Ethical Issues in Participatory Journalism

1
Ethical Issues in Participatory Journalism

• International Seminar
• Towards Participatory Journalism
• University of Tampere
• April 13, 2007
• Jane B. Singer
• U of Central Lancashire / U of Iowa

2
Shifting Environment

• Journalists ethics inform not just the way they
  do their jobs but also the way they conceptualize
  what that job is.
• As we move from a linear delivery system to a
  non-linear network, the conceptualization is
  shifting. In a network
• All messages are connected.
• All messengers also are connected, and the roles
  of producer and consumer are interchangeable.
  
• Communication roles are fluid and broadly
  defined.

3
Gatekeeping Norms

• Journalistic ethics have been codified in an
  environment in which the journalist served as (as
  saw himself or herself as) a gatekeeper.
• Norms are designed to establish and maintain
  trust in the person and/or institution guarding
  the gate.
• Journalists see the role (and therefore
  themselves) as central to democracy as the
  providers of information that citizens need to be
  free and self-governing (Kovach Rosenstiel,
  2001).
• Without the ethical journalist, in this view,
  democracy is ill-served because MISinformation or
  DISinformation can and will pass through the
  gate.

4
Relationships Norms

• In a network, the gatekeeping role is at best
  seriously diminished if not gone altogether.
• Information flows around the journalist as well
  as through him or her.
• The ethical precepts may stay the same.
• But the rationale behind them changes to one
  based on relationships (Nel, Ward Rawlinson,
  2007).

5
Same principles, new rationale

• So for instance
• Truth-telling remains vital but because it is
  necessary for maintaining a relationship based on
  trust (Bok, 1978) rather than because without the
  journalists, the public will not get the truth at
  all.
• Fairness is less about the power inherent in the
  process of vetting information than about the
  golden rule of human relationships.

6
Three As

• Examples of ethical precepts (Hayes, Singer
  Ceppos, forthcoming) that remain important as the
  rationale behind them changes include
• Authenticity (credibility).
• Accountability (responsibility).
• Autonomy (independence).

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Authenticity

• In a traditional media environment, the
  institution authenticates its employees
  products and practices. In a networked
  environment, that process may or may not take
  place.
• Breaking news.
• User-generated content.
• Content also is commonly disaggregated from its
  institutional location. The route to authenticity
  increasingly rests on the individual (a more
  ethically defensible stance).

8
Accountability

• The zeitgeist of the network favors
  transparency a difficult norm for
  journalists, who traditionally have asked for
  public trust based on a promise that they are, in
  fact, behaving ethically. Honest!
• The online ethic of relationships encourages
• Evidentiary support for information.
• Personal disclosure. For instance, j-blogs
• Explain news judgment and decisions.
• Humanize the news-gathering process.

9
Autonomy

• Oversight of professional behavior has become a
  team sport, and journalists no longer control who
  gets to play (Singer, 2007). There are many
  watchdogs of the watchdogs.
• In an open marketplace of ideas
• Journalists are not the only ones who get a say
  in which information is credible and which is
  not.
• The dissemination of truth is collective and
  collaborative.
• Rigid adherence to autonomy can devolve into
  isolation which in a network equates to
  irrelevance.

10
Participatory journalism ethics

• Do the ethical precepts change in a networked
  environment? I dont think so.
• But the rationale behind them does.
• Such normative concepts as authenticity,
  accountability and autonomy need to be
  reconceptualized in terms of relationships rather
  than as justifications for a traditional, and
  rapidly fading, gatekeeping role.

11
Thanks for listening!

• What do you think ?