of those who write content[bb] in comparison to those who do not actively contribute in any way (not even in flag/tag/or rating), the credibility rankings remain very similar, with only 12.4% of non-contributors rating these collaborative sites as less credible than MSM and 87.6% rating them the same or more credible. Not completely self-deprecating, writers were more likely to judge these sites as being more credible.

On Aesthetics

More pleasing and convenient to the eye. While nothing was rated as “poor,” when asked to rate each website’s interface (display and organization / ease of finding relevant news) collaborative news sites were rated above both traditional newspapers’ online interface and the news section of search engines (an average score of 1.37 vs. 1.90 and 2.28).

Do They Make Friends: To What Extent A Politicizing Force

Discovering an issue. An overwhelming 90% indicated that based on the experience on the website, they had “taken a further interest in an issue”. (Without comparable studies it is hard to understand if and how that interest differs from any generated by more traditional news platforms).

Socially bold online in new groups, less so with new persons especially in-person. Beyond being more interested, 37% joined an online group and 12% joined an offline group to learn more or take further action on an issue. Unfortunately it is unclear what kinds of groups and issues these are and how sustained those associations are. On a more personal level, 22% emailed or became online acquaintances with other members of the site and 9% engaged offline with members they met on the website.

The Social vs. Less Social

- The locals connect. New personal connections held particularly true of hyper-local sites, where 56% became online acquaintances and 50% became offline acquaintances with members they met on the site.

- Less to say in person on certain sites. In general, non-tech news sites forged more one-on-one connections and to a lesser extent more offline group connections than tech news focused sites. Within that bunch, more conventional news topics were associated with less one-on-one connections than sites with a greater potpourri of subjects such as Metafilter.[cc]

- After all, we work together. Aside from subject matter, it appeared that more active participation as article/content writers was associated with much greater forms of all types of online and offline connections.

Question: Based on your experience on the website have you...
Response Choice	ALL	ALLnoTech	JustTech	Local	NoContri	Nonwriters[dd]	Writers
Joined an online group to learn more or take further action on an issue	37.0%	39.0%	35.0%	24.3%	21.0%	32.0%	*50.0%*
Joined an off-line group to learn more or take further action on an issue	12.0%	*19.0%*	10.0%	*18.8%*	8.0%	10.0%	*20.0%*
Emailed/became online acquaintances with other members of the site	22.0%	*42.0%*	18.0%	*56.0%*	6.0%	16.0%	*43.0%*
Engaged offline with members you meet on the website	9.0%	*25.0%*	6.0%	*50.0%*	2.0%	5.0%	*21.0%*
Taken further interest in an issue	90.0%	90.0%	90.0%	87.3%	86.0%	89.0%	*93.0%*

Motivations for Actively Contributing to Content

Participation is not a simple picture. Of those who did not write, 25% still flagged/tagged/rated content and 13% still contributed to discussion of site’s development. Similarly, of those who neither wrote nor contributed to the site’s discussions on development, 22% still flagged/tagged/rated content.

For the sake of meaningful sharing. A desire to share knowledge and area of expertise was the top motivator, conveyed by 78.3%. A particular dimension of sharing revealed in the “Other” response option was exposing a larger narrative and set of opinions. Another primary motivation for writing and/or editing was to further action or attention on an important issue, 40.5%. A good number, 29.7% stated they were “professionals with first-hand knowledge that can enhance public information about current issues.” Only a small percentage, 7.9%, mentioned any interest in pursuing journalism.

Side perk of good company. Confirming earlier observations, the social aspect while not the primary motivation, is still important with 26.3% indicating “finding and connecting to others with similar interest” as a reason for contributing. Within the 13% who specified “Other”, related responses fell into the category of “giving back to the community/helping others”. Although they likely do not think of their intentions in terms of providing a public good, a handful also indicated motivations beneficial to the larger community: a desire to correct, fact check, and/or make articles more clear.

Individual differences. Writers were more likely then non-writers to be interested in journalism, want to share their expertise, and further action/attention on an important issue or cause. While similar in most motivations, women were more likely then men to express “to find and connect to others with similar interests” (35.8% vs. 25.4%) as a reason for writing and/or editing.

Impact of the model on the motivators. There was noticeable contrast in motivations on a few dimensions between websites. Most significantly, 68.8% of OhmyNews respondents expressed an interest in pursuing journalism. Global Voices likewise stood out from the average on several dimensions: a high percent of respondents characterized themselves as professions with firsthand knowledge (57.9%), motivated by the potential to find and connect to others with similar interests (42.1%), and further action/attention on an important issue/cause (63.2%).

Personal benefit and satisfaction. Adding some color not offered in the answer choices, common among the “Other” motivations for writing/editing respondents volunteered included generating page hits/“street cred,” as fun or hobby, general learning, and simply as a “personal satisfying” activity.

Sources of Information

No one source. Information is pulled from a variety of sources. Overall, 58.6% cited the predominant information source for articles they published to be from aggregators, 40.6% cited individual blogs, 40.7% first hand information, and 38.7% MSM. Among those indicating “Other”, major categories missed among the answer choices included online non-news websites, offline reports/publications, and listserves.

Barriers to Contributing: Reasons for Not Writing Content or Posting Comments

Open-ended answers were coded into a few overarching categories. While the details vary, some consistent patterns can be distinguished.

Busy, No time. “It'd take me 2 lifetimes to comment on everything I read.” (1-P, #652) The overarching stated reason is lack of time. 27.1% said something to that effect. For some this meant not being able to devote enough time to create anything of sufficient quality. “I want to make sure that what I write has weight in terms of content and intelligence -- would take a huge lump of my day to sit and write comments I could be proud of...” (1-P, #41) Many indicated busy work or study schedules, leaving little energy for something viewed lower on the priority totem pole. A good number bluntly stated they were too “lazy.”

