Abstract

Extant research on how innovations diffuse among news organizations over time has largely focussed on democratic contexts. By contrast, this is the first longitudinal study to investigate the spread of a participatory newsroom innovation under authoritarian rule. Adopting a multiple case study design, the article reconstructs the histories of comment sections on the opinion-leading online media in two authoritarian contexts, which varied maximally with regard to the outcome of the diffusion process. In Belarus, the diffusion process followed a classic S-shaped curve of adoption, whereas in Azerbaijan adoption rates remained low during the studied period. The study identified primarily three factors that obstructed the diffusion process in Azerbaijan: (1) the restrictive policy of the authoritarian leadership specifically towards audience participation on news websites (social system), (2) the low intensity of communicative exchange between local and foreign news organizations (communication channels), (3) the advent of the successor technology in 2010 (time).

摘要

关于创新如何随时间在新闻组织中传播的现有研究主要集中在民主背景下。相比之下，这是第一个纵向调查，旨在研究独裁统治下参与式新闻编辑室创新的传播。通过采用多案例研究设计，本文在两种威权主义背景下重构了意见领先的在线媒体上评论部分的历史，这两种观点在传播过程的结果方面发生了最大的变化。在白俄罗斯，传播过程遵循经典的S形收养曲线，而在阿塞拜疆，收养率在研究期间仍然很低。这项研究主要确定了阻碍阿塞拜疆扩散进程的三个因素：社会制度），（2）国内外新闻机构之间的交流交流强度较低（沟通渠道），（3）后继技术在2010年问世（时间）。