Reader comments as press criticism: Implications for the journalistic field

Abstract

This study examines the actions of readers as press critics and, therefore, as potentially powerful shapers of journalism’s cultural capital. An analysis of 2 years’ worth of online reader comments on the ombudsman columns of three national news organizations reveals readers’ support of – and even nostalgia for – mainstream journalism values such as objectivity, echoing earlier research suggesting the stability of the journalistic field in the face of challenges from new players such as bloggers. But commenters’ critiques of journalistic performance also employed social, and not only professional, values, representing a potential challenge to journalist autonomy.

When News Meets the Audience: How Audience Feedback Online Affects News Production and Consumption

“…News websites now allow audiences to leave comments, which are also visible to other users, right next to news articles and videos. Unlike letters to the editor that are often placed in a separate section and published only a few days after the original articles had been published, if ever, user comments become visible to other readers instantaneously, especially when comments are left unmoderated (Craft, Vos, & Wolfgang, ). Individual readers also publish their opinions about news events and issues on their social media accounts; post comments on online discussion forums (Lou, ); or use their personal blogs to engage in press criticism, questioning news accounts and calling out what they perceive as transgressions of how journalism ought to be (Vos, Craft, & Ashley, ).…”

The power of the cover: Symbolic contests around the Boston bombing suspect’s Rolling Stone cover

“…Bloggers who criticize traditional media employ traditional journalistic standards and common frames of normative references in their discourse (Vos et al, 2011). So do readers who comment on news websites (Craft et al, 2015). The audience has clearly formed its own channel for news construction (Singer and Ashman, 2009), meriting a reconsideration of the audience's role in journalism's interpretive community.…”

Media Discourse About Entrepreneurial Journalism

“…If changes in journalistic practice are to lead to a shift in cultural capital, that shift should be evident in the normative discourse of the journalistic field, which will cast some new practices and ideas as legitimate and some as illegitimate (Craft, Vos, and Wolfgang 2015). Moreover, whether emergent practices and ideas are defined as heterodox or as orthodox, relative to established cultural capital, is important in positioning the newcomers within the field (Waisbord 2013).…”