Online Journalists’ Beliefs and Attitudes toward User Participation in News Media / İnternet Gazetecilerinin Haber Medyasında Kullanıcı Katılımına İlişkin Görüş ve Tutumları1

Previous studies concluded that the online news media in Turkey are remarkably slow and sluggish to respond to participatory journalism. Most stages of the news production process are closed to user participation or, when allowed, the participation is strictly controlled by journalists. This paper sets out to explore the factors shaping this present state of participatory journalism and hindering the adoption of user participation. For this purpose, the paper examines the online journalists’ beliefs and attitudes toward user participation and usergenerated content, with the aid of in-depth interviews conducted with a total of 12 online journalists (7 executive editors and 5 editors) from nine different online newspapers. In these interviews, the main aim is to develop a better understanding of how online journalists consider the benefits and risks of user participation and how they react to the conflict situation between professional control and open participation. In addition to this, the wider contextual factors that shape journalists’ beliefs and attitudes toward user participation, like the economic and organizational structures of their online newspapers, are also considered and brought into the discussion