Dark Participation

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.

What’s New about Whatsapp for News? A Mixed-Method Study on News Outlets’ Strategies for Using WhatsApp

“…These results are in line with findings indicating that journalists view the audiences not as partners collaborating on news stories but as "active users" (Hermida et al 2011;Cozma and Chen 2013;Noguera-Vivo 2013). Further, we find that the challenging perspective of "dark participation" (Quandt 2018) is a minor factor for WhatsApp, although it has become apparent for other social media (Loosen 2016). In contrast to other social media and news sites, journalists do not have to moderate comments sections when distributing news via WhatsApp.…”

“…Loosen (2016) differentiates between three different ways of how journalists integrate the audience in the editorial process: as an economically motivated strategy to build audience loyalty (editorial analytics), as a chance to enrich diversity in public discourse (participation) andbecoming apparent more recentlyas a challenge originating from hate speech, propaganda, and other unwanted content posted online. Quandt (2018) describes this kind of user engagement with the concept of "dark participation". However, the third perspective plays a minor role for WhatsApp.…”

Discussing Emotions in Digital Journalism

“…L€ unenborg and Maier (2018) show how current phenomena like hate speech and "shitstorms" via social media are to be understood as "explicit public articulations of emotions; at the same time they produce affective dynamics, which can be described as contagious and viral". Hence, at the reverse side of the optimism surrounding the early days of digital media, many of the enthusiastic theoretical concepts on user engagement did not endure close empirical inspection (Quandt 2018). There is now an ever-increasing fear of populist turbulence, viral panics, experts under attack, and disinformation.…”

Active audiences and social discussion on the digital public sphere. Review article

“…Often, it is in relation to the concept of the public sphere that the potentially democratising role of active audiences is highlighted (Papacharissi, 2010). However, there have been frequent observations that the early research on active audiences was perhaps over-optimistic (Borger et al, 2013;Molyneux, 2018;Quandt, 2018). This realism was the result of multiple empirical studies, which repositioned the role of the active audience and its ability of deliberation in the new public sphere, particularly in two areas: -comments on the news, and -the conversation opened up by the expansion of social networks.…”