Hostile atmosphere and low quality conversation. “Am but one voice in a flood of idiots.” (2-P, #176) Part of what is inhibiting that time tradeoff is a sense that little value is created in return. 6.2% highlighted unnecessary flame wars as a turn off. “While I find it mildly amusing to read the comments, most of them are just worthless trolling of people who have too much time on their hands.” (3-P, #11) Within this group, some complained about the quality of the comments -- more noise than useful, reliable content. “Most of the opinions/comments are opinions or emotions, most are not substantive in content.” (2-S, #83) “As the popularity of a site increases, so does the number of comments while the quality and utility of the comments decreases. It's not worth my time. (4-P, #2) A few complained of a “clubby atmosphere” that proved especially difficult and unwelcoming for minority viewpoints and newcomers. There was a sense that the majority of the community was too “biased”, “one-noted”, “one-sided” and prone to “group think”. These sentiments prevented some from making the investment.

Just want to “listen” because I am unqualified. The second most cited category of reasons, 22.5%, fell along the lines of feeling unable to provide any value-added. “Usually don't have the most interesting perspective, living in Arkansas.” (3-P, #82) Not knowing enough was often stated in conjunction with the supposition that others on the site were more knowledge and better positioned to contribute. Some noted that even if they wanted to add something, usually others were more tapped in and beat them to posting. A small number indicated a discomfort with writing and a sense of intimidation. A smaller percent simply stated they felt no need because the current postings were already sufficient in expressing both the news they discovered and their opinion on it. “My opinions have usually been clearly stated by someone else. Do not feel the need to shout out "me too!" (3-P, #69)

Prefer to “listen” for information, not to “teach.” Roughly 13.4% indicated that the reason they came to the website was to learn, not provide information or seek interaction. Often this preference for a more passive role was expressed in conjunction with a sense of limited time. “I'm listening in to the conversations of folks who have a lot more time than I do to explore the web... I'm their audience, rather than a participant or community member. I very much value the service they provide…” (3-P, #49) A small percent indicated a desire for privacy and to remain unnoticed.

Just not interested. Approximately 5% simply stated with minimal detail that they just had no want, need or desire to do anything but read. A few noted that they were professional writers who published enough material already. Another 3% of respondents indicated they were not interested enough in the topics, or felt no “cause” to contribute, but would consider writing if circumstances were right. “It doesn't interest me. I just like to read what is happening and don't feel the need to comment unless I have a desire to on an issue that effects me.” (D-P, #43) “The gaining of an account and/ or logging in before each post seems tedious. I don't feel so connected as to want to post to these websites.” (5-P, #66)

Failed logistics. Issues such as not getting account access, or being blocked (when trying to access at work) were among the obstacles indicated by roughly 4%. Fears of being lost in the shuffle, or giving up after unaccepted submissions were also expressed concerns. “I've tried. They never accept my submissions. Now I don't bother.” (2-P, #99) “for larger sites… it'd be pretty pointless, as voices get lost in the crowd past the first 15 comments.” (5-P, #100)

Membership requirements. It is unclear whether privacy or procedure fatigue is the primary reason, but 3.5% stated they did not want to be members. For Metafilter, a few mentioned a preference not to pay.

· Preference for other outlets or other ways. Roughly 3% indicated they had other websites or blogs, outlets to do similar things. Some also indicated that they preferred to share information with friends in smaller groups or through email links. “Feel more comfortable reviewing news and discussing opinions only within my own social group.” (5-P, #39)

What Is their Perception of the Challenges

Bad discussion. The comments section is just like the part in the circus where the little car opens up and all the clowns come out. (3-P, #2) Roughly 18.5% noted a poor quality of debates and an echo chamber dominated by a few loud voices. By far, it was trolls, nasty commenters, and flame wars that were cited as producing a sense of tension, disrespect, and snarkyness. “... The depth and breadth of the things that can be learned on the net never ceases to amaze me. And at the other extreme, the crassness and lack of depth also amazes me...” (2, #63)

Imperfect community. Related to this discussion dynamic were community issues such as perceptions of cliqueness among posters who intimidated the rest, group think, and inflated egos. “… the user base can be difficult to deal with at times; many are split between two camps: cruel/ignorant and elitist.” A few indicated that the majority tended to "bury" the minority. “Constructive criticism that goes against the herd usually gets undugg, thus hiding their comments, though there was nothing wrong with what they said. Their comments are undugg because they disagree, not because they flame, spam, etc., which goes against the purpose of the filter. (1-C, #490)

Difficulty in producing quality. Likely related to design features, among the biggest topics of complaint, by 14.3% of respondents, was producing quality. Within this concern was particularly appropriateness and uniqueness of content but also accusations of poor writing skills/style, grammar, and faulty sourcing. Especially for the sites with a large community, duplications appeared to be a frequent problem. Roughly 3 percent noted a tendency to ax-grind/crusade on certain issues and a need to expand the scope of current topics. “Inaccurate stories and the herd mentality have really hurt the credibility of what are, on the whole, an excellent collection of stories.” (1-C, #395)

Technological stumbles. 12.6% expressed issues related to technology. The majority, 11.1%, were concerned about slow loading and or crashing. For the tech-news sites, many indicated the Digged or Slashdotted effect. This was especially distracting in prematurely dampening excited discussion, when the article under discussion could not get referenced. A much smaller number pointed to getting blocked or filtered.
Interface and tool weaknesses. Roughly 8.6% indicated issues related to features or layout. Within this 2.6% indicated that managing which comments to display, and the absence of sufficient mediation, editing, and other interactivity tools prevented fixes to the problems. 2.7% specifically mentioned issues with rating system abuse in terms of who got featured, the popularity contest, or artificially inflating/gaming.

The entre of marketing. 9.5% noted that the introduction of marketing ranging from self-promoters using buzzwords to more obtrusive spam and advertising was a turn off. A smaller number expressed dislike to pay for “elite” membership.

Unexpected dynamics of disinformation “… this [user voting system] can lead to a misrepresentation of specific topics. The system usually works, but can easily fail... (1-C #350)” A sizable chunk 8% highlighted the potential for fake news amplification, where incorrect information can spread just as easily as correct information. Partly this was attributed to people not actually reading the article before voting, but the more commonly cited cause was user irresponsibility or dishonesty.

Information overload. 6% brought up complaints of low signal to noise ratios. The information was deemed too dense and/or overflowing to short out the gems.

