Abstract

This study uses a thematic approach to analyse engaged journalism projects. This research analyzed more than 50 cases covered and breaks down case studies from the past into three main categories which are; random acts of empowerment, content collaborations and facilitating conversations. Further categorization identified new strategies for community outreach practices. One of the findings is that about a quarter of the cases are not about engaged audiences in content creation but rather about engaging citizens. Engaged journalism can evolve society and this is being accepted by the media and its role as a community organizer. This changed concept will help journalists and media scholars to understand what they need to do when talking about engaged journalism.

Key Words

Engagement Journalism, Media Practices, Digital Technology, Citizen Journalism

Introduction

There are two types of engagements. The first involves the media economy which analyses the situation to attract and garner the audience. This matter is more important in media and belongs to the business industry. The more audience engages in media content will eventually help the media economists to earn from their business of media productions. This engagement belongs to the advertising industry (Nelson & Webster, 2016).

The other type of engagement is cultural, social and political impacts which are fascinating the journalism scholars. This comes under the umbrella of "engaged journalism". This is the type of journalism which understood the need of its audience and embraces them (Batsell, 2015). This is more important for any media to have an engaged audience. 

It is very important to note that this time is embarking on history in terms of the relationship between media and its audiences. The historian of this century will write about engaged journalism as a bridge between the audience and media. Engaged media has played a very important thus convincing role in social and political change. Even, the impact of engaged journalism is far more social.  We can even let the media practitioner understand the power of engagement through the changes it brought and brought. This paper is an effort to define engaged journalism practices which are observed in publically available content rather than conversations. Further, this paper has subcategorized the theme and explained it. 




Multiple Approaches in Engaged Journalism

Engaged journalism research falls in theoretical approaches with the purpose of helping us comprehend that what are the patterns of media engagement in digitized worlds. (Batsell, 2015). It is realized in the age of the digital information world that audiences should be engaged with each other. Digital information and communication technologies are the driving forces for the concept involved in this study. There are multiple practices in journalism which have become important in order to engage citizens. Many of the engagement practices are traced to citizen journalism. Arguably, society cannot negate the importance of digital communication technologies but not always embedded in each other (Rosenberry & St. John, 2009).  

The sample of this study is based on the database from 2010 to 2020. The 2nd decade of the 21st century noticed face-to-face community engagement and communication to the practices. One of the examples of the digital augmentation of face-to-face engagement is social media usage for sharing and publishing content across platforms in order to stay connected with multiple audiences. 

This study analyzed various digital engagement projects of the audience. Post COVID world has witnessed more community engagement through social media rather than in reality. This study leads us to understand if journalism could avail adopt the right algorithm to connect with the audience. The practices we need to engage with the audience in a relatively digitized world. This is the necessity of journalism to engage the audience in order to retain its place in society otherwise, digital media will replace it.

This study is an effort to understand the journalism effort in engaged practices for years. The sample is selected from 2010 to 2020. The collection is short stories. Its focuses on how journalism, community and media practitioner efforts in the projects in order to bring society close to media. A sample of 50 cases has been analyzed through thematic analysis. Thematic analysis is based on content-driven projects and conversation and space that bring society close to media and media practitioners.

A thematic analysis of 50 cases offers some summary terms which could help build an engaged journalism concept. It could look relatively at the prevalence of content-driven projects i.e. published news stories versus the content that brings the community together to share conversations and spaces. 

Background of the Study

Various academic writings addressed the subject of engaged journalism. Multiple approaches and subcategories have been devised to address the subject under study. The terms used for engaged journalism are solution journalism, public journalism, civic journalism and citizen journalism and more (Glasser, 1999). Most of the literature deals with the ways professional journalists and news users collaborate with each other and shape content (Gillmor, 2003).

Journalism scholars are often interested to investigate the working behaviours of newsroom and engagement journalism from the perspective of journalism and editors working stance (Domingo et al., 2008). 

The focus of 2010 was the era of disturbances into new routines, organization structures and the overall industry. That was the starting point for research on engaged journalism. Engagement journalism is not to produce content but to engage civic conversation and communities and inform the public. Batsell (2015) define the new paradox of journalism in the early 2000s. he laid down the focus on changing patterns of economic interest and new ways of making money in the market. When we talk about Journalism and focus on this word, similarly, engagement is also important. The value of journalism in a democratic state is speaking acceptance by media professionals whereas; the value of community engagement continues to be debated in journalism circles (Meyer & Carey, 2014).

Input Continuum of Previous Research

Previously, Engaged journalism is closely associated with participatory journalism. In order to look into the news organization with its citizen, the actors are news websites. Citizen pages are different from websites and other volunteer projects for citizen engagements. (Rosenberry & St. John, 2009). Walls (2017) stated that citizen journalism and professionals have no comparison and that it cannot be criteria to evaluate the work of professionals with that of citizen journalists. The analysis could be useful for some kind of research but cannot be a comparison of how deeply an organization is involved with its audience. 




