Agenda Building in the Age of Online Audience Feedback

A thesis submitted to the College of Communication and Information of Kent State

University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

by

Patrick R. Mayock

May 2012

Thesis written by

Patrick R. Mayock

B.A., Ohio University, 2007

M.A., Kent State University, 2012

Approved by

______Danielle Coombs, Ph.D., Co-Advisor

______Robert Batchelor, Ph.D., Co-Advisor

______Jeff Fruit, Director, School of Journalism and Mass Communication

______Stanley T. Wearden, Ph.D., Dean, College of Communication and Information

Table of Contents

Page

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE...... 3 Agenda Setting...... 3 Agenda Setting Online ...... 9 Audience Interaction ...... 11

III. RESEARCH QUESTIONS...... 17

IV. METHODOLOGY ...... 19

V. RESULTS...... 22 Most-Considered Feedback Channels...... 22 Audiences’ Impact on Existing Reportage Plans...... 28 Audience Feedback and New Article Ideas...... 31

VI. DISCUSSION...... 34

APPENDICES A. Questionnaire...... 43 B. Feedback Table ...... 44

REFERENCES...... 45

iii

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my patient wife, Emily, who knew precisely when to offer encouragement, empathy or a swift kick in the butt as the weeks of research and revisions dragged into months. Thanks also to my loving parents who never waned in their support and enthusiasm. And finally, I must recognize an exceptionally accommodating team of advisors who gave me the length on my leash when I needed it and tugged me back in just in time to get me across the finish line. I couldn’t have done it without any of you.

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Chapter I

Introduction

CNN’s decision to lay off approximately 50 employees in December 2011 might have come as a shock to some of the staffers working within the cable giant’s newsroom, but the move seemed hardly out of the ordinary within the context of the broader media industry marred by downsizing and budget cutbacks. More surprising, however, was the rationale delivered by Jack Womack, CNN’s senior vice president of domestic news operations. Within a written correspondence highlighting operational inefficiencies and staff redundancies one would expect in similar corporate memos, Womack also cited user-generated content and social media, as well as CNN iReporters as contributing factors.

That the common citizen, armed with nothing more than jerky smartphone cameras and high-speed Internet access, could so starkly impact the landscape of a venerable legacy newsroom is yet another chapter in the rapidly expanding introduction to participatory journalism in the online age. Though the Web is now a mature news channel, participatory journalism remains a new phenomenon. And while researchers have examined the impact the media have on their audiences, few have focused on how audience interaction is shaping the press in return.

This thesis adds to the scholarly literature by examining at least a part of that audience/press interaction: the consequences of online audience feedback on the agenda- building stage of the newsgathering process. My work in this new area borrows heavily from past agenda-setting research, which concludes rather definitively that the press not only tells the public what to think about a topic, but also how to think about it.

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Furthermore, my research adds to the scholarly work on the related concept of agenda building, which examines how the media construct that agenda and what sources influence the process.

My specific focus analyzes how emerging online audience feedback channels, such as article comments, Twitter feeds, and Facebook pages, influence how journalists collect the news and form their agenda. The goal is to provide some clarity surrounding the role of user-generated content in the newsroom, leaving journalists and their editors in a better position to navigate this increasingly complex space.

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Chapter II

Review of Related Literature

Agenda Setting

Some 40 years before the term “agenda setting” was even introduced into the vernacular, Lippmann (1922) laid the groundwork for the theory in his groundbreaking book Public Opinion. In the seminal work, the American-born intellectual argued the real world was too big and complex for people to understand in its entirety. Common citizens, armed with insufficient time, energy, and capabilities, must rely on interpretation via

“pictures” in their heads (p. 16).

While man can construct those “simpler models” for himself, Cohen, in The Press and Foreign Policy (1963) claimed that the task is better left to the press. His work advanced Lippmann’s ideas and, as a result, is largely credited with formalizing the theory of agenda setting—even though its author did not specifically use the term. Cohen explained:

The press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. (p. 13)

First-level agenda setting.

Having been refined into a legitimate theoretical framework—albeit one without a name or label—agenda setting faced the scrutiny of empirical research. McCombs and

Shaw (1972) introduced the term in their groundbreaking study that investigated the role of media coverage in shaping the public’s attitudes and agendas during elections.

During the September and October preceding the 1968 president election,

McCombs and Shaw asked 100 undecided voters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina—those

4 deemed the most open or susceptible to campaign information—to outline “the key issues as he (sic) saw them, regardless of what the candidates might be saying at the moment”

(1972, p. 178). Concurrently, the authors analyzed select media outlets serving the city to search for correlations between political coverage of the campaigns and what the 100 interview subjects found most important. Their findings underscored Cohen’s earlier claims of the media’s stunning influence in shaping the pictures that dominated public consciousness:

The media appear to have exerted a considerable impact on voters’ judgments of what they considered the major issues of the campaign. … In short, the data suggest a very strong relationship between the emphasis placed on different campaign issues by the media (reflecting to a considerable degree the emphasis by candidates) and the judgments of voters as to the salience and importance of various campaign topics. (p. 180-181)

After observing high correlations between the media agenda and public agenda,

McCombs and Shaw set out to establish time order, which was necessary for determining the causal influence of the media agenda. The duo designed a longitudinal study in

Charlotte, North Carolina, during the following presidential campaign, which again found a correlation from the newspaper agenda to the later public agenda (McCombs, 1977).

Shaw and McCombs (1977) expounded on the findings in The Emergence of

American Political Issues, “which gave them enough space to develop agenda setting from a wildly successful hypothesis into a developing theory” (Davie & Maher, 2006).

Subsequent studies from other researchers confirmed the findings. Iyengar and Behr

(1985), for example, found that the public agenda of television viewers over a seven-year span correlated closely to that of the media agenda. A 33-week study from Salwen (1986) that analyzed the influence of three Michigan newspapers on the public agenda found that the press’s ongoing coverage of an issue transmitted a message of legitimacy to the

5 public. Iyengar and Kinder (1987) followed up on Iyengar’s earlier studies of television influence by testing whether issues that receive prominent attention on national news become what the viewing public considers the nation’s most important problems. Their findings corroborated the hypothesis: “Americans’ view of their society and nation are powerfully shaped by the stories that appear on the evening news” (p. 112).

Second-level agenda setting.

The next wave of agenda-setting research kicked off with the so-called “three- site study,” a longitudinal analysis that measured the effects of the media agenda during the 1976 election campaign in three U.S. cities (Weaver, Graber, McCombs, & Eyal,

1981). The report confirmed results from previous studies on such contingent factors as need for orientation (whether an issue is relevant and/or uncertainty) and obtrusiveness

(whether the public has direct contact or personal experience with an issue) (Zucker,

1978). More importantly, it also introduced the idea of objects (topic or issue) and attributes of that object:

The three-site study found that panelists were able to rate the two presidential candidates, Ford and Carter, along a wide range of image attributes: man of principles, inspires confidence, compassionate, forthright, versatile, and so forth. The salience of the attributes in news messages transferred to the public, establishing an agenda-setting effect for candidate attributes. (Davie & Maher, p. 361)

Put another way, the media choose which objects, or topics, to cover, and in doing so highlight certain attributes of that object. By covering some attributes prominently while omitting others, the media define an agenda of attributes that impacts the salience of those attributes on the public agenda.

