Quality Management of User-Generated Content in Participatory Journalism

Newsrooms utilize increasing amounts of user-generated content (UGC) in news making. However, managing the quality of UGC is challenging. Our three-phase study identifies qualities of newsworthy UGC, and ways to enhance the quality of contributions by online feedback. Review of 31 UGC-driven websites revealed as the most used methods of improving the quality of contributions flagging of inappropriate content, counts of sharing to social media services, ratings, user’s activity statistics, and badges. Interviews of news editors and reader reporters showed a conceptual difference in the qualities of good news content. Interviewed reader reporters expressed the feedback from the newsroom as the most important for their development in addition to seeing the examples by other reader reporters. Content was perceived as more important than competition in case of readers’ UGC. Communal quality management conventions, online community elements, and guidelines for developing quality management are presented.Peer reviewe