Abstract

Wikinews began in November 2004 as a collaborative online journalism project and sister project of Wikipedia, the well-known collaborative online encyclopedia. This article explores how Wikinews members have defined “news” and the ramifications of that definition for how they have been able to produce news collaboratively. One of the defining characteristics of Wikinews is a dedication to the neutral point of view (NPOV) policy, which was adopted from Wikipedia. NPOV serves as a structuring device for defining news, but also conducts a great deal of organizational work and is in turn structured by the discourses and debates of NPOV in stories. Further, a commitment to an organizational culture of consensus and collaboration, although not without handicaps in a news production environment, is a laudable achievement among Wikinews participants and could be a precursor to the way that citizen journalists will become more involved in news production in a sustainable way.

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