The bad of too much volume. In particular on the tech-news sites, 4% indicated the tendency for stories to disappear too fast or for quality stories to be lost in the cracks. This was attributed to the high volume of stories, and to a lesser extent the background of participants that cause them to favor certain stories to spotlight. Such dynamics also serve as caveats to the extent that “in-depth” coverage is provided: “… [we] direct so much traffic to a linked site that it takes their server offline, by the time it's back up, everyone's forgotten to go back and take a look...” The tech-news sites were also particularly likely (5.2%) to mention concerns over rapid growth. This was tied especially with worries over the influx of new users, who at times were different from the “established” users. “… blocking new subscribers can lead to staleness, letting in hoards impacts on the nature of the community.” (3-C. #35) Changing and conflicting core values (common netiquette and vision for the site) were struggles. “... there now are a lot of posters who really don't know what they are talking about; whereas earlier (say 99), it was only really experts in the field posting there.” (2-C #143)

· The bad of too low volume. The contrast was also stated, especially for the non-tech news sites (3.7%), of struggles in getting a larger critical mass, attracting outside attention, and organizing users to get broader participation, including attracting good editors. A small handful on particular sites indicated infrequent content updates as a detraction. Untimely or missed, pertinent news was indicated by both tech and non-tech sites, but moreso with the latter. (This is likely more format then content related, as there was a difference between the two tech sites.)

Perceived Strengths over MSM

“Up to the nana-second bleeding edge technological news as it's happening.” (1-S #621)

“Traditional news media is about 12 hours behind most of the social news sites. I often find news stories that were posted on Google news for "one hour" or less, that have been on digg.com for most of the day, sometimes days.” (1-S, #291)

“You'll read about something big DAYS or WEEKS before It gets to mainstream media and before the 'spin' is added. It’s quite fascinating to see how the 'spin' happens. (2-S, #180)

· Speed and strength in numbers. 19.2% indicated superior resources. The majority, 13.5%, noted a speed in reporting and publishing before MSM. In particular, the presence of multiple resources was attributed to enabling better scope and research.

“… Verifying information is incredible as the community always seems to have people who either know the facts or are very good at hunting them down...” (6-S, #5)

“Digg is very fast, all the people who submit and digg stories are way ahead of other means of media. We are the editors, there is no one man who need to approve the stories before they're published.” (2-S, #685)

2.2 % explicitly indicated the valued presence of experts and people who actually understood the topics (especially true of the technology sites.)

“News from the guys on the ground, not some reporter who, more likely than not, has so little background in the subject she's covering that it's impossible to report accurately.” (2-S, #80)

Diversity that’s “Real.” Very related to the benefits of numbers was a sense of diversity. 16.2% indicated that diversity, no single voice or bias, was a valuable quality. “Varied stories from a multitude of sources. Being able to hear 5 takes on 1 story usually leads to the truth.” (1-S, #3) 6.2% indicated that the summary of bloggers’ “real” lives, not just opinion leaders, but ordinary, sometimes marginalized, “street opinion” helped produce more diverse content that provided better perspective when combined with news.

“An attached discussion thread that serves to capture popular opinion and additional details that serve to increase the accuracy and credibility of any given post.” (2-S, #76)

“People's voices who live in the area/region give a direct path to the heart of news. All Media talked about was the Iranian nuclear crisis, no one talked about the bus strike, 1000 arrested people and strongest syndicate movement in 27 years in Iran except GV!” (7, S2, #8)

“While there is personal bias, there is more than a single point of view covering multiple topics. These topics effect the lives of people, and thereby are more interesting since they are dealing with it first-hand, instead of a reporter who cares naught what the topic is since it is just a "job". (8, #19)

Better content -- In-depth and missed now found. An equally substantive percent, 16.9%, indicated access to missed content and deeper content.

“MSM are the most unoriginal publications/broadcasts available. Virtually all the news from every station, paper, magazine, etc. is virtually identical.” (2-S, #97)

“I know if I go to 10 news web sites, I'll see all the same stories ... and at 5 of them I'll see the same canned AP or Reuters story. (1-S, #513)

“The Inquirer never has the resources to send a reporter to my local township meetings… There is lots of stuff going on in the Philadelphia area that 5,000 or even 10,000 people care a lot about but that's not a big enough demographic for a newspaper that has to make a 20% annual profit. (8, #1)

For them, these websites provided more comprehensive content along with more in-depth coverage (deep-linking, continued conversation) that resulted in a product different from traditional news media.

“Stories you can't find elsewhere in soundbyte and misinformed mainstream (2-S, #112)

“the news is not only the article anymore, but also contains the comments, votings and tags which enriches the information (1-S, #62)

“true global coverage encompassing countries that are often not reported in mainstream media…” (7, S2, #3)

“… it is based around technology and science- the section of the paper/cnn/whatever that I always go for, and it has 50x-100x more stories in those categories than any mainstream news source.” (D-S, #68)

Some of this perceived difference was facilitated by website design/characteristics (easier to find mash-up of content).

“…The biggest strength is probably that the site is easier to navigate and search on than most online versions of print newspapers... when a big story happens, these sites often display more contrasting points of view than found in the traditional media, though often these points of view are articles FROM that media, the juxtaposition of positions on a site like Digg's frontpage offers a certain balance of research that is not fostered as much on mainstream media sites. (1-S, #137)

In particular the ability to view comments was specifically stated by 3% as allowing a more well-rounded and complete examination of issues, not to mention a unique opportunity to understand how other’s rationalized their opinions.

“It gives insight as to how the public is perceiving events, rather than solely what the media is presenting. Sometimes, it is also interesting to note how the media presents something, and then note how people react to it… (7, #23)

“Cover areas that traditional media aren't interested in. A story's comments are often more informative than the story itself.” (2-S, #157)

These opinions sometimes offered missing expertise (especially for specialized news).

“A number of people providing input have better technical qualifications than most reporters. Its rare that I find a reporter that has a real clue about science.” (1-S, #700)

In general, diversity was often mentioned in conjunction with the ability for more interesting, unusual and obscure information to arise. Diversity moreover was credited for facilitating a willingness to follow-up on otherwise avoided or unorthodox stories.