The object-attribute idea proved essential when McCombs (1992) broadened the theory of agenda setting to relate it to framing research. This next step was in response to

6 the critiques of Kosicki (1993), who pointed out that agenda-setting theory typically

“strips away almost everything worth knowing about how the media cover an issue and leaves only the shell of the topic” (p. 112). In other words, agenda setting could explain how extensive coverage of Topic A would thus increase the salience of Topic A, but so what? Media coverage is not characterized just by how much a given issue is covered but rather by the manner in which it is covered. By drawing in ideas of framing, McCombs moved from the first level of agenda setting (i.e. the media tell the public what to think about) to the second level. He explained:

Agenda setting is about more than issue or object salience. The news not only tells us what to think about; it also tells us how to think about it. Both the selection of topics for the news agenda and the selection of frames for stories about those topics are powerful agenda setting roles and awesome ethical responsibilities. (p. 820–821)

The agenda of attributes and framing became conceptually equivalent. “Frames and attributes can be used interchangeably when we are dealing with the second level of agenda setting” (Ghanem, 1997, p. 7).

First-level agenda building.

Gandy (1982) critiqued agenda-setting research in Beyond Agenda-Setting, suggesting a clear theoretical weakness: “I suggest that we have to go beyond agenda- setting to determine who sets the media agenda, how and for what purposes it is set, and with what impact on the distribution of power and values in society” (p. 7). McCombs responded to the charge in a 1992 article observing the 20-year anniversary of the Chapel

Hill study. The author described the first three phases in the evolution of agenda setting, which took the media agenda as a given: (a) original hypothesis, transfer of issue salience

7 from the media to the public; (b) contingent conditions; (c) agenda of attributes. He then introduced a fourth: (d) investigations of who sets the media agenda.

The fourth phase “provided a theoretical bridge from previous agenda-setting studies to the ample body of research in media sociology” (Davie & Maher, 2006) and linked agenda setting to the theory of agenda building (Cobb & Elder, 1971). Agenda- setting theory examines the process of forming the public agenda, while agenda-building theory, which is derived from policy-agenda research, examines the process of forming the media agenda. Empirical studies usually concentrate on two major independent variables affecting the media agenda: real-world issues and events, and political actors, such as political parties or candidates. “Most agenda-building studies belong to the first group, and many of those studies find a rather low correlation between real-world indicators and media agenda” (Sheafer & Weimann, 2005. p. 349).

Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw (2004) identified three major sources that exert an influence on the media agenda: (a) influential news sources; (b) other elite media sources

(intermedia agenda setting); and (c) social norms and traditions of journalism.

Research examining influential news sources most commonly studied the president and other political actors, because they, more so than other individuals,

“subsidize the efforts of news organizations to cover the news by providing substantial amounts of information, frequently in the form of press or video releases (Weaver,

McCombs, Shaw, 2004). Turk (1986), for example, showed that state government news releases can increase the public salience of state agencies in the media agenda. Kaid

(1976) found that newspapers incorporated candidate news releases exactly as they were disseminated. Fahmy, Wanta, Johnson, and Zhang (2011) found evidence of a linear

8 model of agenda building wherein former President George W. Bush influenced subsequent media coverage of the Iraq War. In their study of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Kim, Xiang, and Kiousis (2011) observed a correlation between the two major candidates’ speeches, press release and global media coverage.

Intermedia agenda setting examines the process by which elite media sources influence other media sources. Reese and Danielian (1989), for example, argued the media’s coverage of the purported cocaine scare in the mid 1980s had more to do with intermedia agenda setting than with real-world indicators or news events. Golan (2006) found significant intermedia agenda setting influence of elite, legacy players like the New

York Times over three national American evening newscasts. McCombs (2005) summarized the effects:

Because journalists routinely look over their shoulders to validate their sense of news by observing the work of their colleagues, especially the work of elite members of the press, such as the New York Times, Washington Post and national television networks, this stage includes intermedia agenda setting, the influence of the news media on each other. As a result of this elite leadership and the pervasive norms of professional journalism, among other factors, the news agenda, as we already have noted, is highly homogeneous across all the news media. (p. 549)

The third source in agenda building comprises social norms and journalistic tradition. The first component, social norms, stems from the notion that “there is a strong impulse to affiliate with others in groups” (Weaver, McCombs, Shaw, 2004). In this context, the media agenda is constructed as a reaction to the needs of various groups—a theoretical elaboration of the concept of need for orientation (Weaver, 1977).

The second key component, journalism tradition, is more abstract in practice—an

“invisible hand” of news judgment, often operationalized through ethical codes and newsroom creeds, that guides good practice. Or, as Bennett (2004) outlined, “The

9 personal news values of the individual journalists along the line reflect strong and widely shared professional norms” (p. 297). Numerous academics and professional journalists have attempted to describe this abstract concept (Fowler, 1991; Hall, 1978; Westerstahl and Johansson, 1994; as cited in MacGregor, 2007). Tunstall, for example, (1971) takes a typical approach:

News organisation (sic) executives and specialist correspondents all operate within what they regard as some set of news values which are in general fairly vague, but which in the individual journalist’s specific work situation are more clear-cut . . . These news values constitute only general guidelines; there is always some discretion. (p. 263)

Second-level agenda building.

Like agenda setting, evidence exists within the study of agenda building for influence at a second level—that is, of a source’s ability to influence not just what the media cover but rather how they cover it. Wirth et al (2010), for example, found a transfer of salience of issue attributes from campaigners to the news media. The same researchers also point to the works of Huckins (1999), Joengsub (2006), Sweetser, Golan and Wanta (2008) and Tan and Weaver (2007), who found second-level effects in both traditional news outlets as well as online. Kiousis, Soo-Yeon, McDewitt, and Ostrowksi

(2009) studied the agenda-building influence of political news releases versus political advertisements and found the latter were somewhat more consequential in forming the attribute agenda at the second level.

Agenda Setting Online

Agenda setting emerged in an era where traditional news sources (e.g. newspapers, television) comprised the lion’s share of audience attention. The media landscape has changed dramatically since then, most notably with the introduction of the

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Internet. Though the long-term economic consequences remain uncertain, the Pew

Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s The State of the News Media

2012 reports that the digital news sphere is well-established and growing. According to a

December 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 40% of

Americans get most of their national and international news from the Internet; less than

20% said the same for newspapers. Only television remains more popular; 60% of

Americans reported getting most national and international news from television.

(Olmstead, Sasseen, Mitchell & Rosenstiel, 2012).

The rapid emergence of the online medium in the traditional journalism landscape has yielded a fair amount of research on agenda-setting and agenda-building in the digital realm—most of which seem to support the effects observed in newspaper and television.

