NEWS SOURCES OF CITIZEN JOURNALISTS: HOW DOES SOCIAL CAPITAL INFLUENCE CITIZEN JOURNALISTS IN CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES? by LI YANG WILSON LOWREY, COMMITTEE CHAIR GEORGE DANIELS YONGHWAN KIM A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Journalism in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2016 Copyright Li Yang 2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Online citizen journalism has been seen developing fast and with popularity with more advanced media platforms in recent years, yet what factors affect citizen journalists’ likelihood to produce public news remain murky. The effect of social capital on health, on politics, on internet, on educational achievement and many other aspects has been studied for diverse groups. This study sought to measure U.S. and Chinese citizen journalists’ social capital and their perceived ability to report public news as well as the influence of social capital on citizen journalists and compare how social capital worked for citizen journalists in the two countries. Social capital, longevity in community, strength of personal relationships, relying on personal social connections as news sources, professional media experience and social media use were measured and analyzed to address the hypothesis and answer research questions. Results showed that U.S. citizen journalists, who were proposed to have higher political openness in their society, perceived a higher level of likelihood that they will have the ability to report public news than Chinese citizen journalists. Longevity in community, professional media experience and level of social capital were all found to positively affect citizen journalists’ perceived ability to report public news and their level of social capital. Citizen journalists with stronger personal relationships were found to have higher level of social capital. Substantial differences of effects from independent variables on dependent variables were found between U.S. and Chinese citizen journalists. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank the University of Alabama for giving me the great opportunity to complete my graduate studies in this wonderful place. I am fortunate to have been a student in the department of Journalism, College of Communication and Information science. Some very important thanks to my committee members, Dr. Wilson Lowrey, Dr. George Daniels and Dr. Yonghwan Kim. Their advice and guidance has been invaluable. In particular, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Lowrey. He has remained very supportive and enthusiastic throughout this study. He has also demonstrated an endless patience with me for which I am eternally grateful. I would have been lost without him. Dr. Lowrey, thank you for fully investing yourself into the completion of this work and pushing me to do my best. Dr. Daniels and Dr. Kim, I have learned a lot from your classes, thank you for making yourselves so available for discussions and meetings. Last but not least I would like to thank the University of Alabama Libraries for providing so many sources. iii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................... vi 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................3 3. METHODS ............................................................................................26 4. FINDINGS .............................................................................................32 5. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................45 REFERENCES ..........................................................................................53 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY ..........................................................................57 APPENDIX 2: IRB APPROVAL .............................................................69 APPENDIX 3: IRB RENEWAL APPROVAL .........................................72 iv LIST OF TABLES 1 Frequencies of percentage for the comparison of U.S and Chinese Journalists on perceived ability to report ...................................................34 2 Bivariate Correlations for Two Main Outcome Variables and Independent Variables ...............................................................................36 3 Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Variables predicting both U.S. and Chinese Citizen Journalists’ perceived ability to report public news ................................................................................................37 4 Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Variables predicting Citizen Journalists’ social capital .............................................38 5 Regression Analysis for Variables predicting each group of Citizen Journalists’ perceived ability to report public news ......................42 6 Summary of Hierarchical Regression Analysis for Variables predicting Citizen Journalists’ social capital ...............................................................44 v LIST OF FIGURES 1 Model ......................................................................................................21 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The problem area addressed in this paper is how social capital can be used as news resources to promote the influence of citizen journalism in terms of doing real public news reports by citizen journalists in China and America. Social capital can be conceptualized as reciprocity, resources, and trustworthiness obtained from building and maintaining different forms of social ties (e.g., families, friends, neighborhood, colleagues, etc.). Studies of social capital have discussed its use as resources in many fields, such as serving as resources for health and well-being, and serving to promote civic engagement. Citizen journalists refer to everyday people who contribute to, disseminate and share news information, and make news reporting through different channels of media. Citizen journalism has gained more and more popularity with the development of online media platforms. There are plenty of studies in these two areas –social capital and citizen journalism. But only limited studies can be found when considering social capital as sources for citizen journalism practice, and it is rare to find analysis of Chinese citizen journalism. A recent study revealed that social capital in middle-sized communities could be improved by citizen journalism practice in the college classroom, and other potentially beneficial factors have been explored as well. However, the impact of social capital of citizen journalists on their news reporting remains unclear. Recent studies have shown that citizen journalism is a common phenomenon in both China and 1 America: but that it is unclear how much these individuals actually produce journalistic reporting. A number of untrained citizen journalists produce commentary, analysis, opinion and forward other articles on their own news websites instead of reporting real news. It is proposed in this study that one reason for this is many citizen journalists are hindered by their inferior access to news sources to produce original news. The purpose of the paper is to analyze factors that help explain the likelihood of reporting on public issues. Surveys of both U.S. and Chinese citizen journalists were conducted. The factor of social capital was examined as a possible explanation, as are longevity in the community, strength of personal connections, use of social media and professional background. Predictors of social capital are also examined. Differences between Chinese and American citizen journalists were studied: especially, perceived ability to do public reporting and factors that explain level of public reporting. 2 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW Citizen Journalism in the U.S Professional journalism is defined as news content published by various channel of news media outlets such as newspapers, television, radio and online news websites by professional journalists who are paid, trained, supervised and work within established editorial norms. Citizen journalism which is also referred to as grassroots journalism and participatory journalism, is defined as citizens who contribute to, disseminate and share news information, and make news reporting through different channels of media. Most of citizen journalists are not paid by news organization, are lack of professional training. The number of citizen journalists is growing with the improvement of website technology. Everyone can create their own media products including news and commentary with the access to computer and mobiles. The number of online citizen journalism consumers is not estimated by available figures. However, according to the infographic blogging statistics in 2012, there are near 329 million people viewing blogs. The leading blog -blogger in U.S. has over 46 million unique visitors each month (Rampton, 2012). Blogs are an application and one of the most commonly used platforms by online citizen to distribute their news content. More than thousands of citizen