Empowered user base. “Overabundance of information without presumptions of preference.” (1-S, #353) 16.5% cited the interactive features (particularly commenting and rating) as a strength that allowed users to decide what was worthy. These features created a sense that people were treated as participants and valued.

Not evil. A different kind of credibility. 13.8% stated something along the lines of the transparency and accountability. Many stated an appreciation for the openness of information and admitted biases that allowed people to judge for themselves.

“It actually will make a PUBLIC correction on the presented information rather than publishing it in 8 point print in a postage stamp buried in part of the site that's never read.” (5-S, #16)

It is always available. It is fast. It is free. It is tuned to my interests, with none of the bullshit. They advertise to me less... Stories can be discussed or debunked in the comment sections. Often, stories can be backed up with actual evidence, unlike a normal newspaper which will only tell you the story with a "trust us" attitude... (2-S, #85)

In particular, some people (5.7%) raised the idea that the site’s motivation was not based on, and that the site was not held back by, a fixed agenda of advertisers, corporate or government interests.

The people who do the news are actually interested in the situations and the news itself. With mainstream media, the reports do exactly that... they report. (1-S, #183)

“Non-traditional sites are beholden to fewer big interests. The NYT might hold stories for the White House, for other reporters, for shareholders, for management, or for an advertiser.”(2-S, #124)

2.8% specifically mentioned that MSM was more slanted and corrupt.

“A different focus primarily. News media wants sensationalist stories that capture a general audience” (1-S, #72)

“Blogs, on the other hand, are less likely to be concerned with drawing readers as with sharing information” (5-P, #17)

These broad perceptions of transparency and independence brought up adjectives like democracy, trust, and truth. One person noted, “motivations can make a difference.” These endeavors were perceived not as a job, but a citizen’s activity.

Knows how to speak to me. “The news is fast, the news is easy to read, the news is targeted. I don't care about 99% of the stuff that's in a newspaper. I DO care about 75% of the news on the websites I read. (1-S, #576) 6.4% noted that the collaborative news sites were more in tuned with what they thought was important/interesting or presented the news in ways they found more appealing. Some noted that there was more of a “light-touch” that provided information in readable, humorous ways. Others indicated that the mixture of personal interest, not just “newsie stuff” helped to let the medicine go down. Finally a few, especially on the tech news sites, noted better quality (less sensationalism) that was not pitched to the “lowest common denominator.”

· Practical tool to find all the best. 5.6% indicated the site was efficient at quickly finding and summarizing the best news of the day (whether that meant the most meaningful, funniest, or most popular). “I can see what is the latest and greatest news that other people have found interesting. Instead of traditional news media which tries to figure out what's the ‘most important’ thing... Online news is for the people and by the people.” 1-S, #677) Aggregation was also cited in helping to link multiple types of information (blogs, MSM, and comments) to see the “big picture.” Being free and easy to access was stated by 1%.

Community to plug into, if desired. Community, while often cited as far from ideal, was also a defining feature. 4% mentioned the availability of individual connection, exchange, and network as strengths over traditional media.

“…There is an ongoing discussion in real time...” (1-S, #360)

“It gets you more involved with news. I've noticed some people who shy away from mainstream news, but they may flock to this for the sense of community. (1-S, #651)

“… you can have conversations and enter into dialogues with these people, who are often activists, to collaborate on joint projects. It is a great network.” (7, S2, #7)

While direct references about quality, fellow community members were scarce, the prevalent behavior of comment reading and the expressed value for diversity suggests a generally positive sentiment towards the overall community. “The ability to immediately get a cross-section of real user feedback. This must be taken with a grain of salt, but almost always has gems hiding amongst the gravel.” (2-S, #68) In particular, a small percent (3%) of those on the tech news sites expressed a preference for the niche news and audience of “geeks like me”.

Just different. Small, but worthy to note, 1% of respondents indicated that these sites were just different from traditional media, no better or worse.

A Discussion of Implications: Tying it all Together

“democracy is ugly sometimes” (1-C, #588) vs. “It's the people. The people win. The system sucks. I trust people more than the system b/c the people are real. Vested interests come at a minimum when dealing with mobs. It usually devolves into chaos...which leads to more fact checking, and more thorough reporting... in the end.” (1-S, #435)

There is an intrinsic tension on these websites between the downfalls of discussion/public production and the new kind of unique credibility and content richness that comes from that group engagement. For those who are coming to these sites, the tradeoff in favor of the freedom for potential noise nets positive.

“A zillion idiots are more intelligent together than a few geniuses: most topics are tested and commented significantly in matters of minutes. This filters valid data from non-valid.” (2-S, #79)

For those who come to think it too noisy, as the survey revealed, there is the option to play alternative roles, or just sit-back and suck in the information, but remain satisfied with the overall value in what is produced.

“Please do not underestimate the value of these sites to users who use them in a ‘read only’ fashion, rather than posting articles or comments. I read because I have found that the posted articles include everything I see in my ‘mainstream’ media reading, much that I see in my "professional" reading, and some things that I do not see anywhere else. (2-C, #1)

As noted in the survey summary section on reasons for contribution, participation is a nuanced rather than simple picture. Aside from posting articles or comments, there are different ways in which community members feel they are adding value to the websites.

Instead of being a ‘news content provider’ I tackle the more arduous role of ‘wading through the slushpile.’ By serving purely in an editorial role I can devote my energy to ensuring quality of content which is promoted to the home page. Additionally, others are far more adept at being ‘news hounds’ than I am, so I give where I can maximize my effect.” (1-P, #456)

“The ability to swarm around and create significance of a story by voting on its interestingness or newsworthiness. No one tells me what I should think is important, we all give our opinions and the public decides what they feel is important.” (1-S, #666)

Moreover, that behavior changes:

“Do post rarely... When I do post, it is regarding my experiences with specific issues.” (2-P, #205)

“Unfortunately I don’t have time to participate in the comments section. I used to be a moderator but I haven’t participated for 18 months now.” (2-P, #158)

“I only post if I have the chance to do so early. Nobody reads the comments that are posted later, so posting comments late is like talking to a tree.” (2-P, #189)

The risk, and trickiness for sustainability, is if/when the space becomes closer to pure noise such that the required group engagement necessary to produce that differentiated content and environment disappears.

