The five main types of participatory journalism discussed in Chapter Three were sources, user feedback, user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and citizen journalism.
The sources are where you gather your information on a story. These are people or organizations that provide you with information or expert opinions. Journalists usually seek two types of sources for their stories. They reach out to experts and people with a personal or emotional connection to the story.
User feedback are the individuals that comment, share, and discuss the story. The more engagement in a specific story, the higher the likelihood that the story is going to gain traction.
User-generated content is anything that a user on a journalist’s site contributed. An example would be if a viewer submitted a picture for a specific story. When the contributor shares the story, It will drive others to their site.
Crowdsourcing is when multiple individuals work together on a story. This also encourages efficiency when multiple experts work on one story together. An example is Wikipedia, where various individuals come together to work on a story.
These different types of participatory journalism show the various levels of participation from the audience, with citizen journalism being the highest because the audience is truly impacting the story. The lowest participation is user feedback because they are participating, but only in the comment section, where their ideas do not affect the story.
An example of citizen journalism is a group called “Food Critics of McHenry” on Facebook. This is a Facebook group from my hometown where individuals will visit our town and review the restaurant. They will review everything from the wait time to the service and the quality of their meals. This is citizen journalism because these people are not professional food critics but just people who live in the town and want to share their experience of restaurants with others.
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