Lecture 4 in the course From Gatekeeping to Gatewatching: News and Journalism in the Digital Age. This lecture series addresses the continuing transformation of the production and consumption of journalism in the contemporary media environment. It provides a brief history of the impact of participatory online news production and engagement practices – from the first wave of citizen journalism to the social media platforms of today – on how news content is disseminated and experienced; examines reactive and proactive responses to these changes by news organisations and journalists; and explores the longer-term impact of these developments on the public sphere, touching on the power of social media platforms and their role in shaping their users’ information diets. Readings are largely drawn from Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere (Bruns, 2018), with additional readings recommended for selected lectures. Reading for this lecture: Bruns, A. (2018). Random Acts of Gatewatching: Everyday Newssharing Practices. Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 4. Peter Lang.

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Random Acts of Gatewatching:
Everyday Newssharing Practices
Prof. Axel Bruns
Guest Professor, IKMZ, University of Zürich
a.bruns@qut.edu.au — a.bruns@ikmz.uzh.ch

2. https://insidesocialmedia.com/2003/03/12/random-acts-of-journalism/

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From Trending Topics
to Everyday News

4. Twitter and the Sendai Tsunami (March 2011)

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http://bit.ly/_ATNIX_

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(It’s complicated.)
And Facebook?

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But: Facebook data available only for public pages and groups,
and likely to be somewhat incomplete even there.

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Serendipity

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(Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Digital News Report 2017)

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‘social media powerfully invoke an efficient listening subject’ — Crawford
‘serendipitous news discovery … is essential to forming public opinion and creating
informed consensus’ — Purcell et al.
‘Twitter as a social awareness system that delivers a fragmented mix of
information, enlightenment, entertainment, and engagement from a range of
sources’ — Hermida et al.
‘ambient journalism’ — Hermida
Ambient and Always On
‘create and receive personalized social news streams’ — Hermida et al.

12. 4m known Australian accounts
Network of follower connections
Filtered for degree ≥1000
255k nodes (6.4%), 61m edges
Edges not shown in graph
Networks in the Social Awareness System
Teen Culture
Aspirational
Sports
Netizens
Arts & Culture
Politics
Television
Fashion
Popular Music
Food & Drinks
Agriculture Activism
Porn
Education
Cycling
News &
Generic
Hard Right
Progressive
South
Australia
Celebrities
Horse Racing

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(Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: Digital News Report 2016)

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Random Acts of
Gatewatching

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Habitual Acts of
Gatewatching

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Quick and possibly short-lived stories
Slow, sleeper stories
Bruns, A., & Keller, T. (2020). News diffusion on Twitter: Comparing the dissemination careers
for mainstream and marginal news. International Conference on Social Media and Society 2020.

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Habitual Newssharing
‘[on Facebook], news … is just something that happens’ — Pew Research Center respondent
‘personal network as a way to filter the news, rather than solely relying on the
professional judgment of a news organization or journalist’ — Hermida et al.
‘users [who] devote a substantial amount of effort and care to this activity…
are news curators’ — Lehmann et al.
‘personal publics are one of the most important characteristics of the social Web’
— Schmidt
 Intrinsic and altruistic motivations for newssharing and news curation
‘users may be both sharing and seeking information at the same time, facilitating a gathering
and sorting of information’ — Holton et al.

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Sharing and Engagement
‘participation comes more through sharing than through contributing news themselves’
— Purcell et al.
‘the use of news sharing for the purposes of both criticism and “collaborative verification”’
— Newman et al.
‘gathering public affairs content from an ever-expanding array of content providers
and delivery platforms and at all times of day’ — Thorson & Wells
‘those who are incidentally exposed to news on social media use more
different sources of online news than non-users’ — Fletcher & Nielsen
‘sharing on Facebook centers more around few dominant issues,
whereas on Twitter there is more variation’ — Trilling et al.
‘social network site users select “markers of cool” based on an imagined audience of
friends and peers’ — Marwick and boyd

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https://www.businesstopia.net/mass-communication/spiral-silence-theory
diversity of views
Person
receiving
community
reinforcement
narrow,
extremist
views
Spirals of… ?