Roberts, Wanta, and Dzwo (2002), for instance, found that media coverage of issues from five news outlets exhibited strong correlations with discussions on electronic bulletin boards. Althaus and Tewksbury (2002) examined agenda-setting effects for both the print and online version of the New York Times and found that readers subjected to either medium adjust their agendas after only five days, although to different degrees. And

Groshek (2008) found that online versions from CNN and CNN International were

“remarkably consistent in telling audiences in America and abroad what to think about”

(p. 52).

Audience fragmentation.

Despite the above evidence, the principles of agenda setting cannot be transferred to the online space carte blanche. There are clear differences between the “traditional” and “new” media landscapes, most notably the rise of fragmented media outlets and the

11 niche audiences that follow them. McCombs (2005) summed up the state of the industry, saying:

Consequently, some social observers predict the end of agenda setting as audiences fragment and virtually everyone has a unique external media agenda that is a highly individualized composite constructed from this vast wealth of online news and information. The result of these idiosyncratic personal agendas, continues the argument, will be a public agenda characterized by considerable diversity and the scattering of public attention. (p. 544)

Tewksbury (2005), for instance, found evidence of “outlet specialization”—the extent to which websites attract distinct audiences who visit them for specific content— and the issues sought by readers of a nationally representative panel of Internet users.

Perhaps the most notable example comes via online partisan website and blogs, in which readers of a specific political affiliation are more likely to visit a partisan website or blog with a matching political affiliation. Baum and Groeling (2008) found a high degree of partisan filtering among the left-leaning DailyKos.com and the right-leaning

FreeRepublic.com and FoxNews.com.

Yet despite evidence of fragmentation, the original assertion of homogeneity first observed in the Chapel Hill study largely holds true. Online news sources, whether legacy outlets or new media upstart, typically cover the same topics and issues—usually initiated by the more venerable legacy players. Several studies (Hamilton, 2004; Singer,

2005; Reese, Rufigliano, Hyun, & Jeong, 2007; Kelly, 2008; Maier, 2010) found a high incidence of blog coverage corresponding or hyperlinking to that of online outlets run by legacy news media. A Pew Research study found that “Bloggers almost always linked to legacy outlets for their information” to the tune of 99% (Pew Research Center, 2010).

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Audience Interaction

The rise of the Internet has done more than just fragment the traditional news landscape. It also has allowed for more audience interaction, both as a reaction to and, in some cases, a precursor to the media agenda. Research dedicated to either phenomenon has attempted to frame the function of journalism within several models, including traditional, public, interactive, participatory, or citizen (Nip, 2006). Of those, the public and participatory models are most pertinent to this analysis.

Public journalism “aims to engage people as citizens in the news-making process and the use of news” (Nip, 2006, p. 216). The practice emerged during the “civic turn” of journalism that emerged out of criticism of the media’s coverage of the 1988 U.S. presidential election, during which reporting concentrated on competition and poll results rather than key issues (Ruusunoksa, 2006). Journalists determined that they had forgotten the public frequently throughout the course of the campaign and set out to remedy matters through a series of practical experiments in which they tapped into the concerns of the community through town hall meetings, citizen panels, and polls (Rosen, 2000;

Nip, 2006; Ruusunoksa, 2006).

The movement received a significant amount of criticism surrounding: the role of the journalist (Hardt 2000; Haas and Steiner 2003, as cited in Ruusunoksa, 2006); the content of stories (Davis, 2000); a heavy dependence on experiments and projects

(Glasser 2000, as cited in Ruusunoksa, 2006); and, most notably, a lack of relevance in the digital age. Witt (2004), for instance, argued that old public journalism has morphed into public’s journalism, in which Web-based platforms and communication channels, such as blogs, enable audiences to participate in the news-making process.

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As a result, many scholars and commentators have focused on the idea of

“participatory journalism,” a broad term that is generally understood as the increasing amount and various ways in which an audience actively contributes to journalism.

Examples include submitting text messages, images, and footage to journalists and newsrooms, as well as commenting on news articles or recommending it to others (Bruns,

2005; Domingo et al, 2008). Oftentimes the concept is framed as a transition from Web

1.0, where media act publishers that transmit their agenda to the public online, to Web

2.0, where the participatory potential of the Internet more fully is exploited (Holt and

Karlsson, 2011).

Nip (2006) is careful to distinguish between participatory journalism and citizen journalism. The former delivers content, which is produced by both professional journalists and lay contributors, in a news product produced, published and marketed by professionals. Citizen journalism, on the other hand, are those news outlets for which the lay contributor or common “citizen” alone gathers content, produces and publishes the final product.

The related notion of community journalism, which, although abstract, is typically locally oriented and often includes content either produced by or as a result of citizen interaction (Lowrey, Brozana & Mackey, 2008), can fit within either model, depending on the production and packaging of the news content.

Most of the research on participatory journalism has focused on the way in which user-generated content is dealt with in the newsrooms of traditional mass media and the way this material is valued, treated, and presented (Deuze et al, 2007, Domingo et al,

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2008; Rebillard and Touboul, 2010, as cited in Holt and Karlsson, 2011). Not surprisingly:

… new and allegedly participatory arenas do not automatically foster an equal or uncontested discourse but are constrained by the underpinning logic of their context or production. The choices that editors make shape the conditions under which user generated content is produced, the immediate context of publication and the perceived prominence of the published content. (Holt and Karlsson, 2011, p. 32)

Though Holt and Karlsson advocate further research to confirm their findings on a longitudinal basis, their study does suggest a more traditional agenda-setting relationship, in which editors ultimately control published content (i.e. the media agenda) despite the presence of readers (i.e. the public agenda) in the gathering and generation of news. Thus, scholars generally have been critical of media organizations’ attempts to gather feedback and interact with audiences (Dahlgren, 2005; Hacker, 1996; Schultz, 2000; Bruns, 2008).

In short, “opportunities for participation still rest, to a high degree, at the mercy of editors” (Rebillard and Touboul, 2010).

The question regarding whether the public agenda can exert influence over the media agenda within the participatory context is still in its infancy, comprising empirical snippets of insight that make it difficult to draw meaningful, widespread conclusions.

Schultz (2000) analyzed online forums of the New York Times website and found limited interaction among staffers despite the “vivid,” “highly political,” and “energetic” discussions among readers (p. 215). Zhou and Moy (2007) observed a more dynamic, cyclical relationship between the public and press in their study of Chinese media. They found that Chinese news organizations often returned to report on issues of intense online reader discussion, and, at the same time, the most enthusiastically discussed issues were those that received the most media attention.

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Greater strides have been made by MacGregor (2007), who conducted one-on-one interviews with 19 online journalists and/or editors to gauge how tracking data (e.g. page views, time reading particular stories) influences newsroom practices. His findings suggest that tracking data “validates and informs editorial practice as has never been possible before” and “helps shape decisions of both editorial detail and strategy online”

(p. 294). Yet tracking data is by no means a panacea to connect with increasingly fragmented audiences. Editors approach it with caution and “actively resist giving tracking data too much importance” in order to uphold brand values or news values (p.

290).

