A crucial question that has arisen is whether the involvement of Web users can be extended to the funding of news organizations aimed at their financial independence from traditional funding practices. The evolution of multimodal media websites, the media crisis and the growing dissatisfaction of the citizens, create the conditions for online journalism to work with citizens, and through emerging journalistic practices such as crowdsourcing. This concept is a form of collective online activity in which a person or a group of people volunteer to engage in work that always involves mutual benefit to both sides. The main research question of this paper concerns the analysis of the current situation regarding crowdfunding and the adoption of best practices on the technological features, services, and tools used by websites around the world. Very few media have tried to apply even nowadays, the proposed model of journalism, which this study is going to research. The results of the study shape new perspectives and practices for participation, journalism, and democracy.

In the current media world, there is a huge debate about the importance of the visibility of a news website in order to secure its existence. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) practices have emerged in the news media systems around the world. This study aimed to expand the current literature about the SEO practices by focusing on examining, via the walkthrough method, the ways that news companies allow the users to comment on their online news articles. The comments on the news websites are related to the notions of social influence, information diffusion, and play an essential role as a SEO practice, for instance, by providing content and engagement. The examined sample was collected by the most visited news websites' rankings of alexa.com for a global scale and for the countries Greece and Cyprus. The findings reveal that the news websites throughout the globe use similar features and ways to support the comments of the users. In the meantime, though, a high number of the news websites did not allow the users to use their social media accounts in order to comment the provided news articles, or provided multiple comment platforms. This trend goes against the SEO practices. It is believed that this finding is associated with the difficulty of the news organizations to regulate and protect themselves by the users' comments that promote, in some case harmful rhetoric and polarization.Future Internet 2019, 11, 188 2 of 13 behavior. In the meantime, social influence is related to information diffusion. Many studies in the field have revealed the connections between the social influence and the information diffusion [10][11][12][13][14]. Information diffusion and social influence have become of great importance due to the daily use of social media platforms and the operation of search engines.Additionally, previous studies of social media platforms, such as YouTube, have demonstrated that users with similar cultural and political ideas tend to like or dislike the same cultural products [15]. For instance, Japan was one of the most characteristic examples of a country that became successful in the spread of its culture on a global scale. The anime and the manga cultural products have turned into global products. According to Otmazgin [16], this development allows Japan to have a greater influence on different state and non-state actors throughout the world. The aforementioned description regarding the influence of a country has led Nye [17] to create the theory of "soft power." According to him, "soft power" is the capability of causing individuals to adopt beliefs, results, opinions, etc., without getting paid. For a country, its "soft power" can be its policies and culture.Nowadays, social influence and information diffusion are strongly linked with the World Wide Web, social media platforms, and social participation. For more than twenty years, scholars have tried to explain the role of the new technologies in the participation of the public in crucial events, such as demonstrations and collective actions [18]....

Fake news and misinformation are a menace to the public sphere, democracy, and society with sometimes irreversible consequences. Journalists in the new era seem not to be able or willing to play their traditional role of gatekeeper and social media have made the problem even more intense. The need for truth is unnegotiable in modern democracies. Nevertheless, non-true stories and misinformation dominate media outlets with severe consequences and negative impacts on societies all over the world. Fact-checking platforms based on crowdsourcing strategies or automated digital websites might be the answer to a problem that is escalating. Initially, in order to tackle such a severe problem, researchers and experts have to monitor its characteristics. Very few research attempts have been conducted in Greece on fake news, its characteristics, origin, and impact. This dissertation scopes to map the characteristics of fake news and misinformation in an EU country such as Greece, based on the findings of “Ellinika Hoaxes” a fact-checking platform that uses in combination professional fact-checkers and crowdsourcing strategies in collaboration with Facebook. The findings shape new perspectives on the nature of misinformation and fake news in Greece and focus on new communication and fact-checking models.

The era of journalism and the participation of the readers on online media websites have changed online journalism. The research interest is now focused on removing the distinction between the publisher/entrepreneur and the journalist/user, with the ultimate goal of actively involving citizens in the journalistic process but also in the web presence of media websites. The evolution of technology, the deep media crisis and the growing dissatisfaction of the citizens, create the conditions for journalism to work with citizens, and in particular through citizen journalism and journalism crowdsourcing. This concept is a form of collective online activity in which a person or a group of people volunteer to engage in work that always involves mutual benefit to both sides. The main research question of this research concerns the analysis of the current situation regarding crowdsourcing, co-creation and UGC and the adoption of best practices such as crowdcreation, comments from the users, crowdwisdom, instant-messaging applications (MIMs) and crowdvoting used by media websites around the world. Very few media have tried to apply even nowadays, the proposed model of journalism, which this study is going to research. The results of the study shape new perspectives and practices for online journalism and democracy.

No abstract