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Demotic, Not
Democratic

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Consequences
‘Facebook exposes some people to news who otherwise might not get it’
— Pew Research Center
‘social news discovery … reaches different demographics—and not just the young.
… Social is the only discovery mechanism that appeals more to female users’
— Newman et al.
‘two-thirds of people who get news on Facebook have it passed along to them
second, third or twentieth hand from their Facebook friends—rather than directly
from news organizations’ — Pew Research Center
‘news correspondents and columnists are gaining new authority and influence through
their expert use of social media. Some are becoming ‘network nodes’ attracting significant
audiences of their own—independently of their parent brands’ — Newman

25. Niche Authorities
Ausserhofer, J., & Maireder, A. (2013). National Politics on Twitter: Structures and Topics of a Networked Public
Sphere. Information, Communication & Society, 16(3), 291–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.756050

26. 4m known Australian accounts
Network of follower connections
Filtered for degree ≥1000
255k nodes (6.4%), 61m edges
Edges not shown in graph
Teen Culture
Aspirational
Sports
Netizens
Arts & Culture
Politics
Television
Fashion
Popular Music
Food & Drinks
Agriculture Activism
Porn
Education
Cycling
News &
Generic
Hard Right
Progressive
South
Australia
Celebrities
Horse Racing
Niche Authorities
‘ordinary users can gain influence by focusing on a single topic and posting
creative and insightful tweets that are perceived as valuable by others, as opposed
to simply conversing with others’ — Cha et al.
‘just as the majority of crowds simply disperse over time, parts of some crowds
come together again around new newsworthy events’ — Lehmann et al.

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Mass Participation ≠ Democratic Negotiation
‘the ideal of the news sharing user as an altruistic democratizer is to some extent
also backed up by empirical studies’ — Kümpel et al.
and
‘many active internet users now see themselves as editors—balancing and comparing
multiple sources, multiple editorial judgements, and even multiple algorithms’ — Newman et al.
vs.
‘this potential does not lead to meaningful cross-ideological interaction’ — Himelboim et al.
 ‘the social negotiation of the meaning of news’ (Maireder and Ausserhofer)
is not a democratic process, even if it is demotic

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Demowhatnow?
• Demotic = ‘in the language of ordinary people’:
• In radio and TV, the exploitative use of vox populi, talk radio call-ins, reality TV
• Cheap content to fill airtime and generate engagement (even outrage)
• ‘among the casualties of the demotic turn is the professional production of journalism’ — Turner
• In social media, the active participation of ordinary users in discussing and curating the news
• If anything, more labour-intensive for journalists and news organisations to engage with
• ‘citizens involved in the flow, framing and interpretation of news’ — Hermida
 ‘a more expansive notion of political talk: one that embraces the vernacular, expressive, and porous
characteristics of everyday public speech’ — Wright et al.

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Journalism and / on Social Media
‘hybrid system’ of ‘“older” and “newer” media’ — Andrew Chadwick et al.
‘with social media, journalism and audiences meet on uncommon ground’
— Wiebke Loosen and Jan Schmidt
‘spontaneously emerging encounter publics’ — Christoph Neuberger et al.
‘networks for the wild flows of messages’ — Jürgen Habermas
 from random acts of journalism to habitual acts of gatewatching and newssharing
 not democratic (equal voices), but demotic (widespread participation)
 collective news curation by social media users, including journalists

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Next Time

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Readings
4. 14.10.: Random Acts of Gatewatching: Everyday Newssharing Practices
Bruns, A. (2018). Random Acts of Gatewatching: Everyday Newssharing Practices. Gatewatching
and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere. Ch. 4. Peter Lang.
5. 21.10.: Weaponising Newssharing: ‘Fake News’ and Other Malinformation
Bruns, A., Harrington, S., & Hurcombe, E. (2021). Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories: Tracing
Misinformation Trajectories from the Fringes to the Mainstream. In M. Lewis, E. Govender, & K.
Holland (Eds.), Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 229–249). Springer.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79735-5_12

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Lecture
• NOTE:
• Week 5 lecture will be pre-recorded and made available through the OLAT site.