Martin (2009) moved beyond statistical tracking data and examined how audience feedback from the comments section below online articles shapes editorial practice in the newsroom of the Indianapolis Star newspaper and website. His study revealed a strong, immediate correlation between the media agenda (as measured by content) and the public agenda (as measure by article comments). However, as time went on, those dynamics appeared to reverse. The results, ultimately, were mixed and inconclusive. He explained:

One week, the media appears (sic) to have influence on the public through which issues it made salient early in the week. The early-week media agenda influenced the public agenda closer to the weekend after days of coverage. However, in the second week studied, the public agenda actually showed influence on the media agenda measured a few days later. (p. 27-28)

While the above research provides a good starting point to examine how the public agenda shapes the media agenda in the online space, a consistent shortcoming is the failure to understand the reasoning behind editor decision-making. MacGregor (2007) comes close in his qualitative approach, but his focus on statistical tracking does not address the two-way communication made increasingly available by user message

16 boards, comment sections and more robust, emerging channels like Facebook and

Twitter. Martin (2009), for example, conducted only a “brief qualitative analysis” and found “no overt actions by the Star to explain how it used the feedback commentary” (p.

26). Holt and Karlsson (2011) advocated for further investigation of “the role of editors and the conditions under which editors operate in participatory journalism” (p. 33).

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Chapter III

Research Questions

This study considers how audience interaction (and thus, the public agenda) informs the media agenda. While the literature review provides insight into some of the dynamics therein, more research is needed to investigate the perceptions of editors working in the field. This study attempts to fill that void, which will better enable journalists to understand the extent that audience interaction is even considered, let alone determine its impact on news production and the reasons that shape this relationship.

Given the fast-moving nature of the Internet and the emergence of new channels of audience participation on a frequent basis, these research questions are intended to examine which channels editors prefer and why, and thus the most likely to influence the agenda-setting process in the online newsroom.

Therefore, the research questions of interest are:

RQ1: What types of online audience feedback channels receive the most consideration from online journalists? Why do these channels receive the most consideration?

RQ2: In what ways does audience feedback from these channels alter existing online reportage plans?

If online editors indeed give consideration to audience feedback channels, it is necessary to explore concrete instances of when said feedback influences pre-existing editorial strategies.

RQ3: In what ways does audience feedback create new online reportage plans?

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There is perhaps no greater example of the public setting the media agenda than by planting the seeds of new story ideas. RQ3 question attempts to qualitatively measure how frequently this phenomenon occurs in newsrooms.

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Chapter IV

Methodology

Given the complexity and diversification of the media landscape, as well as the changing habits of consumer media consumption, it is necessary to define the space and the place of online journalism. The Pew Research Center provides a useful breakdown for the “mainstream or establishment daily news media in the United States,” which comprises the following five main sectors: network TV news, newspapers, online news sites, cable news, and radio news (Pew Research Center, 2011). The definition expands upon an earlier—and more limited—framework designed by Tunstall (1971), which split journalism into the sectors of print, broadcast, and magazine. Deuze (1999, p. 141) operationalized online journalism further: “journalism (as in production of digital content, including audio, video and text) as it is produced more or less exclusively for presentation and distribution on the World Wide Web as the graphic interface of the

Internet.”

Research studying agenda setting in the field of online journalism has predominantly used surveys and content analysis for gathering data. More often than not, detailed reasoning for journalists’ perceptions and actions are not available in previous research (MacGregor, 2007).

This study employed qualitative one-on-one, in-depth interviews. Twenty-five editors in senior and mid levels who work at local newspaper websites were targeted.

News websites were considered only if they had an established, reputable, consumer print daily counterpart that covered one of the top 50 metropolitan statistical areas in the

United States. No more than one news outlet was targeted in a given city.

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Editors were targeted if they assigned, edited or otherwise managed the day-to- day flow of content in their organization, or if they assisted in that process. In three instances, those who were initially targeted deferred to a more knowledgeable member of the editorial staff. Twelve editors in senior and mid levels were interviewed via semi- structured telephone interviews conducted over two weeks. Research proceeded until reaching redundancy. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Transcriptions were analyzed to identify relevant emergent themes. Each interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. No adjustments were made for the time-elapse between the interviews, since the short-term timeframe was unlikely to disrupt overall perceptions and approaches to audience feedback and its influence on newsroom practice. (See Appendix A for questionnaire.)

A purposive sampling was used based on qualitative best practices. Targeted participants included those holding senior and mid levels of editorial hierarchies who supervise other journalists or teams, since these individuals held sway regarding decisions that affect reportage plans for the online organization. Not more than one participant was interviewed from the same news organization. The sampling admittedly was not representative of all online journalism in any formal sense, including online-only publications, new blogs and broadcast television online news portals. Sampled editors worked for online news outlets that had a pre-existing, daily print newspaper version.

Generalizations only can apply to the group sampled.

The conceptualization of “audience feedback” differed from outlet to outlet, because not all online news outlets had the same channels and platforms available to collect feedback. Generally speaking, the term was defined within the framework of

21 participatory journalism as the various ways in which an audience actively contributes to journalism by submitting texts, images and film or by interacting with news in various ways, such as by commenting or recommending it to others (Bruns, 2005; Domingo et al,

2008). The only addendum to the above is an emphasis on electronic means of contribution exclusively (i.e. letters to the editor submitted via “snail mail” were not considered).

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Chapter V

Results

The number of feedback channels used by each editor varied from as few as two to as many as nine. Facebook and reader comments were cited in all cases, although the latter often varied in form and function. For example, some editors’ media outlets only allowed article comments in their blog sections, while others required readers to first sign in via Facebook before posting a comment. The majority, however, allowed for posting on any and all articles through an open source format that allowed for both anonymous comments as well as comments attributed to a specific user name.

Most-Considered Feedback Channels

RQ1 asked what types of online audience feedback channels receive the most consideration from online journalists, and further, why these channels receive the most consideration. Editors indentified that Twitter received the most consideration, with seven of 12 editors listing it as their number one (or tied for number one) feedback channel. Article comments were the second most-considered channel, cited by four of 12 editors as their number one (or tied for number one) feedback channel. (See Appendix B.)

Twitter.

When asked why Twitter received the most consideration, most editors highlighted the instantaneous nature of the platform’s 140-character “tweets,” which allowed for 1) the ability to instantaneously monitor both competitors and non- competitors to track news in real time, 2) the ability to engage with readers in real time, including answering questions and reaching out to contacts, and 3) the ability to promote content to increase readership.

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The ability to monitor both competitors and non-competitors to track news in real time on Twitter was deemed as especially important for two reasons. First, it was viewed as a key source of generating new story ideas or news leads. Second, it allowed editors to keep a competitive eye on their competitors so as not to miss a scoop or fall too far behind in the daily news cycle.

Regarding the first reason, numerous editors said they viewed Twitter constantly throughout the day to generate new story ideas. “We’re always looking for tips and stuff in there,” E5 said. “Twitter’s just great for listening. It’s great for eavesdropping on what people are saying out there,” E11 said. Some editors had members of their staff either dedicated to monitoring the channel in general as a key job responsibility or as part of their daily reporting duties covering a certain beat.

