Engagement With Live Blogs: When Passive Consumption Overpowers Participation

Abstract

This study investigated citizen participation in live blogs in the changing media ecosystem from the public sphere perspective. The live blog is a web-native, participatory-oriented journalistic genre comprised of brief updates of an event in motion and designed to deliver real-time information from multiple sources about breaking news and scheduled events. To examine participation in this contemporary news format, the current, exploratory study, collected survey responses from 339 volunteers and found that participation was not a motivating factor for readers to engage in live blogging on a deeper level. Other study findings pertaining to participation were also pessimistic, showing that the majority of participants were not personally interested in participating in live blogging. This is an important finding for digital journalism as it implies that the capacity of online platforms to accommodate participation does not necessarily translate into citizens’ willingness to participate.