The terms citizen journalism and participatory journalism are often used interchangeably to describe the use of content produce by non-media professionals. Other terminology even refers participatory journalism to the circulation of user-generated content by main stream media. In our view, participatory journalism describes the production of professional journalism content involving members of the audience in the process. This implies a process of co-creation, with both parties (citizens and professional journalists) contributing for example original content or commentary. Most often this means that the content producers react to a call made by a newsroom to produce specific content like videos or pictures from their neighbourhood, to help in journalistic investigations or to support the newsroom in the verification process.
Forms of participation can be brainstorming, monitoring, fact checking, information gathering, document searching, producing original content, mapping, translating, indicating interesting sources like interview partners, financing single investigations, and promotion (share articles, suggest subscriptions). In some cases, the newsroom allows their citizen contributors to check content before publication and to suggest changes. Participatory journalism often evolves over time, but can also include single-project cooperation.
The level of interaction between the newsroom and the citizen contributors can range from low to rather frequent and intense. While some authors underline that this process should be based on a non-hierarchical relationship and a close alignment with local communities, others contend that this is an overly romantic point of view. Challenges for participatory journalism can be the lack of resources like staff, time and money in newsrooms, inadequate preparation of communication channels and work tasks, concern about the (digital) security of audience members as well as the handling of digital vandalism and the risk of bias in the data.