“I used to post comments and moderate on slashdot after a while I got annoyed and moved on. I used to read and post on metafilter obsessively and after a while I got bored and moved on.” (2-P, #112)

I generally am just a consumer of news and I see a lot of things on Digg that I haven't seen elsewhere. I stopped participating in the forums because of the immature users on the site making me very frustrated. (1-P, #198)

While not every member need participate for a collaborative news website to be sustainable, (in fact the scalability of a small number can be exponential), at least a small critical mass is needed. The community produces the noise, but it also produces the signal.

“Greensboro 101 is only as good as the stuff it aggregates. If people in the community are writing crap, GSO101 presents crap. If they happen to be well informed and insightful, GSO101 will be the same.” (7-C, #1)

What is Natural and What Can be Built

As exemplified by the noticeable differences across collaborative news websites, it is as much, if not likely more, about the structure of the space as the people present and subjects discussed in it (the former also attracts the latter two). While across the board there was a sense of a different ethos, kind of information, and added community dynamic than provided by traditional news media, there is a spectrum to the nature of any revolution of roles, community, or information.

Far from a website design guru, I will not pass quality judgments on these alternative mechanisms and models for participation and community. I will offer a personal opinion that there is no exact wrong or right. The more relevant and interesting question is what kind of community is desired. Or alternatively, what kind of relationship with information is desired. Design follows to foster and allow that threshold of exchange.

Short (and discussion focused) by Many vs. Long (and production focused) by Fewer

For example, although Wikinews and Digg are both community-based models of collaborative news production, their distinct features and interfaces create a very different kind of information flow and community. Digg permits only one link per post and has a strict word limit per submission. This leads to frequent, but short, two sentence news posts. While the initial context is limited and focused on whatever external content is linked to, additional color arises from the community’s follow up comments and/or links. (Arguably this makes the need for good gem sorters and noise dampeners especially crucial.) Wikinews, in contrast, allows each contributor to post extensive text and links. This creates fewer, but longer stories, where more of the aggregation of sources and perspectives is provided in the body of the article. While there is a separate discussion page, much of the participatory engagement with the news comes from the construction of the news story (usually by one or a small number of people). This differs from the longer conversations, comment threads involving dozens (or many more) community members, that is often seen on Digg.

Interface design also plays a role on the nature of fact-checking. The amount of eyeballs viewing each story and the ease with which someone can press a button to broadcast “false” effects the pace and extent to which inaccuracy or misinformation is corrected.

Direct vs. Indirect Connecting Spaces

A second example is the design of connecting community spaces. MetaFilter has a community space for the public to announce projects (MeFi) and a discussion area for “sharing knowledge among members of MetaFilter” (AskMeFi). Notably while not necessarily directly developing on the news just one click away, these features create an easy to spot place to meet and collaborate. On Digg, the mechanism for serendipitous connections is less direct. Like Metafilter, Digg members have profiles. Anyone can search out anyone else and see what they and their friends have been reading and doing on the site. If they chose to leave personal details, the member can even be contacted. However, the profile pages are less of a shared public space for quickly sparking a fresh connection based on an issue. While not proof of causation, it is worth noting that Metafilter respondents were significantly more likely than Digg respondents to become acquaintances. Finding a community is not why most come to these collaborative news sites, but a sizable percent engage with it when accessible.

In either case, the existence of profiles (even if just depicted by a generic shadow portrait picture) creates “people” within a community, and a sense of identity in connection with the website not found in traditional news media.

Set vs. Tagged Categories

While not based on direct voting, tagging indirectly enables public expression of community preferences. For example, NowPublic’s browsing features include searching through the most recent and most popular (most viewed) posts. This is not so different from seeing the New York Times’ most frequently emailed articles list. More interestingly, the website provides searches via tag clouds. In tag clouds, articles/posts are classified according to words that users define. Typically the word’s font size grows as more people use the tag word. This provides a visual representation of what topics (and/or places) the community is paying most attention to. Equally path breaking, unlike traditional news media that predefines categories like “international”, “politics”, “technology,” etc., tags allow the community to assign its own meanings about the relevance of news. Public discussions on news topics ranging from “treehouses” to “gremlins”, “immigrant rights”, “Bill Gates”, “political elections in Italy”, burlesque”, and even “McDonalds” become visible and searchable.

Seen vs. Unseen conversations

A final example is the design of conversations. The “hiding” of low-rated conversations on websites like Slashdot, help to decrease the degree of “noise” that can diminish the value of a vocalized community. At Global Voices that kind of filtering does not exist, however conversation are “hidden” in another way. While most collaborative news websites encourage the content and comments to take place on their website, Global Voices is intended to be a “pointer.” As founder Rebecca MacKinnon notes,

“We are concerned about the conversation on the comment thread, but more interesting is the Technorati thread in the online universe and if people are emailing it around… We’re trying to be the hub or maybe the spark of the conversation... We’re helping people find those conversations, however and wherever they want. If that means conversation on our site, that’s fine, on another website linking to us, that’s fine too... either way it’s accomplishing its goal.”

Lots of conversation may be happening about Global Voices articles, but not physically connected to the site itself. While widening the geography of conversation onto different website communities, it changes the way conversations are “seen” and the degree of connected conversations between participant on the same topic.

In that vein, Newsvine CEO describes,

“One of the problems with the fragmented blogosphere and "newsosphere" is that your interactions are all over the place. You leave a comment here and you forget about it there. If the comment is particularly important to you, you may remember to check back for about 24 hours looking for responses, but after that, it's out of sight out of mind.”

In response, Newsvine created a feature called the "Conversation Tracker" that automatically notifies members when someone has left a comment on an article, seed, or comment the member submitted around the site (or a story a user chooses to track).

Building site-based community does not need to happen through a single, discussion board-like page. As trackback and tagging tools grow, the incorporation of related features have sizable impact on the extent and nature of sustained conversation flow.

Creating any paradigm shifts

The examples could go on. Granted this is just a cursory outline that neglects the details required for an accurate cross-comparative assessment. Moreover traffic data and other indicators could provide meaningful validity to these general observations.[ee] However, I have raised them to make more concrete how design impacts the nature of a community and the engagement of the community as a group with the news. It will largely be the design of these websites that will make what is happening in this We Media age any different from the revolutions of the past.

