Abstract
Citizen participation in the news-making process has been a hopeful promise since the 1990s. Observers hoped for a rejuvenation of journalism and democracy alike. However, many of the enthusiastic theoretical concepts on user engagement did not endure close empirical examination. Some of the major fallacies of these early works (to whom the author contributed himself) will be outlined in this article. As a bleak flip side to these utopian ideas, the concept of “dark participation” is introduced here. As research has revealed, this type of user engagement seems to be growing parallel to the recent wave of populism in Western democracies. In a systematization, some essential aspects of dark participation will be differentiated. Finally, the benefits of (also) looking at the wicked side of things will be discussed.
Highlights
Issue This article is part of the issue “News and Participation through and beyond Proprietary Platforms in an Age of Social Media”, edited by Oscar Westlund (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway) and Mats Ekström (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
There was a certain heroic and noble Samaritan attitude connected to wearing it, and it felt a little bit “punk”—or at least as punk as academics at conferences dare to be between conference cookies and presentation marathons
For the younger generation of journalism researchers, “legacy” media seemed to be stuck in completely crystallized traditions and was awfully outdated, especially in contrast to the exciting new things developing on the Internet
Summary
Save Journalism! I remember a dear colleague wearing a shirt with that slogan at a conference sometime during the early 2000s. For the younger generation of journalism researchers, “legacy” media seemed to be stuck in completely crystallized traditions and was awfully outdated, especially in contrast to the exciting new things developing on the Internet. Politicians, public relations officers, and other stakeholders largely ignored the “new kids on the block”; there were stories of online journalists not even being admitted to press conferences, being seated somewhere in the back, or being perceived as “computer nerds” (Deggerich, 2001a, 2001b). This situation changed rather quickly in just a few years. This allows for a more nuanced understanding of participation, and in the end, a more realistic approach that allows for actual change (Section 4)
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