The World-Wide Conversation: Online participatory media and international news

Abstract

This is not a paper about what is wrong with American journalism. Nor is it an analysis of the shortcomings of the American media’s international news reporting. The American public’s growing distrust of news media is well-documented. Much has also been written about the way in which the pressure to derive profits from shrinking audiences has caused most media outlets to “dumb down” their news content. According to the latest survey of American journalists by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: “Roughly half of journalists at national media outlets (51%), and about as many from local media (46%), believe that journalism is going in the wrong direction, as significant majorities of journalists have come to believe that increased bottom line pressure is "seriously hurting" the quality of news coverage.” As the work of numerous scholars and professional journalists has shown, American newspapers, magazines and TV news outlets have a limited “news hole” for international news – a news hole that has continued to shrink in recent years, if one discounts for war coverage.

This paper is an exploration of how – and to what extent – the Internet and new interactive forms of online media might provide solutions to these serious problems: lack of international news in the mainstream media, lack of incentives for commercially-driven media outlets to provide international news, the apparent lack of public interest in international news, and lack of public trust in what news does wind up being provided.