“… Digg, slashdot, and other sites appear to useful because they have developed ways … to address the low S/N [signal to noise] issues that killed USENET: (It's hard for folks to realize now, but USENET was a very valuable resource early on. As more people came online, it became broader and hence more interesting, but simultaneously more crappy as it filled up with low-quality posts and spam.) We appear to be approaching the useful limit of volume for these newer types of media as well.” (1-C, #6)

Features of these collaborative news models such as their rating and moderation systems, social networking components, and aggregated mash up of diverse content, suggest significant shifts from previous We Media platforms that may indeed make this a different revolution.

Their Side of the Story: Summarizing

So what is the reality compared to the hype about these collaborative news websites and their future? According to their current users:

1. These websites provide unique, valued information for their communities. It’s not so much about the soapbox, as it is about the entertainment box, info box, and voting box. On net, they are perceived as faster, more mixed source and better highlighters of under-covered topics. [Details: p24-26 Why Do They Seek Here: Primary Uses, and p26-27 Trading Off: What Do Users Most Value]

2. People are ready for fuzzy credibility (if not too much). They take info with a grain of salt, watch the warning opinion signs, and make their own judgment calls. Moreover concerns are partly balanced by a new kind of credibility -- an ethos about the goals of the sites, such that even if they do not trust a good chunk of the audience, they trust the site and community as a whole. Part of that ethos is generated by a sense of ownership at the voting box. In part, it is in response to transparency and openness. And in part, it is due to the idea of accountability to no one but the public. (That last piece threatens to be tested as bigger players and associated advertising enters). [Details: p28 Credibility, and p37-42 Perceived Strengths over MSM]

3. There is a new definition for what qualifies as an “expert” for news. Professional and life experiences count, and especially for specialized topics, can count much more than a traditional press pass. People still want “editors” and “experts” but are open to different providers. [Details: p37-42 Perceived Strengths over MSM]

4. Moreover news’ value is not solely about scooping an original story (although these websites sometimes beat traditional news media there). Currently, most postings still refer to existing stories, but what has become possible is a mash-up more comprehensive than any single source. For example, embedded in any one Wikinews story can be links to articles from the BBC, New York Times, and Washington Post, interspersed with links to blogs, additional context from Wikipedia, an associated report from a nonprofit or governmental agency, not to mention a connected comment/discussion thread. This remixes content in one place and in a way distinct from traditional news media providers.[ff] [Details: p37-42 Perceived Strengths over MSM]

5. Some people find the addiction in the quick headlines, some in the comments, some in the brief limelight, and some in the voting click. In short, this is not a solid mass. Not everyone reads the details, much less contributes to creating it, but they do value the potential it creates. Sites that recognize these nuances develop features to address that continuum of involvement (to more easily ignore noise, find noise, judge noise, make noise, and/or connect with certain people). Moreover, the very different information flow and community on the various sites predicts that there is space for alternatives to enter. [Details: p30-32 Motivations for Actively Contributing to Content, and p16-18 Part I: Strategies from the Real World]

6. Diversity is a valued, but also destabilizing force. Especially for non-niche news, ambitions to transform into any organizing force are tempered by the challenge of reaching goal coherence (outside of an Alpha group) or even just getting all the neighbors to like each other. However the ability for information to quickly reach large numbers, who then get voting on the issue, is evidently out there. [Details: p34-37 What Is their Perception of the Challenges, and p42-43 Discussion of Implications]

7. Interactions are not confined to news exchange among a semi-anonymous group of strangers. Socializing and political mobilization are not primary activities, but online and offline personal exchanges can be sparked off the sites’ discussion of issues. [Details: p29 Do They Make Friends: To What Extent A Politicizing Force, p 44-47 What is Natural and What Can be Built]

8. At the end of the day, these are still citizens with other offline lives and jobs to lead. While they may want and like to write a post, leave a comment, vote on a story, and help develop the community, the majority do not call themselves “journalists” or “citizen reporters” in any formal sense. Borrowing an analogy made by Michael Tippett, founder of NowPublic,

“When I was a kid, there was a product called Shoe Glue (plastic stuff you could patch up shoes with.) No one advertised it as, ‘Be a citizen cobbler.’ That’s a crazy connotation from institutions not relevant to people’s lives. Citizen journalism is a misnomer to most if thought about like that.”

To them, it is about the public engaging as a group with the news. To make it more likely that a greater mass gets and stays engaged, this means keeping the means of participation relatively simple. [Details: p32-34 Barriers to Contributing: Reasons for Not Writing Content or Posting Comments]

The people who visit and keep coming back to these collaborative news sites do see more than hype. They also see forms of involvement and impact beyond the dynamics expressed in the three anecdotes at the beginning of this paper.

Current trends including the increasing accessibility of media production and publishing tools, along with the growing overload of information, suggests a need and opportunity for collaborative news models as convening aggregators and organizers. However, this paper was not intended as a cheerleading session about any inevitable revolution. The goal was to outline how one corner of news creation and flow has (is perceived to have) changed. Aside from a very real question of whether these sites will steam forward or sputter, there are also legitimate concerns about potentially darker implications. The existence of a digital divide becomes even more worrisome and counters the supposition of any full democratization and expansion of news reach. Similarly, a system that only highlights certain voices can lead merely to a new political elite online. There is also the less decidedly dark, but definitely different content that may flood this space. As much as technology can highlight portions of the long tail in relevant news and related conversation within the public, the barriers to entry are also lowered for the world of commercial agents to make the majority of the noise. This brief paragraph only begins to peel back the onion of darker case scenarios. At the same time, it is also fair to say that only the tip of the iceberg of overall scenarios has been revealed. The potential for greater integration of mobile devices promises that these models will morph and that even more interesting collaborative news models will emerge. Thus in this continual evolution, we circle back to the question of what can be understood so far – what has the nature of group engagement with the news looked like so far in this corner of change.

