Participatory Audiences

When looking at the five main types of participatory journalism sources, user feedback, user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and citizen journalism, they vary mostly in how active the audience is in the reporting process. Sources and feedback are the most basic, where the audience gives quotes or reactions but doesn’t shape the full story. User-generated content and crowdsourcing take things are different since the public is directly contributing photos, videos, or information that becomes part of the reporting. Citizen journalism is the most involved, where audience members act almost entirely like professional journalists by investigating and publishing stories on their own. Sites like Reddit and Twitter (X) often act as crowdsourcing tools for news, where posts from users get used by larger outlets.