Is Citizen News Alternative? Online News Platforms and the BP Oil Spill

• In Event: Citizens as Collaborators: Extending the Voices of Journalism

Abstract

For disasters with a culpable human element like the BP oil spill, alternative media are of heightened importance. With emerging content forums and news practices blurring the distinctions between competing journalistic paradigms, this study helps to illuminate those which best promote alternative ideals. Content analysis was conducted for three different hosts for online citizen journalism. Corporate (CNN’s iReport), alternative (Indymedia), and independent blogs’ news stories on the spill (N=1,566) were coded for sources, links, interactivity, tone, and contestation of mainstream information. This helps determine which type of platform is most likely to cultivate news that does not merely extend the mainstream. This study contributes to concepts of alternative media in an expanding communications environment, and parses out the varying functions of those who produce news at different points on the paradigmatic continuum.

Author

• Benjamin A. Lyons, Southern Illinois U - Carbondale