ABSTRACT

The multi-layered participation that has found its way into networked media spaces in recent times have contributed to increased collaboration between mainstream journalists and ordinary citizens as co-creators of media contents. With these progressively blurring boundaries in the news production process, the need to ascertain the evaluation of mainstream media practitioners about the credibility and legitimacy of alternative media platforms have never assumed a more social and professional relevance in the journalism sphere. This study adopts Shoemaker and Reese’s Hierarchy of Influence model as a theoretical template to investigate the extent to which individual, routine, and organisational level influences affect journalists’ perception of citizen journalism credibility. This research is contextualised in Nigeria, an environment with a distinctly dissimilar political, economic, and cultural landscape to the countries of prior research. Findings from a random sample survey (n = 397) revealed, contrary to previous assumption, that journalists’ judgement of citizen journalism as moderately credible, is mostly a consequence of individual-level factors (demographics, career length) and routine level factors (frequency of online media use), rather than by organisational level influences (media affiliation, professional ethics). The peculiarity of Nigerian journalism landscape places professional allegiance and media structures at the lowest level of influences.

摘要

近来网络媒体空间的多层次参与促进了主流记者和普通公民作为媒体内容的共同创造者之间的合作。随着新闻制作过程中这些界限的逐渐模糊，确定主流媒体从业者对替代媒体平台的可信度和合法性的评估的需求在新闻领域从未具有更多的社会和专业相关性。本研究采用 Shoemaker 和 Reese 的影响层次模型作为理论模板，以调查个人、日常和组织层面的影响在多大程度上影响记者对公民新闻可信度的看法。这项研究是在尼日利亚的背景下进行的，一个政治、经济和文化景观与先前研究国家截然不同的环境。随机抽样调查结果（n  = 397) 显示，与之前的假设相反，记者对公民新闻的判断是中等可信的，主要是个人层面因素（人口统计、职业生涯长度）和常规层面因素（在线媒体使用频率）的结果，而不是而不是受组织层面的影响（媒体从属关系、职业道德）。尼日利亚新闻业的特殊性使专业忠诚度和媒体结构处于最低影响水平。