(Limor Peer)

Over the last few years, media industry observers have advocated the idea of redefining news as conversation (see Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen and here. See also OJR article). Their main rationale is that an open conversation between professional journalists, bloggers, public officials, and the public in general, will improve the quality of news. Another reason for embracing the notion of dialogue, articulated here by my colleague Rich Gordon, is that conversation is integral to community and that an online community enabled by a news organization can enhance the connection between that organization and its audience.

Improving the quality of the product and having a more engaged audience should be key considerations for any strategic, forward-thinking media company - and these are things that the Media Management Center and Readership Institute work hard to advance. But there's another reason why news as conversation is a better model - one that is obvious, but that doesn't often enter the day-to-day production of journalism: it makes for a better democracy.

Books have been written about this connection between the news media and the health of democracy, and I will not go into it here. What I do want to share is a little study we have done here which unequivocally shows that news as a dialogue works better for democracy than news as a monologue (it will be available later on this site).

Last fall, we collected data from the 100 Impact markets for our 2006 RBS study. In addition to asking 30 people in each market about their usage of the local daily newspaper, we also asked about their usage of the paper's Web site. We published the results of that analysis here. Briefly, we found that in a given newspaper market in the United States, only about a third of the people report ever using the newspaper's Web site, indicating untapped potential. Those who do access the newspaper's Web site tend to be younger, more educated, and higher income than those who do not. Men and women access the sites to the same extent, but men report more frequent usage.

When on a newspaper's site, people most commonly read, view, link, and search. Fewer contribute content, communicate with reporters and bloggers, or request news alerts sent to mobile devices and RSS feeds (this may be more a reflection of what sites offer than users' inclinations to use such features, but we did not analyze the sites themselves).

We looked at a total of 38 different online behaviors and clustered them into five categories:

• Consume Information - captures the idea that people consume content online in a passive way, similar to the way they would use the print newspaper but with the added benefit of digital features such as hypertext and the search function to find additional information of interest.
• Express Opinion - focuses on those digital features that enable conversation between the user and other people or enable to user to express his or her opinion; the idea is that people use the Web site to participate in, and talk about, the news.
• Monitor Conversation - refers to the monitoring, as well as participation in, online conversation via blogs. Express Opinion and Monitor Conversation are aspects of behavior that involve conversation, which is enabled, and carried out, by the medium (Internet). We label these behaviors "interactive."
• Trade Goods - describes behavior related to online commerce through advertising; the user here is a consumer of goods, using the site as a marketplace.
• Manage Services - refers to managing the relationship with the media institution as a service provider. It has elements of both customer service and control (i.e., "pulling" information rather than having information "pushed" at them).

Here's where it gets interesting: The people who use newspaper Web sites in more interactive ways also participate more in offline politics. In contrast, people who go on the site and passively consume information are much less likely to take part in civic activities. Similarly, people who focus on commercial activities or customer service features on the site, tend to be less frequent participants in civic activities.

Even when controlling for demographics, interest in news, and Web savvy, the analysis shows that interactive behavior - expressing opinion and preferences and monitoring online conversation - predicts offline political participation.

In order to encourage civic participation, news organizations would do well if they saw their role as a space where conversation takes place. News organizations that see their mission as being part of the democratic process have the potential, via their Web sites, to increase political participation if they encourage interactive behavior among their users. This means newspaper Web sites should do more to invite ordinary people to contribute original content (this does not have to be relegated to the politics area of the site), offer more opportunities for people to take polls and rate stories, and more opportunities to share content freely or respond to reporters and stories.

Thinking about readers, viewers, or users as a public rather than an audience should be seen as a positive move. A public is defined by interaction among its members. Ultimately, democracy is better off with a public than an audience.



By Limor Peer (l-peer@northwestern.edu)
Limor Peer is research director for the Media Management Center and Readership Institute.