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RJI Research

An Experimental Test of Audience Response to News Stories Written in Collaborative, Twitter, and Wikinews Styles

Research study conducted by Doreen Marchionni
In collaboration with Esther Thorson, PhD

Reported by Dan Neuharth, PhD

People increasingly seem to seek a human and conversational presence in the news, treating electronic media almost as human and viewing the use of ordinary citizens in news stories as adding to credibility. New forms of journalism are appearing on sites such as Twitter and Wikinews. Even mainstream media are using a collaborative form of journalism that includes more comments from ordinary citizens than traditional news stories.

A key question is how credible these new forms of journalism are to news consumers.

Doreen Marchionni, in collaboration with Esther Thorson, Ph.D., compared three of the new styles of journalism – the collaborative news approach, Twitter, and Wikinews – on how credible, conversational, and likable they are to consumers. The study surveyed 67 students taking UM School of Journalism courses on principles of American journalism and strategic-communications research. Students were shown three stories – one each about job prospects upon graduation, college plagiarism tools to catch cheaters, and college drinking – in all three formats.

Readers found the greatest credibility and expertise in collaborative news stories, followed by Twitter, then Wikinews.

Collaborative news stories balance qualities of traditional and conversational journalism. Collaborative news stories are written by professional journalists but also carry a preponderance of quotations from ordinary people rather than public officials, and lead with real-people anecdotes.

“Stories perceived as having a good proportion of conversational features also yield higher credibility and expertise scores. News organizations would be wise to consider these results,” wrote Marchionni. This study indicates that, at least among young news consumers, the more journalists seem to interact with the public, the more highly consumers rate those journalists’ credibility and expertise.

In the study the collaborative news stories were presented as having run in a local Missouri newspaper and emphasized both in the body of the story and in a box how much the fictional reporter went out of her way to talk with many citizens to gather information for the story.

The Twitter stories featured a brief exchange on Twittersearch between a fictional journalist seeking information for a story and ordinary citizens who might know something about the issue. After participants read the exchange, they then read a short news story from a mainstream newspaper Web site that included references to the journalist having used Twitter to help report the story.

The Wikinews stories included tags in the text that drew attention to material two citizens contributed to the story. Wikinews, with the slogan “The free news source you can write,” features content written and edited by private citizens, though some of its articles link to mainstream media news stories for additional information and background. Wikinews stories tend to be written in an informal style and do not include identifying features of the citizens who wrote them, although in this study such identifying features were included.

Marchionni measured students’ responses in several areas including: how much they thought each reporter was like them; how much they felt they got to know the reporter from reading the article; how much the reporter interacted with ordinary people in writing the story; and how friendly and open the reporter seemed towards others.

In addition, the study measured how credible readers perceived both the individual story and web site as a whole along with how much expertise the reporter seemed to possess. The study also measured how well the readers liked each story and format.

Among the more surprising findings were how the readers rated the various fictional journalists as similar or dissimilar to themselves.

Even though Wikinews touts that it is written by ordinary people, readers did not perceive themselves as similar to the writers. In addition, readers rated the Wikinews stories lowest on credibility and authority, suggesting that readers trust journalism by professionals, despite some research to the contrary. Readers did, however, like reading Wikinews’ essay-like, colloquial prose even if they did find the stories less credible than the Twitter or collaborative news articles.

Readers perceived Wikinews and Twitter stories as the most informal and that worked against perceived expertise.

With Twitter, the more casual the journalist appeared to be, the less credible readers found the organization behind her, perhaps as though the organization failed to properly train her. Even in the collaborative stories, journalists’ perceived friendly openness hurt the credibility of that news web site.

“If you want readers to see you as credible and authoritative, take care not to come across too casual or friendly,” Marchionni advised journalists.

Note: Charts based on analysis of covariance among answers to multiple questions on each theme. More about the collaborative news model is presented in:
Thorson, E. & Duffy, M. (2006). A needs-based theory of the revolution in news use and its implications for the newspaper business (Tech. Rep.) Columbia, MO: University of Missouri-Columbia, Reynolds Journalism Institute at the School of Journalism.

Read more on Wikipedia-ing the News
Wikipedia-ing the News

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