Corrections Practice in the Croatian Online Media: Between Legislation and Tradition

Abstract

Economic, technological and societal trends have switched the model of (online) journalism so that it is focused on the immediacy and volume that has resulted in a lower level of accuracy. To retain a critical function in a democracy, that model needs a corresponding error correction practice. In this study, we used content analysis to investigate how the Croatian online media correct errors, and how their correction practices differ according to the types of online media. The results demonstrate that errors in action or meaning (N = 217) were 67.8% of all errors, that the most common way of correcting errors was by posting an independent note about an error that was linked to the article (59%, N = 188), and that the correction notes were linked to uncorrected articles in 85.1% (N = 159) of cases. The findings showed that the only statistically significant difference between traditional and online media were the correction labelling practice and the location of the corrections.