The effective participation of the audience in the production of news: encouraging opportunities through data journalism

Abstract

Digital tools allow and encourage users "to participate in the creation and circulation of media” (Lewis, 2012). This participation can be considered as a remedy against the growing disconnection between journalism and citizens, also as a formula for a greater democratization of the media (Negroponte, 1996 y Castells, 2001). However, most studies show that rarely the participation of the audience become significant, papers indicate that it is actually quite unusual to allow citizens to be part of the productive process. (Domingo et al., 2008). The journalistic organization has not transferred the power to the recipients and the interaction with the audience is only welcome as comments about the information (Peters & Witschge, 2014). This work aims to demonstrate how the Data Journalism comes to enable this effective participation of the audience in the process of news production. Our main objective is to define the terms in which the participation of the audience takes place in Data Journalism, we aim to categorize how and to what extent this relationship occurs and what benefits it brings to the information. To achieve the objectives set for this work we have analyzed the Data Journalism works awarded in the Data Journalism Awards since its foundation in 2012. These awards are the most prestigious of the world and they have also been the reference for other international researches because selecting award-winning works involves studying a sample with quality (Hermida, 2017; Ojo & Heravi, 2017). After an in-depth analysis, sixteen pieces were detected, of more than a hundred, in which citizen participation was perceived.