As mentioned earlier, how much these collaborative news websites truly become a paradigm shift in changing the role of people from that of a spectator, and the way people engage as a group with the news, depends in large part on the design features. [Details: p44-47 What is Natural and What can be Built, and p12-16 Features Structuring Participation, Production, and Community.] There is still much room for improvement (most noticeably in moderating the noise and connecting the conversations), but there is already a basic infrastructure at play that appears significantly different from the We Media of the pamphlet and even USENET days.

While community was not necessarily what people came to these sites seeking, community is an intrinsic part of the equation, and the basis for preceding these websites with the adjective collaborative. To quickly refresh the question, does any of this matter? We can say “yes” because they have the potential to be faster, more comprehensive in uniquely aggregated scope, and deeper in sustained discussion. But, there is also a “yes” for another big reason, perhaps best reflected in one last short anecdote. From Slashdot:

Kathleen Fent Read This Story

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thu Feb 14, '02 10:25 AM

from the typed-with-one-pair-of-sweating-palms dept.

Editorial

Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially embarassing way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers was as good a way as any. I love you more then I can describe within the limits of this tiny little story. We've been together for many years now, and I've known for most of that time that I wanted to spend my life with you. Enough rambling. Will you marry me? Update 15 minutes 30 seconds later: Subj: "Yes", message body: "Dork. You made me cry. :)" Hazah! I'm getting married! :)[gg]

This post received 2,133 comments. While you may see wedding announcements on the Sunday New York Times, it will be a long time to the day you see a real time proposal hit its pages. However, the point of this illustration is not about speed. The point is about the extent of loyalty and engagement with the website and its news. At a time when the public is said to be disengaging from the news, these websites seem to have made news a personal and communal experience that is relevant to their lives. Thus if form determines function (in this case the nature of information, conversation, and community) society should care for whose interest and purpose these websites evolve.

APPENDIX

Exhibit A: Survey Design Details

The time period of data collection varied among sites depending on logistics. Roughly, all surveys were open from early February through late March 2006. The site-specific surveys were identical to the general survey aside from the first question and specific name references instead of “the website” in questions #1, 4, 5, 7, and 8. The general survey was open for a shorter duration from March 15 to March 17, 2006, closed after overwhelming response.

N=3,167

Sample of online survey

1. Introduction

Welcome! Blogs, Wikis, Flickr, RSS... the list keeps growing of technology and innovations that help people share their voices and knowledge. In particular, emerging collaborative news sites such as Slashdot, Global Voices, Wikinews, OhMyNews, Digg, among many others, are leveraging these tools to enable and engage people in creating, discussing, and sharing news content. This has sparked both enthusiam and controversy.

I'm a graduate student in the Kennedy School at Harvard. This short, anonymous, 5-minute survey is part of a research project that seeks to get a better understanding of why people use -- and how they value -- these collaborative news sites. The eventual study (to be published in late April) will hopefully be interesting for readers/producers/participants like you.

Next >>

2. Questions

1. Which collaborative news site do you visit?

(Base all subsequent questions/answers off the site you choose. If you visit more than one site, chose the website you visit most frequently.)

Kuro5hin

Digg

Wikinews

OhMyNews

Slashdot

Global Voices

MetaFilter

Other (please specify)

2. What usually brings you to the website?

Web search result

Outside website link

Online news article link

Check website regularly

Word of mouth

Other (please specify)

3. Do you usually enter through the "homepage"?

Yes

4. When you enter the site, which most accurately describes your experience? (Can check more than one)

Read for articles on a specific country or geographic region

Read for articles on a specific issue/topic

Browse around (not seeking specific information)

Read the featured or latest stories

Read for particular members' articles

Other (please specify)

5. What do you primarily use the website for? (Can check more than one)

Primary source of information/news I can't get elsewhere

Supplemental information on news first learned elsewhere

Research tool for professional or academic purpose

Personal interest/ entertainment

Tool for reporting news and information I learn/discover

Tool for connecting to people with similar concerns

Other (please specify)

6. What do you find most valuable about the website? (Rank among these attributes from 1= most valuable to 7 = less valuable. If you do not find the attribute valuable, do not include it in the rank. For example rank from 1 to 5 instead. Please do not give attributes the same rank -- e.g. multiple 2s and 3s.)

Public/Citizen first person perspectives

Outside of mainstream or under-covered information

Summary of what various voices are saying

Aggregation of various voices on one site

Ability to communicate with reporters and editors

A community to facilitate becoming more involved in an issue

Ability to report information I learn/discover

7. How would you rank its information credibility next to mainstream news media?

Less credible

The same

More credible

8. How would you rate each website's interface -- display and organization / ease of finding relevant news? (1=good, 2=fair, 3=poor)

Collaborative News Website

Traditional Newspapers (Online Interface)

News Section of Search Engines (Yahoo, Google)

9. How do you participate on the website?

Yes No

Read articles

Read comments

Post comments on articles

Flag/Tag/Rate content or users

Write articles/content

Edit articles/content

Read/post/comment on any discussion of site's development

10. If you do not participate in writing content or posting comments, what is the reason? (One or two sentence answer)

11. Based on your experience on the website have you...

Yes No

Joined an online group to learn more or take further action on an issue

Joined an off-line group to learn more or take further action on an issue

Emailed/become online acquaintances with other members of the site

Engaged offline with members you meet on the website

Taken further interest in an issue

12. How often do you visit the website?

Daily

Once a week

Once every two weeks

Once a month

Rarely

Other (please specify)

13. What is your age?

0-21

22-34

35-55

55+

14. What is your gender?

Male Female

<< Prev Next >>

3. Additional Questions - Skip to End (Part 4) if not a Writer/Commenter/Editor on the website

15. What is your primary motivation for writing and/or editing articles on the website? (Can check more than one.)

Interest in pursuing journalism

Want to share knowledge / area of expertise

Professional with first-hand knowledge that can enhance public information about current issues

To find and connect to others with similar interests

To further action/attention on an important issue or cause

Other (please specify)

16. What is your predominant sources of information for the articles published?

News aggregators

Individual blogs

Mainstream news

First hand information

Other (please specify)

17. In your opinion, what have been the most significant problems the site/users have experienced? (1-2 sentence answer)

18. In your opinion, what is the biggest strength of this site over traditional news media? (1-2 sentences)

<< Prev Next >>

19. Feel free to add any comments

(Please include your email if you would like a response)

<< Prev Done >>

[b] According to Alexa the page hits are actually 50% of Google’s, but it is still one of the top 10 websites.

