Can User Generated Content or ‘Produsage’ Complement Mainstream Journalism

CAN USER-GENERATED CONTENT OR 'PRODUSAGE' COMPLEMENT MAINSTREAM JOURNALISM AND IN WHAT WAYS? SUPPORT YOUR ANSWER WITH SPECIFIC EXAMPLES AND RELEVANT ACADEMIC LITERATURE.
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The journalism landscape is rapidly evolving, with user-generated content commonly regarded as 'produsage' emerging as a transformative power. Such a form of digital journalism, facilitated by social media platforms and digital technologies, empowers ordinary people to participate in producing and disseminating news. Although some people may perceive produsage as a possible threat to credibility and control of the mainstream media, user-generated content enhances and is complementary to traditional news reporting in different ways. For example, mainstream media can harness produsage power by integrating grassroots investigative efforts, diverse opinions, and real-time reporting to offer the local community more extensive, involving, and relevant news coverage. Moreover, incorporating citizen journalism is fundamental for audience engagement, collaboration, and a wider, more extensive comprehension of pertinent societal issues. This paper first delineates the link between user-generated content and mainstream journalism to develop a background and guide the direction of the paper in the subsequent parts. User-generated content supports the mainstream journalism by facilitating gate-keeping roles, increasing bias and subjectivity in the news, and making traditional media more consumer-driven. Moreover, user-generated content captures local news and perspectives, offers real-time news, crowd-sourced verification, audience engagement, investigative reporting, covering of niche stories, and creates room for unprofessional practices in journalism.
Produsage and Mainstream Journalism Demystified
While produsage and mainstream journalism serve diverse roles and present varying features, they can work collectively to offer a diverse and more comprehensive media ecosystem. As noted above, user-generated content is commonly known as produsage, and together with mainstream journalism, they can complement each other. Citizen journalism and produsage have emerged as significant driving forces for paradigm shifts, specifically in the media landscape, facilitating common citizens to actively engage in news production and dissemination (Xiang, 2019, p.55). Produsage disrupts news production and journalism (Bruns and Schmidt, 2011, p.6). Produsage is a representation of deviation from traditional media production, with the passive role of media consumers evolving into active roles or contributions. People can now use blogs and social media platforms to share their accounts of events, views, and experiences in real-time. Conversely, mainstream media is critical in offering comprehensive analysis, observing journalistic standards, and fact-checking. Professional journalists receive extensive training to ensure ethical standards and guidelines, verify information, and remain objective (Wang and Diakopoulos, 2021, n.p.). Such journalists have the expertise and resources to access official sources, cover extreme stories, and carry out investigative reporting.
News media organizations can take advantage of the diversity and immediacy of citizen reporting by ensuring that mainstream journalism integrates user-generated content. Citizen journalists sometimes serve as first responders during such situations as breaking news, offering real-time updates from where the incidents happen. Such acts support mainstream journalists' efforts and can verify and expand citizen journalists' information. Also, user-generated content can provide local insights and special perspectives that may be inaccessible to mainstream media. Blogs and web forums offer active discussion spaces, allowing people to correct and critique mainstream news media (Beckett and Mansell, 2008, p.9). In such cases as humanitarian crises, natural disasters, and social uprisings, multimedia contributions combined with immediate accounts of the citizens can offer significant information that news media outlets can use to cover the stories comprehensively.
Supports Mainstream Journalism Gatekeeping Roles
User-generated content triggers the gate-keeping roles of mainstream journalism. It is critical to understand that produsage is increasingly shifting with user-generated content. In this context, user-generated content will likely bombard mainstream journalists with information from diverse sources (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch, 2009, p.73). Therefore, mainstream media outlets must ensure that they take their role as gatekeepers seriously, fact-checking and curating any content they obtain from citizen journalists. This complements mainstream journalism by encouraging players to take proactive measures to select and shape the volume of information that should become news via gatekeeping roles. In this vein, user-generated content will likely trigger gate-keeping practices in mainstream journalism to ensure that the information is selected, written, edited, positioned, scheduled, repeated, and fine-tuned before it reaches the masses. The argument delineated the need for future studies to consider investigating the agenda-setting role of mainstream media in the advent of user-generated content. This is because mainstream journalists' gatekeeping role may be influenced by their media house's ideological preferences and related forces (Wahl-Jorgensen and Hanitzsch, 2009, p.82). Apart from supporting the gatekeeping role of mainstream journalism, user-generated content triggers critical questions concerning the role of media houses in gatekeeping and agenda-setting since they might be subject to government influences and diverse ideologies.
The Potential for Bias and Subjectivity
Produsage may suffer from problems concerning subjectivity and bias. Citizen journalists, at times, depict personal connections to the events covered, which may significantly affect their reporting. Thus, mainstream journalists must navigate such aspects while fostering objective and balanced reporting. User-generated content may not be accurate or verifiable, and this could result in fake news or misinformation dissemination. As argued above, produsage or user-generated content can comprehensively complement mainstream journalism. The involvement of citizen journalism extends news coverage scope, offering real-time updates and diverse views, with a significant potential for biased perspectives (Xiang, 2019, p.56). With its resources and professional standards, mainstream media can contextualize, verify, and extend citizen journalists' content via the gatekeeping role. Journalists and news outlets now integrate audience insights in information sourcing by levering user-generated content (Wang and Diakopoulos, 2021, n.p.). The two forms of journalism can work collectively to develop an accountable, diverse, and holistic media ecosystem that addresses the citizens' right to information and improves the general news reporting quality.
Mainstream Media is More Consumer-Driven
User-generated content complement mainstream media by creating more consumer-led coverage. This is an archetype entailing the integration of market liberalization and digital technologies, which makes the news media sector more consumer-driven. Instead of depending on the news delivered via mainstream media outlets, people can now access information from a wide range of shared platforms, such as news websites and social media. This has made news media change their modus operandi by providing continuous access to websites, permanent broadcasting, and news channels. Due to the wide range of news available from user-generated content, mainstream media houses and producers are increasingly responding to consumer wants or risk losing their clientele. Mainstream media has been forced to develop new approaches to engage citizens or consumers. Traditionally, news media outlets address their audiences' long-term trends, while user-generated content implies that they should build their brand around consumers. It is also important for news producers to engage their audiences via the Internet, email, mobiles, and text to allow them to share their perspectives (Beckett and Mansell, 2008, p.6). Thi...