Participatory journalism is very interesting, as it’s a blur of normal journalism and the public’s discussion on a variety of topics. Now being a sports guy, I see participatory journalism in a variety of ways that makes the world of sports a little more interesting.
User-generated-content: This is where normal individuals who aren’t journalists contribute to a story. If it’s video, photo, audio, or any other form of content. This can be crucial to any story and in sports, user content can help an organization be first to report big news. An example in soccer is when on an old episode of Sky Sports MNF, the host let people ask the pundits questions about anything soccer related. example when a fan ask a rather amusing question to former Manchester United player Gary Neville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz5w747wkZ0
Playing off the video from my User-generated-content is my next view on sources.
Sources: The biggest part of any story in general, sources in participatory journalism is very interesting. As that’s how a lot of sports journalism is based of. if it’s interviews of players, coaches, and/or fans, sports has a lot of it. Especially when it comes to stuff that happened in a locker room years ago, players from that time are your best source for that. In the video above, Gary Neville gives his thoughts as a coach when his team Valencia loss 7-0 to Barcelona in the Spanish Copa del Rey semi-finals in 2016. Another example is when Roy Keane was talking about his time playing for Manchester United in the 1998/99 season and his first hand recount with his teammates at that time. https://youtu.be/HPn_KZysAYg?si=pHgxb4U4yMjc5dOy
Citizen journalism: When ordinary people do their own journalism, usually independently, where they post to their own website like a blog. Or, when they post to a social group where other citizens can participate to the story. In soccer there’s a Facebook group called ‘Fabrizio Romano’ which is a soccer news group named after the famed soccer journalist of the same name. https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1CKEc58EZJ/
User Feedback: In sports this is the comment section of any article or news that is posted on social media. While they don’t generally contribute to the story itself, media companies do notice it and can use it to their advantage. Case in point, here’s today’s post from Sky Sports asking fan their thoughts about the first half of Manchester City v. Liverpool. https://www.instagram.com/p/DGbGUbBI4tN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Crowdsourcing: When a group of people with knowledge of a topic come to contribute to a story. This is very similar to user content but to a larger scale and is usually seen when major moments in sports history occurs. You can see this with Wikipedia which is essentially a crowdsourcing website. Documentaries can also be considered crowdsourcing as multiple people are needed to make one. You also see this many times when tragedy happens. When Kobe Bryant died in 2020, many people in the sports world shared their memories of him from playing with or against him, and memories of him as a person
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