Most editors said they used Twitter for uncovering breaking news. “The breaking news team uses Twitter very frequently. They get a stream of tips daily, a couple of times a day—five or more,” E1 said. Several editors shared specific examples of times their respective editorial staffs uncovered breaking news via updates:

One that comes to mind is a story that we had, it was this past summer, where there was a shooting in (the park), and everybody was reporting how this was happening, it was a gang activity, somebody was shot. (We) found out … that it happened on Twitter. (E2)

For example, on the Occupy (Wall Street) protests, when the police started reading them they put together a Twitter feed that searched (for protests via an “occupy” hashtag). It pulled in these moment-by-moment accounts of people we didn’t know and people we can’t vouch for, but at the same time it’s information that we might want to share with our readers. (E11)

A handful of respondents highlighted Twitter as a viable platform for tracking broader trends in addition to breaking news. E4 explained:

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I think that, more than story ideas, it does give us topic ideas. You kind of look at things that are trending sometimes on Twitter, and you can kind of look at that and go, ‘This seems to be really gaining. This seems to be really gaining traction as the days going forward. Maybe we ought to consider something on this.’

The second reason why respondents said the ability to monitor news on Twitter was important had to do more with competition—or rather, competitive safeguards. By tracking the headlines and news leads that were being tweeted by rival media outlets, editors said they could adapt their coverage plans accordingly so as not to miss a scoop or fall too far behind in the daily news cycle. “We follow all the news organizations in (our city) so we can kind of monitor if they have broken something before we did,” E5 said.

Other editors shared similar accounts:

I am also constantly watching that to make sure we’re not missing something, especially local stories. I make sure that we follow as many of our local media outlets and individuals as we can just so that we are covered. I think a lot of the reporters in the newsroom do that as well. (E6)

I also follow the main regional and the main news organizations, because even if we are covering (our city), I also do want my readers to be informed on Twitter about the most important topics and the most important news of the day no matter if its international or national news. (E7)

I have a Twitter dashboard set up where I listen to any reference to (our paper), where I follow all of the other news sources in town and that sort of thing. … Twitter is really a helpful way to gather that sort of information. (E11)

In addition to tracking news, several editors said they gave Twitter the most consideration of all audience feedback channels because it allowed them to engage with readers and followers almost instantly on a range of topics. As E1 explained, “Our readers now know that when they tweet the question or tip that they will very quickly get a response back, and that has kind of grown upon itself.”

Several editors said they used Twitter to promote that back-and-forth exchange as a means of fostering a more loyal and engaged readership. E10 pointed to a particular

25 savvy journalist on his staff who had generated a tremendous following on Twitter by hosting live question-and-answer sessions. Others described their staffs’ use of Twitter to provide requested information to readers:

It is not uncommon that someone will give us a tip, and we will tweet back, ‘We’re looking into the story,’ or, ‘We’ve got a reporter on the scene,’ and then we will let them know that we are working on a story, and then we will come back and give them a link to the story. (E1)

Another reason is to make sure that those who are looking for information (or have a question) and we can provide that information … that we get back to them. It’s making sure that our audience is satisfied. (E7)

E8 said his staff used Twitter to keep their fingers on the pulse of their readership by monitoring tweets that included the news outlet’s hashtag or doing more general searches to see what their followers were tweeting about.

A far more prevalent and proactive method of audience engagement via Twitter was “crowd sourcing,” a method in which journalists tweet a question or query asking for sources to share their experiences. As E5 explained:

Especially in social media, this probably happens more on Twitter than anything, where we’ll throw out a request: ‘Are you inside the perimeter of this fire?’ ‘Has anybody had to return a big-screen TV recently?’ Those kinds of things.

Crowd sourcing as a news gathering tactic certainly was not limited to Twitter and was explored more in response to the second research question.

The third reason why editors gave the most consideration to Twitter among all audience feedback channels was because it provided another vehicle to promote and distribute content, thus transferring salience from their agenda to the public. In some cases, editors said they used Twitter to distribute news as it was happening. “We have our routine when the story breaks at a very modest threshold that we should tweet it out,” E8 said, adding:

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On Twitter it is more of a play by play. We cover news events live on Twitter. And we will share information. We also cover an exchange with news sources on Twitter. … Twitter really is a live news environment.

Other respondents used Twitter as more of a promotional tool to increase traffic.

“Sometimes we try to promote other things. … For the most part it’s the stories or headlines that are going out that way,” E3 said. Of the six editors who used the platform for this purpose, the majority said they used or had access to an automated system that tweeted content on a pre-determined schedule or time interval. Explained E6:

We send out every story we do pretty much on there. We have an automated system that sends out our newest, most updated story every half-hour, and then I also will push things out and re-tweet of the people and things like that.

Article comments.

Article comments, which received the second highest level of consideration, were the most ubiquitous of the audience feedback channels along with Facebook, being used to at least some extent by every single editor interviewed for this study. In the best of circumstances, editors said comments provided a viable way to both monitor readers and interact with them.

The goal is for reporters to monitor their own comments on their own stories. I will do more global moderation to the entire site. And when I do see something that might be of interest to a reporter, I’ll make sure that they’re aware of it. (E11)

There’ll be people who go there I think legitimately asking for more information we’re looking for, or trying to find out something that wasn’t included in the story. I think those are the ones that we try to respond to. (E4)

(A reporter) spent a ton of time investigating these gangs in the area and wrote this big Sunday package, and ended up with people in the comments that were involved in this and people who have family members involved in this. That’s another example of a situation where if they were using their own name they never would have posted that, but the reporter, she saw that and replied to them. (E6)

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Our reporters who cover beats regularly read the comments on the stories because oftentimes people who are really close to the story will come in on the story and leave story tips. (E8)

In the worst of circumstances, respondents described comments as an outlet for ignorance and negativity. “There are a lot of people who come to the comments and just mouth off and spew venom at times,” E4 said. Others shared similar experiences:

There are some topics out there that people are very passionate about. Sometimes people can go over the edge with their passion. Sometimes things can get ugly amongst commenters. (E1)

When we have people that post that many comments, it tends to not be a good thing. So I think reporters get frustrated with the comments, especially because a lot of them tend to be anonymous. I think that they’re frustrated just because it’s not the type of civil discourse that they would like to have about the articles that they are working on. (E2)

Every editor discussed the negative aspects of allowing readers to comment on articles.

Nearly every respondent (10 out of 12) said they had a system in place to monitor and filter obscenity and offensive material, ranging from a dedicated team of comment reviewers at the most active end of the spectrum to a less formal method of author review and automatic filters at the other. Four respondents had either implemented or were planning to implement Facebook logins for article comments, in which users would have to log in to their personal Facebook accounts before leaving comments on the newspapers’ websites. This safeguard essentially eliminates anonymity and, as the E2 explained, much of the negativity that often goes with it:

One of the things that we’ve noticed is that people who are not anonymous tend to be a lot more civil in conversation. So with the Facebook move, we think that there’s going to be a reduction in the trolls, if you will, and that there might be a better dialogue on stories or articles that we write. They’ve done it in a couple of test markets and they found that basically people are a lot more cautious if there are names and faces and information associated with things that they post online.

