ABSTRACT
With the recent rise of the new digital media culture, mainstream news media across Western democracies have been increasingly adopting new forms of online participatory journalism. One of the most popular forms has been comment sections attached to news articles (i.e. comment fields). Such spaces are unique because they not only allow audiences the opportunity to react and comment on journalistic content, but also provide a space where audiences can debate and discuss the news with each other and journalists. Moreover, they offer the audience an opportunity to bring new and alternative ideas, opinions, arguments and sources to journalistic content, potentially allowing such content to evolve in a public and more deliberative manner. In this chapter, I argue that such a connection between public and journalistic content may have significant implications for journalism, thus requiring a reconceptualization of the role of journalism in the context of Web 2.0 technologies. Comment fields have typically been dismissed by journalists and academics alike as fostering flaming, fringe opinions and misinformation. Yet, there has been little systematic, empirical research conducted on comment fields. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to begin unravelling the potential of such spaces by exploring and assessing how audiences are engaging and participating in them.
