From News Receiver to News Produser—The New Relationship between Journalists and Audience in Web 2.0

Abstract

The development of Web 2.0 culture has made social media important instruments for transforming the traditional one-way news production and reception process into a mode of collabora-tive and interactive journalism. This paper aims to investigating the effects of social media on the relationship between journalists and "produsers"-a hybrid combining the roles of producer and user adopted by news audiences in the Web 2.0 age. Based on a heuristic model of audience inclusion in journalism, this paper conducted a web survey of Taiwan's journalists and analyzed the interactive relationship that they had with their audience through various types of social media. The findings suggest that electronic media journalists and journalists with Facebook accounts that are open to the public are more inclined to interact with audience. Male journalists interact more with audience than female journalists. In addition, journalists who identify with public participation in the news and subsequently integrate audience outputs into their products and work routines , and those whose media use emphasizes audience involvement exhibit higher levels of audience interaction through their Facebook accounts. Finally, the results reveal that the accessibility of journalists' Facebook accounts to audience members is the most powerful variable in the journalists' interactions with audience.