[c] “The observation of the output gates of news publications and other sources, in order to identify important material as it becomes available” (Gatewatching, p17)

[d] They point to blogs hosted on external sites.

[e] There is a Global Voices wiki where anyone can propose blogs (categorized by country) to source from, but there is not a facilitated way to “submit” particular stories on the main website. Each editor has their own methods for aggregating regional blogs.

[f] Basically posting good comments gives a person better Karma. Karma puts one in the pool to moderate (limited to 3 days). Moderation, in turn, determines the prominence of comments posted. For detail see Slashdot’s “FAQs, Comment and Moderation.” http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm700

[g] For Metafilter after a one-week waiting period

[h] See Part II, Survey discussion for more detail

[i] Most members do not choose to leave IM/email or other contact information

[j] Informal analysis of list (All Users) on http://www.digg.com/topusers March to April 2006

[k] Site scale matters in this picture. Larger communities, such as Slashdot, run smoothly with only 5% of their community contributing extensively in every meaning of the term.

[l] Deviating slightly from pure volunteer-based participation, sites such as OhmyNews and Newsvine have used financial incentives, payment sharing, to stimulate successful citizen-written contributions

[m] See Appendix, Exhibit B for rough format analysis example

[n] The time period of data collection varied among sites depending on logistics. Roughly, all surveys were open from early February through late March 2006.

[o] Contained the same questions as the tailored surveys with the addition of an initial question asking respondents to choose a particular website.

[r] 37.9% of Digg males surveyed were 0-21, compared to 29.4% Digg female, however the difference is not significant at a 95% C.I.

[s] The number of Slashdot subscribers who contribute to posting articles/comments is roughly 85%, perhaps indicating that a sense of community with the site can potentially impact behavior. (Source: email exchange from Rob Malda, via Jeffrey Bates)

[t] The difference in editing rates was not statistically significant

[u] The differences were only significant for posting comments if Digg men were removed

[v] RSS was identified by respondents in the “Other (please specify)” box. Given that RSS was not an answer choice, it is unknown how dramatically its placement as an answer choice option would have affected those who responded “Check website regularly.”

[w] Granted tech news on the web does seem to be of more primary news value. Notably, what appeared to be gender differences in value as use for primary information was not significant once filtered for news category

[x] Consistent with their stated-use as more a supplemental than primary information source, for hyper local sites, this attribute was not ranked significantly higher than the next category of attributes.

[y] Differences between these three attributes not statistically significant at 95% level.

[z] Differences between these two attributes not statistically significant at 95% level.

[bb] Within this group 83% flag/tag/rate, 30% edit, and 62% contribute to discussion of the site’s development

[cc] More detail on how site features likely contribute to this difference in the discussion section

[dd] Although this group does not write articles/content they still contribute in other ways such as posting comments

[ee] At a more detailed level, site statistics on what subjects/news are most heavily posted and/or discussed could provide interesting implications on how this sort of engagement might be more successfully tied to political action, social mobilization, or heightened coverage in mainstream media.

[ff] A back of the envelope content analysis of 47 articles over a period of 5 days found per Wikinews article on average 11 links and references to 4 unique news media sources. A detailed breakdown: averages of 3 links to “mainstream” media articles, 0.5 links to “Indy” media, 6.7 links to wikipedia, 0.2 links to government, 0.1 links to personal blogs, and 0.6 links to others such as nonprofits organizations. These statistics likely change over time and vary by websites, but strongly suggest that dismissing the future of participatory news as merely opinion aggregating would be incorrect.

[gg] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/14/143254

	Slashdot	Digg	OMN	Global Voices	Greensboro 101	Newsvine	NowPublic	Metafilter	Wikinews
Submission – Open all				<					+
Submission – Members only	+	+	+		+	+	+	+
Comment posting	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+	+
Selection – by editors	+		+	+	+
Selection – by community		+			<	+	+	+	+
Open editing									+
F/T/R[hh] articles		+	+		+	+			F
F/T/R comments	+	+				+
F/T/R users	<	<				<
License options			+		+		+
Explicit rules	+		+		+	+	+		+
Pay Contributors			+			+

	Slashdot	Digg	OMN	Global Voices	Greensboro 101	Newsvine	NowPublic	Metafilter	Wikinews
Personal Profiles	+	+				+	+	+	+
Blog Hosting, Directory or RSS Syndication			+	+	+		+
Association Features (friends&foes)	+	+					+
Chat areas				<		+		+	+
Site wiki				+					+
Site blog		+				+		+
Training			+
Discussion area					+			+	+
Conversation Tracking		<				+
Meetups					+
Listserve				+					+
Feeds	+	+		+		+	+

Table of Contents

An Introduction

Anecdote One: “Every Citizen Is A Reporter”

Defining Collaborative News Models

Reassessing What is “News”

Some Ideas Borrowed

An Expanded Framework

Editor-Based Models

Community-Based Models

Tradeoffs

Features Structuring Community

Site-Based features

Methodology

Summary of Survey Results

Who Are We Talking About: Some Demographics

How Committed Are They: Some Notes in Usage Behavior

How Do They Seek

Why Do They Seek Here: Primary Uses

Trading Off: What Do Users Most Value

Credibility

On Aesthetics

Do They Make Friends: To What Extent A Politicizing Force

Motivations for Actively Contributing to Content

Sources of Information

Barriers to Contributing: Reasons for Not Writing Content or Posting Comments

What Is their Perception of the Challenges

Perceived Strengths over MSM

Short (and discussion focused) by Many vs. Long (and production focused) by Fewer

Direct vs. Indirect Connecting Spaces

Set vs. Tagged Categories

Seen vs. Unseen conversations

Creating any paradigm shifts

Their Side of the Story: Summarizing

Exhibit A: Survey Design Details

Sample of online survey

Exhibit B: Sample - Identifying Structural Features

Interviews

References