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Facebook.

Facebook, the third most cited audience feedback channel, was described as a viable platform for discerning trends among followers, for promoting content on both the media outlets’ business pages as well as individual reporter’s personal pages, and crowd sourcing. However, the majority of respondents said the social network’s strict security filters and closed group structure (i.e. a user must first accept the “friend” request of another user before they can engage in meaningful interaction) limited Facebook’s effectiveness for widespread distribution and crowd sourcing. Or, as E11 explained,

“Facebook is harder because Facebook is built on friendships and relationships, so you can’t just cast general questions.” The platform was also described as less of a “breaking news” service and more as a message board for more thoughtful and civil discussion over a longitudinal basis. As E4 explained:

We find that it is a different type of comment string (on Facebook). … They don’t necessarily see it as a back-and-forth. It’s just a place for them to go read a comment and to kind of move on.

Audiences’ Impact on Existing Reportage Plans

While there was some disparity in terms of the feedback channels most commonly used and those given the most consideration, respondents’ answers to the second research questions displayed significantly more uniformity. RQ2 asked in what ways audience feedback from these channels alter existing online reportage plans. As a general rule, audience feedback, no matter through which channel, had a minimal impact on reporters’ existing plans. Few respondents identified any feedback that could cause reporters to change a topic they were covering or the angle through which they planned to cover it. “I cannot think of an instance, however, where unsolicited comments on Twitter, Facebook

29 or the comments really affected how our reporter then proceeded in writing the story,” E9 claimed.

In the very few instances in which respondents said feedback did alter existing reportage plans, it occurred when journalists were publishing several articles covering the same topic. E11 provided a particularly poignant example regarding a time when one reporter posted an article on the newspaper’s website, while another reporter worked on a more thorough article for the next morning’s print edition:

The police here found a train, a large freight train, left on the tracks with the engine running. They were very concerned about this. Somebody could take this freight train and drive it into a nuclear power plant and blow up the world. … They had the story on the news online probably about 6 o’clock in the morning our time. Instantly train buffs from around the country started firing off comments calling (us idiots because) this is the way it’s done. When one freight train crew ends their shift and another freight train crew isn’t there, the first crew just leaves. It’s much harder to start a train up and get it going than to turn it off and get it started again. So they just leave her running. So when I handed that report off to the regular staffer to produce the story for the paper, I was able to tell them it’s not so much about the who, the what, or the why. What you need to focus on is, is this a safe practice? Is this what we should be doing given all the terrorism concerns? That’s the best example I have of very, very informed contributions from readers making our reports better in a way that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have comments.

In a few other cases, audience feedback helped reporters identify key sources for follow- up coverage of certain topics. “A lot of times in comments we find people with insight that we don’t have,” E11 said, before offering the following example:

A while back we had a very tragic death on the day that a Coast Guard boat crashed into a family boat during a parade of boats on the bay and killed the little boy. … People commented on our story about, ‘Oh it was terrible. I was there.’ We reached out to them, and those accounts strengthened our reports for the next day’s paper as well as for (our online coverage).

E9 shared this example:

There was another story that had to do with seatbelts. It was a national story. Both of those stories had comments on them. The reporter asked me if I could find e-

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mails for about five of the commenters. I provided them. She ended up e-mailing those people. … All five very willingly responded to her questions. It really helped the story the next day.

In even more cases, respondents described a more proactive newsroom practice in which journalists would use audience feedback channels to seek out sources instead of waiting passively for them to provide feedback. “Crowd sourcing,” as mentioned above, was cited by nine of 12 respondents. In one instance, for example, a reporter supervised by E9 received useful feedback after asking his Twitter followers to share their experiences with a recently released iPhone model. In another example, a reporter supervised by E2 sent a query out via Facebook asking for sources to comment for a trends piece. “It’s almost daily that someone in the newsroom is throwing out a question to their audience in some way,” E5 said of the newsgathering technique.

Editors claimed that crowd sourcing worked better via Twitter, given the open- source nature of the platform. Twitter allows users to follow or be followed by anyone who signs up for the service, whereas Facebook employs different security filters and processes of approval that makes it more difficult to reach out to contacts. E7 explained:

Facebook is still viewed as an intimate thing. And when you’re trying to contact someone, they could see that as stalking and ‘I don’t feel comfortable responding.’ But on Twitter, because people who are on Twitter understand the rules, and they understand that they can get feedback at the response of anywhere in the Twitter-sphere. It’s much easier for them to kind of look at your profile, look at what you tweeted, verify really for themselves if you’re really giving them good content. So they feel much more comfortable responding to that.

Generally speaking, the use of the above techniques was limited in favor of more traditional reporting techniques primarily due to a lack of familiarity. Of the nine respondents who said they or fellow reporters engaged in crowd sourcing, only three said it was a semi-regular occurrence. Four described the phenomenon as in its infancy—a

31 new tool they were either learning to use themselves or were trying to teach their peers.

The remaining two respondents said it was used rarely. No editor discussed any ethical concerns or validity surrounding crowd sourcing.

Audience Feedback and New Article Ideas

RQ3 asked in what ways audience feedback creates new online reportage plans.

Eleven of 12 respondents said they used at least one channel to collect or generate ideas for new articles. The extent to which the channels were used varied considerably, however. On one end of the spectrum, E9 said three to four stories published in each daily news cycle was a direct result of an idea gleaned from a feedback channel; on the other, E11 said feedback channels rarely generated new ideas—perhaps once every other week.

Twitter led feedback channels in its ability to generate new article ideas. As described above, the platform’s instantaneous 140-character tweets were said to be particularly useful for gleaning breaking news. “I’ve been to panels where people described Twitter as the 21st-century police radio, and it’s really true in a lot of ways,” E8 said. Facebook, on the other hand, generated more trends and feature-oriented story ideas.

“We have a daily feature section, a home section, an arts section. A lot of those are trend pieces that are a product of watching Facebook,” E9 explained. Others made similar observations:

Especially in the features department with trends and things like that, I think they especially benefit from being involved in Facebook. They see things that their friends are talking about or that their followers are talking about. Trends are a lot easier to recognize in a large group, so where you’re in a bigger community and social media those are obvious. (E6)

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In Facebook it is more about posting updates and engaging in conversations with people that they sometimes have about those updates or comments about the content we publish. It’s less of a live news environment. (E8)

Article comments generated the most follow-up articles—new ideas based on unanswered questions or further inquiry from a previously published article.

