Citizen journalism plays the role of supplementing legacy news outlets by providing alternative angles possibly absent from those outlets. Arguments about environmental issues in mainstream news outlets usually focus on limited viewpoints, and citizen journalism has the potential to increase the visibility of minor viewpoints about environmental issues. Using the hierarchical model of influence on news content (Shoemaker & Reese, 1991), this study examines different levels of citizen-involved activities to predict the presence of minority viewpoints in the news. Instead of treating citizen journalism sites as homogeneous organizations, this study looks into several levels of citizen-involved activities (individual vs. organizational) and features (online-only, opinionated, non-profit, community-focused, and alternative mission) to incorporate different ways and formats of citizen participation in newsmaking. Arctic oil drilling was selected as a case study because of its wide range of geographic impact (local, national, and global) and the potentially diverse viewpoints that can be advocated. A sample was collected from the Google News database and environmental citizen sites on the Knight Community News Network and the Columbia Journalism Review. A content analysis was conducted using news stories and opinion pieces appearing between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2015. An eight-predictor logistic regression model was computed to test whether citizen journalism increases the number and proportion of minority viewpoints presented in the media. Two additional logistic regression models were applied to compare predictors of minority viewpoints among professional and citizen journalists. This study contributes to an understanding of the hierarchical model of influence by testing the model under the circumstances where media routines and organizational influences differ significantly from traditional media settings. Results show that the chance citizen writers express opposing and minority viewpoints is solely determined by the norms of journalistic format—new insights are usually given in opinion pieces rather than news stories. Apart from journalistic format, professional journalists’ work is also predicted by available resources in media routines and by regional audience’s preferences outside the news organizations. The professional routines and requirements to fulfill the organization’s goals do not apply to citizen journalists’ work. Citizen authorship or stories published on sites accepting user-submitted stories do not add new or alternative viewpoints to the issue discussion. Instead, citizen journalists tend to defend their positions by giving more popular rationales—for example, ecological sustainability. Citizens’ work published in news media helps strengthen the popular viewpoints instead of supplementing alternative views into public discussion. Methodologically, this study provides a quantifiable and replicable measurement of viewpoint diversity that can be applied to examine different public issues in media content.
Read