Theoretical Scheme

The reciprocity theory in journalism studies asks why community engagement is important (Lewis et al., 2014). People start to expect mutuality when they engage with one another. People think of their benefits once interacted with each other (Lewis et al., 2014). Reciprocity is about banked social capital. Journalists are often detached from the audience as a neutral force. They can stay objective if associated with the general public (Lewis et al., 2014). 

This study has focused on many cases and projects as samples and feature descriptions. This research does address that crowdsourcing is a new concept in journalism but to figure out what type of technique is successful for community engagement. There are certain themes to be addressed in terms of content creation. The research could help pave the way for the working vocabulary of journalism for audience engagements. This could help in analyzing that what are the areas which could be reached to enhance public relation building of media with society. This study is gathering data on the following questions. 

1. What are the practices of media organizations when they do engage in Journalism?

2. How are community conversations incorporated with the content produced by journalists?

3. What are the efforts of journalists in collaborative content creation?

Methodology

Thematic analysis is the research technique implied. It is a suitable analysis for qualitative data. This method has been introduced by astride-Stirling in 2001. This unveils the practices and techniques implied in quantitative data. Thematic analysis is used for testing existing knowledge in any particular discipline. More of the themes could be generated in order to better understand the phenomena. A short project is the best sample to apply thematic analysis. It is a hard technique for large amounts of data. This is the simplest process. Anyone reads the data you want to do analysis on. The researcher can transcribe it and then construct sub-themes and explains them. 

This text-based analysis has 60 digital documents. There were 24 case studies of 1000 to 2200 words. The time frame covered is 2010 to 2020. The news organization which originated the content was from Islamabad. The data is from digital networks, radio, newspapers and websites. 

This research analysis the role of journalism, the challenges to journalists and their success in their stories. Each story is analysed on different grounds and each story has a different connotation. It is important to analyse the notion behind projections; either it is online content creation or bringing the community together.

The most important themes have been analyzed and given importance in the selected sample. The outcomes have also been studied with depth understanding. Journalism practices have changed within history and society. The study is an attempt to document those changes and the way these affected societies. 

Findings and Discussion

Thematic collaborations tended to rule the cases recorded in this news coverage data. Many of the case study write-ups and extended briefs were recorded within the accumulated data of news coverage to develop as professionals and analysts. Other than that subject was distinguished. 

Whereas numerous media centres it was as characterized as an arrangement of media measurements (Nelson 2019), the venture talked about centres on society. In a few ways, these endeavours are a continuation of civic news coverage and open news coverage developments. 

There is a guarantee here for building social correspondence in communities through news coverage. In the event that anybody is progressing the “transaction costs” recognized by Lewis et al. (2014) and build up community correspondence through news coverage. These are those who allow subsidizing to undertake. But we ought to look at the organizing subjects, along with uncommon consideration given to the “content collaborations” and “facilitating conversation.”

Content Collaborations

Themes and venture briefs examined here, which is 64% of the overall. They are characterized as direct sufficient as locked-in news coverage ventures and occasions where the essential reason is to accumulate or contribute to news substance. The endless larger part of substance collaborations is swarm-sourced announcing endeavours, characterized here as the hone of taking expansive questions or issues and asking an expansive number of online donors to assist the venture in little ways.

 The collective endeavours, ordinarily of personal clients, are utilized to arrange data, and information, and/or to compare encounters. Crowdsourcing takes numerous shapes, and it can be done online. A little number of the “engaging person citizens” cases say extra crowd-engaging components such as crowdfunding.

One of the foremost important notes on the subject of substance involvement is how equally part of the ventures was open to the public as detailing ventures. 

Of the collaboration cases, 94%, of writers locked in specifically with personal citizens. This is because the organization control differential is more prominent when news organizations come in contact with people. This could be noteworthy as it empowers writers to preserve control more effectively over story determination, reportage, and surrounding indeed as their news organization illustrates an eagerness to come in contact with citizens in setting the news motivation. Moreover, having the notion to change the thoughts of bunches of people is the more costly approach. Planning with organized bunches to make substance requires learning. 

A guided asks is when a news organization looks for stuff and bits of knowledge on a specific subject or story decided by writers to be newsworthy (Torchia, 2018). The tradeoff is that citizens with small information on the subject might only engage as a gathering of people individuals. Seemingly the potential to set up correspondence is displayed, be that as it may, since writers are taking note and coordinating activity to address an issue thousands of citizens are having.

