ABSTRACT
In broad terms, the way mainstream general journalism conceptualizes its audience seems to have shifted from rather obedient “citizenship” to more active but privatized “consumerists” (Ahva 2010; Hanitzsch 2007). Cultural citizenship has undergone a similar kind of transformation, where the identity politics of a citizen are formed in the crosspressures of democratic participation and consumerism (Stevenson 2007). Active cultural citizenship is supported by increased audience participation enabled by digital technologies making cultural journalists partners, but also competitors, of a large number of communicating citizen “prosumers”, “pro-ams” (professional amateurs) and professionals (Bruns 2010). Parallel to this, the audience of journalism is no more treated as passive receivers provided with the information monopolized by the professional journalists, but rather newsrooms have sought to open their gates so that the readers’ feedback can be taken into account and so that they can participate in content production (Ahva 2010; Carpentier 2005).
