ISOJ 2009

1. Citizen Journalist or information source: an
exploratory study of public’s role in
participatory journalism within the main
Brazilian web portals
Profa. Dra. Elizabeth Saad Corrêa –
bethsaad@gmail.com
Francisco Madureira –
francisco.madureira@gmail.com

2. The study
 At the beginnings of 2006: major Brazilian Internet
portals released channels for its users
participation as news providers.
 To analyze this scenario we present preliminary
data about the status of participatory journalism
initiatives undertaken by the main portals of the
Brazilian web.
 Our main assumption is that the major portals in
the country have not still been able to adopt
participatory journalism in depht and breadth of
the experience reported by the original
participatory concept.

3. Brazilian Scenario
 A strong concentration of information in digital
environments originally created to access the web - the so
called portals
 Portal news:
 Traffic atractor
 Sources: international agencies feed, proprietary newsrooms and
connection to a journalistic traditional brand
 Web use in Brazil shows, as studies conducted by Ibope /
NetRatings, that, primarily, the users get information
through the portals, to then browse on newspapers
websites
 The reader's engagement on information production is
difficult.
 Genneraly, the vehicles use the material sent by internet users as a
source of information;
 The news processing is performed by professional journalists
responsible for websites, a practice that tends to discourage the "old
reader" to become the protagonist of news process, or making this a
conversation

4. Top 10 Search Engines / Portals And Communities
Pageviews and Unique Audience, Feb. 2009
Brand/Channel
Unique
Audience
(000)
Pageviews
totals (000)
Google 22,151 5,884,229
MSN/Windows Live 20,604 1,704,680
Orkut 17,446 16,105,346
UOL 15,637 1,613,627
iG 13,512 737,966
Terra 13,157 718,252
Globo.com 12,666 1,208,134
Yahoo! 10,937 847,609
Blogger 9,149 152,432
Abril 4,843 81,228

5. Main concepts
 Cultural Studies
 Reception
 Social media phenomenon
 Participatory Journalism
 Dan Gillmor, Bowman & Willis, Bruns, Brambilla
 the action of a citizen or group of citizens who have an active
role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysis and
dissemination of news and information
 New media studies

6. Methodological procedures
 Main hypothesis
 the major portals in the country have failed to adopt participatory
journalism in the depth and breadth of international experience reported
by other authors
 Exploratory field study, content analysis
 The sample – Brazilian Portals
 Audience
 Specific area to display forms of UGC
 Terra portal – VC Reporter
 Globo.com portal – VC no G1
 UOL and iG out of sampling criteria
 Observation and collection participatory journalism pages
from these portals during the period of March, 1st/2009 to
March,15th/2009
 163 published materials were collected and analysed.

7. Content analysis categories
 Editorial area
 Content localization – hyper localism
 Level of user’s engagement:
 Simple flagrant
 Source quotation
 Use of multimedia: photos, videos, audio
 Narrative aspects

8. Editorial area
 105 stories related to metro news (daily events)
 32 stories related to culture and entertainment (higher
focus on concerts)
 12 stories related to sports (as a local event)

9. Hyper localism
 93% of stories covered events that took place in the
physical surroundings of citizen reporters

10. Flagrant x news construction
 56% (92 stories) were not identified as mere striking of
reality
 44% (71 stories) of the published material were identifies
as flagrant
 a simple record of an event in photo or video, without contextual
information, or check with official sources of data and / or witnesses,
case of

11. Narrative aspects
 51% (83) of stories with no citation of any source.
 In 34% (55) of the cases, only one source of information is
mentioned - in some cases, the source is the individual citizen
reporter, paradoxical practice for the purpose of participatory
journalism that will be addressed forward.
 In 14% (23) cases two sources are mentioned, and in only two
subjects, or 1% of cases are cited three or more sources.

12. Differences between portals
 Portal Terra: 35% (27) of stories were considered a mere
flagrant
 Good mix: the work of the citizen reporter to the journalist contribution
 Portal Globo:75% (44) is characterized as flagrant
 Newsroom enrichment of news before publishing
 Snapshot journalist
 The newsroom practice is to quote, sometines, the citizen reporter
information
 The citizen reporter does not develop activities of investigation, but
believes that being at relevant events, book them soon either by
pictures or videos, and refers them with small essays on the major
portals
 Citizen’s news are an additional channel for receiving
information as well as a single source or of the advisory
press
 Credibility: possible presence of commercial and marketing
content in the mainstream news

13. Final remarks
 The participatory journalism in Brazil would not arouse the
reader's engagement with the production of information -
much less the vehicles show this concern, to use the
material sent by Internet users as mere starting point for a
process of investigation.
 Assigning the channels of UGC evaluated in the main
Brazilian portals as the label of citizen journalism becomes
dangerous, especially within the theoretical frame of
reference outlined by Bruns
 Brazilian web users that are involved in these services the
title of citizen reporter in conceptualization of Bowman and
Willis, as practice involves a former "reader" as the
protagonist of news process, not only as adjuvant.

14. Final remarks
 Further discussion for the study progress:
 the degree of editorial intervention exercised by the portal, partly
weakened the concept of citizen journalism;
 the effects on the portal brand credibility facing the collaborative content
which it provides;
 the characterization of "news" within a space of participatory journalism
and how this concept should reflect the characteristics of traditional
news process, and
 differentiated characterization in between citizen journalists and the
"citizen-source" that seems to emerge that study.
 Inclusion, as a comparative data, of the well succeeded
independent initiatives
 Independent Media Center
 Brazil Wiki
 Garapa
 Overmundo