Most editors said they had a single editor or team of editors tasked with monitoring audience feedback channels and filtering notable feedback to the appropriate department or reporter. “I have a social media editor who monitors, and he’s got a team of people who monitor our social channels all day long,” E5 said. Three editors said sharing this feedback was part of a daily editorial meeting, as highlighted by the following account:

At 11 o’clock, I have an editorial meeting where I provide a rundown of what’s hot and what’s cool in the social media world. And then I write a smaller write up of what’s trending and what topics of conversation in the social media world are. (E7)

This filtering process varied by the level of social-media savvy within newsrooms. Commenting on her editorial staff, E7 said, “The potential of newsgathering on social media is just being explored here.” In cases when reporters were savvier, however, editors often said reporters themselves actively monitored feedback channels in search of new leads and ideas. Said E8, “The interesting thing about Twitter is if you’re a beat reporter, part of your job is to follow news sources and in doing so maybe pick up news tips or a hashtag that is newsworthy.” One editor articulated the different approaches as such:

It depends on the reporter. We have a couple hundred people here on staff with various levels of understanding of social media. The frequency and how they’re utilizing it is something that I’m working on getting all of the reporters on board with that. Some of them and many of them use it every day, some of them not as frequently. (E1)

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No matter who was collecting new article ideas, the process typically was conducted passively; that is, new ideas were generated by users without being prompted by media representatives. Only three of 12 respondents said they proactively asked audiences for story ideas or news tips through various feedback channels. This is not to be confused with crowd sourcing, in which reporters sought knowledgeable sources typically after an idea already had been formalized.

When asked whether their websites had a “submit a news tip” or similar feature as a means of collecting new story ideas, six editors responded affirmatively. The activity of this channel was nearly nonexistent in all cases, however, which four respondents attributed to the fact that the channel was “buried” on their websites and hard for readers to find. As E1 explained:

It’s a little buried, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why people just come to us through Twitter—not so much Facebook for tips, but definitely Twitter. Yeah, but we do have somewhere the general information page, and that’s where you can either e-mail or call in a tip.

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Chapter V

Discussion

The results suggest the sampled editors overseeing the production of online newspapers view online audience feedback channels as an increasingly integral part of the day-to-day newsgathering process. As a result, user-generated content—and the public agenda by extension—does seem to inform the media agenda to various extents, as evidenced both by increased audience engagement as well as published content that is directly attributable to audience-generated story ideas, tips and news leads.

Every editor interviewed for this analysis said audience feedback channels are considered to at least some extent in the day-to-day newsgathering efforts of online newspaper newsrooms. The value of the channels was perhaps most reflected by the allocation of resources dedicated toward monitoring them—especially when viewed within the context of today’s budget-crunched news environment. Every newsroom had either an editor or team of editors tasked with managing the inward and outward flow of content on these channels as either part of or the totality of their job responsibilities.

Likewise, every editor interviewed was encouraging their staffs to use these channels in the day-to-day newsgathering process, the progress of which was dependent on journalists’ familiarity with given channels and their general technological savvy. While the extent of adoption varied by newsroom, the overall trend suggests audience feedback channels will continue to gain in prominence in the future.

Just as reporters and newsrooms varied in the extent to which they had adopted feedback channels in the newsgathering process, they also varied considerably in their use of channels. Some editors saw article comments as primarily an outlet for anonymous

35 readers to vent or argue, for example, while others viewed them as a valuable tool that provided new sources and new angles for follow-up articles. Twitter, likewise, was cited as relevant for a number of purposes, including but not limited to: monitoring the activities of rival media outlets; gleaning news story ideas; engaging followers to foster a more loyal readership; promoting upcoming features; and distributing content. The different approaches to each channel reflect their multi-functionality as much as they do a lack of widely accepted, uniform practices to guide behavior surrounding them.

But while the uses of feedback channels differed greatly, editors were more consistent when describing which underlying traits they deemed most valuable in those channels. The majority of editors used Twitter, for example, to follow, collect and promote news in real time. This priority is not altogether surprising given the lightning- paced dissemination of news in the online space, which has seen the news cycle compress from weeks to days to minutes to seconds.

Editors largely discredited feedback channels when they were seen as less instantaneous or too reactionary. Facebook was often described in this context. Unlike

Twitter, Facebook places more emphasis on the creation of virtual social networks and the exchange of information therein. While editors said it was good for generating more thoughtful and lengthy comment threads, they said it did so at the expense of rapidity.

Similarly, editors who largely ignored article comments were more likely to emphasize the time lag between published content and the negative, hateful feedback it would generate.

Speed of information was not a make-or-break criterion for judging the value of feedback channels, however. Indeed, some editors placed a great degree of value on a

36 slower, more thoughtful pace, especially as it related to discerning broader topic ideas.

Whereas speed is a defining trait of “breaking” news, it is somewhat of a deterrent for slower-developing trends that are better observed over time. Not surprisingly, editors largely pointed to Facebook as a better source of ideas for features and trend pieces, whereas Twitter was viewed as a better source for breaking news.

The discussion to this point has focused primarily on insights surrounding different feedback channels and the types of article ideas generated within, but more pertinent to the stated purpose of this report is the dynamics surrounding them. A story idea by itself is just that. But when viewed through the lens of existing research on agenda setting and agenda building, it represents something more: influence. The ability of the public to communicate story ideas to the media through audience feedback channels suggests a transfer of salience from the said public to said media; thus, the public appears to directly inform the media agenda. All but one editor interviewed for this report said they indeed used audience feedback channels to glean new story ideas.

Thus, in at least certain instances shared by the editors interviewed for this study, there does appear to agenda setting at the first level. That is, by raising certain topics or trends, readers in certain instances tell the media what to think about.

The efforts editors go through to stay engaged with readers via back-and-forth dialogue and interaction through feedback channels provides further evidence to the above. Several editors said, for example, they try to respond to reader requests and questions as quickly as possible, whether through one-to-one exchanges (via Facebook,

Twitter, etc.), changes in stories (i.e. to fill in gaps in reporting or to correct errors) or in follow-up articles that address different angles or unanswered questions. A few editors

37 said engagement activities allowed them to keep their fingers on the pulse of readers, which gave them a better understanding of the types of content and topics their audiences were looking for.

It is important at this point to stress that the transfer of salience from public to press as described in the preceding paragraphs does not represent a unilateral shift in the flow of influence outlined by previous agenda-setting literature. The data provided here suggests not a downstream flow of salience from media to public (as outlined in the earliest agenda-setting research), nor does it suggest an upstream flow of salience from public to media. Instead, the rise of easily accessible audience feedback channels seems to have created a more fluid flow of salience akin to the water in a whirlpool. These results complement existing literature on the transition from Web 1.0, where media act as publishers that transmits their agenda to the public online, to Web 2.0, where the participatory potential of the Internet is exploited more fully (Holt and Karlsson, 2011).

One editor explained the transition as such:

It used to do that my business was a one-way street that we deliver the product every morning and people consumed and maybe write a letter to the editor but it was really sort of throwing a message over a fence and not knowing what would happen to it. Nowadays people not only, people expect it to be a two-way street, to communicate and interact in real-time with the creators of content. We’re still in the infancy and a lot of these areas in the industry, but the idea of not having comments or allowing readers to interact, it just sort of seems very foreign.

It is important to emphasis that the back-and-forth exchange observed generally in this study was not instantaneous. There was still evidence of time-order, a crucial characteristic of agenda setting, which McCombs and Shaw measured more than three decades ago (McCombs, 1977). Editors interviewed for this analysis said audiences very rarely influence existing reportage plans in their newsrooms through feedback channels.