Facilitating Conversation

The encouraging discussion sort of engagement accounts for 23% of the ventures considered here. This organizing topic is characterized as a movement or occasion facilitated by the reason of close relations with individuals together to examine issues or to induce them to analyze one another instead of creating news themes. There is a distinction between meet-ups assembled to produce story thoughts or to conduct crowd-sourcing endeavours.

The essential reason beneath “facilitating conversation” social building with cultivated dialogue as prove by points of interest within the writings of these 23% of cases and ventures. The information industry may utilize these occasions for numerous purposes such as educating community individuals almost majority rule processes and/or advancing the news brand in expansion to cultivating discourse. In spite of the fact that these sorts of occasions don't produce news content, they are not fundamentally less fundamental for the advancing part of a news organization since they may offer assistance to preserve.

A few curated discussions that showed up in this information were collected as live meet-ups. Additionally, individuals in power to have control of conference centres or comparable spaces to confront queries from the audience within the newsroom are the powerful ones to impact the theme of the content. These types of occasions may not raise incomes. In numerous cases, there was not indeed an endeavour to turn these occasions into cash creators, the reliable viewpoint of such sorts of ventures is that they were pre-planned to move forward the working of the information industry within the community through serving a few social requirements (McIntyre, 2019). 

Most of the occasions depicted within the information that fits this subject were not as centred, be that as it may. In reality, it is troublesome to classify these occasions as either “guided” or “open topic” since at times indeed the guided discourses secured a few clearing metropolitan issues. Advance ponder will uncover the case and how the hones once known as civic news coverage may be being reconstituted beneath the locked-in news coverage umbrella.

After topical coding and examination, it was decided that the fundamental subjects Contain the “facilitating conversation” organizing topic. Those fundamental topics are “person-to-person” meet-ups, “truth-to-power”, and at large the "soul-looking journalists” topic. Every point presents one of the kind openings for follow-up research.

The person-to-person meet-ups were common, making up 9% of the 23% cases. This is an imaginative endeavour to undertake to bring community individuals together to share stories and to endeavour for shared understanding. Most were open-ended in nature. A few had the express reason for bridging partitions between ethnic bunches or political groups.

These engagement ventures were held live and in person in a real-life setting. After, COVID people are reluctant to meet one another and hesitant to have live communication (in-person). 

People who come out on theses occasions were moderately, but this was frequent since they were ready to meet-ups with a couple of individuals. One plausibility is that this becomes a work of government not basically approximately the administration. On the off chance that the democratic experiment within the Joined together, states needed to proceed, maybe a few already unbelievable steps ought to be taken within the way governing bodies facilitate with.

The "soul-looking journalists” alludes to a few cases of dialogue help. The forum where most of the general audience was taken together beside news experts to talk about the industry. The result, of this constrained test, was regularly that individuals of the open essentially needed to tell writers what they are doing off-base.

The ultimate essential subject in this area is “truth to power,” which speaks to gatherings where civic leaders were welcomed to reply to the queries from audience members of neighbourhood news media. One or two of these occasions were focused on particular issues whereas the rest were open-ended in nature.  

Many of the write-ups for these occasions recommend that they eventually shape and impact news scope, which is promising within the age of organized, advanced communication. In spite of the fact that most of these cases don't demonstrate that the following is happening, future “truth to power” sessions and comparable advanced stages set by news destinations seem to track results.

Acts of Empowerment

The subject speaks to the overall cases that commonly have a few ideas of cultivating strength. Enabling individuals is an honourable objective, and maybe it is as well cruel and irregular as a few of the other occasions but what these have in common is that they don't include the public and writers collaborating with each other to create news themes, nor they implied to keep community members in conjunction with one another to entertain and solve the social issues. The essential definition of this empowerment is a thought that holds on in news coverage. News substances themselves could be as citizen-focused as to be engaging and to constitute engagement. 

The essential subject of “empowering content” fits this charge. It is a point note; this sort of announcement can be great news coverage. It could be imaginative and it could cover an extent of viewpoints, but, for illustration, sending understudy photojournalists to report understated society one day as an instructive workout may do more to mollify blame around auxiliary imbalances in news scope (Bruni, 2018). The themes here included verse, craftsmanship, computer education and old-fashioned perusing and composing.

Conclusion

Many of the industry engagements are not new and modem. Since the 1980s, a small portion of civic engagement which existing in systems.  (Rosenberry & St John, 2009). Community news coverage researchers noted that even the smaller news organizations and the new media working in small regions are also the same and that those outlets are not different from the national or international channels. 

Every member of society is part of a small community in commerce, family, education, or numerous fields and multiple things one is doing under these umbrellas but hardly the news media which is having shared endeavour with the general and civic society.

Making associations with the public to assist keep up a working society is difficult. This does not work in an age of data excess and self-selected news substance. Writers and researchers must be able to explain and stick within the parameters of news where news and societal improvement really works. It is to construct cross-sectional common understanding to encourage community-level things done.

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