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The reasoning is quite simple: Audiences are unlikely to impact newsgathering if they’re not aware that newsgathering is taking place. Readers typically only see the cumulative efforts of newsgathering in a published article, upon which they then provide feedback that could impact follow-up efforts or provoke entirely new story ideas. The time-order is just as evident in the transfer of salience from public to press; a reporter can only react to a reader-generated story idea after a reader generates it.

The transfer of salience in either direction is worthy of considerable future study.

Not only should content analysis be undergone to measure exactly what percentage of published content is informed by the public agenda (as measured by the content in article comments, tweets, Facebook posts, and other feedback channels), but more analysis should be conducted in an attempt to gauge how much user-generated content on feedback channels is informed by the media agenda. The landscape has shifted considerably since McCombs and Shaw (1972) produced their groundbreaking Chapel

Hill study. Audiences have fragmented, the flow of information has become more varied and fast-paced, and more users than ever before are contributing to the conversation.

Thus, it would be worth revisiting those initial assumptions in the “new media” context.

But the results presented here suggest even further implications. Up until this point, this discussion has focused exclusively on the relationship between online newspapers and their “audiences,” a term which has been used synonymously with

“readers” or “readership” as they pertain to the lay consumer of published content. It is important to quickly address another audience segment that expands beyond that traditional definition: rival news outlets.

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The results of this study reveal strong evidence of intermedia agenda setting through more recently introduced feedback channels such as Twitter. Several editors said they used the platform to stay abreast of the actions of their competitors. By tracking the headlines and news leads that were being tweeted by rival media outlets, respondents said they were less likely to miss a scoop or fall too far behind in the daily news cycle.

These observed intermedia dynamics represent an important departure from those observed in earlier agenda-building research. Whereas previous analysis found media outlets focused their attention on elite news sources as a benchmark against which to judge their own reporting, the scope observed here are more regional in focus. Editors were more inclined to track the efforts of competitors in the same city or town; in not one case did a respondent say he or she was also tracking, say, the New York Times or Wall

Street Journal. That shift in focus could reflect the broader shift away from mass distribution toward more niche publication that has emerged in the online era of the press, but further research is needed to confirm this hypothesis. Further inquiry should attempt to lend clarity to the intermedia behaviors of the press via content channels such as

Facebook and Twitter.

Perhaps the final area in need of attention in this discussion is the transfer of salience at the second or “attribute” level. As previous results have shown, online audience feedback channels do allow the public to transfer salience to the media. That is, readers produce story ideas, ask questions and contribute other insights that directly influence the behaviors and published content of the media. In this way, the public is acting on the first level of agenda setting by successfully telling the media what to think about. What has yet to be analyzed is whether the public can successfully “tell” the media

40 how to think about those same items, which previous research has labeled second-level agenda setting or—since this case focuses on the construction of the media agenda— second-level agenda building.

The results presented here are not definitive in this regard, as this analysis was designed to focus on the decision-making process of editors rather than the specific content that they produced. (Further study is needed to lend clarity in this regard.)

However, given the proliferation of crowd sourcing as a valid newsgathering technique cited by those same editors, one might infer that the “public” in limited contexts does have an influence at this second level.

As the results showed, nine of 12 editors said crowd sourcing had taken place in their newsrooms, although only three said it was a regular occurrence. Still, because crowd sourcing draws insight from a news outlet’s readership, any sources who participate in the exercise are, in turn, likely to shape the agenda of the news outlet at the second level. For example, if a reporter sends a general tweet to his followers asking for readers to share their experiences with a new version of the iPhone, any feedback he receives is necessarily from the public, and the resulting report would most likely include information that shaped the way that reporter wrote the article. (i.e. The sources are telling the reporter what to think about the new iPhone.) But clearly, further research would be needed to support this hypothesis.

Regardless of crowd sourcing’s adoption within newsrooms, the practice underscores another important shift in the agenda-building process. Less than a decade ago, researches identified only three major sources that influenced the media agenda: (a) influential news sources; (b) other elite media sources (intermedia agenda setting); and

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(c) social norms and traditions of journalism (Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw, 2004). This research suggests a fourth source is beginning to make is presence felt: the public. Again, all but one editor interviewed for this report said they get new story ideas from feedback channels, not to mention other means of influence as described above.

Whether or not audience feedback could be labeled a “major” source requires further analysis. As these results have shown, audience feedback is considered to varying extents from newsroom to newsroom. However, the mere presence of feedback as point of consideration within the newsroom as well as the expressed desire of most editors to encourage the use of these channels for techniques like crowd sourcing would suggest they will only continue to grow in influence. As social platforms like Twitter and

Facebook make it easier than ever to reach a wider range of potential sources, it is reasonable to believe journalists will begin to exploit them.

At the same time, however, certain ethical and practical implications likely will emerge from the use of these channels for sourcing. For one thing, the “public” is not equally represented in these feedback channels. A number of editors said the vast majority of article comments, for example, were written by a small number of incredibly active readers. Likewise, not every reader of an online newspaper follows the paper’s

Facebook or Twitter accounts. The same goes for the accounts of individual reporters.

Thus, journalists who use these accounts are necessarily discriminating against certain percentages of the population. The effects are somewhat less severe in open-source platforms like Twitter, in which a user can search broadly across any and all Twitter account holders. Editors were more cautious of Facebook, in which security restrictions and a strict process of approval limits one’s reach to pre-approved social circles within

42 the broader network. This approval process raises further questions about the relationship of sources. For example, if a reporter has a pre-existing, “personal” Facebook account, her sourcing activities therein would necessarily be drawing from her own personal network. The same types of questions remain even if that reporter created a separate

“professional” Facebook account, as she still has the discretion to accept certain “friend” requests and not others. Clearly, the ethical and practical implications of sourcing on social networks requires much deeper analysis, as does its implications within the framework of agenda-setting research.

The same can be said for agenda-setting and agenda-building research in general.

As these results have shown, new feedback channels and platforms have made it easier for the public to interact with the press (and vice versa) than ever before, which means the transfer of salience is moving from a unidirectional flow to a more fluid, back-and- forth exchange. This thesis provides only a glimpse into that dynamic and the continuing evolution of the theory of agenda setting.

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Appendix A

Questionnaire

1. Through which channels (e.g. comments, Twitter, Facebook, email) do you receive feedback from your audience, excluding analytical metrics such as page views, time on site, etc.?

2. Which of these channels receive the most consideration and why?

3. Are there any channels that you tend to ignore? Why?

4. In what ways does audience feedback from these channels alter existing online reportage plans? Can you provide specific examples?

5. What is your response to an article or series of articles that generate a significant amount of audience feedback?

6. Have you ever followed a news lead or story idea that was suggested by a member of your audience through one of these feedback channels?

7. Do you actively look through/review audience feedback channels for new leads or story ideas? If so, which channels?

8. Have you ever asked your audience for leads or story ideas through a feedback channel?

9. Is there a primary member of your staff who is responsible for monitoring audience feedback channels, or do you use a more team-based approach? Why?

10. Is your news organization in the process of introducing any new feedback channels? If so, what are they?

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Appendix B

Feedback Table

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