Abstract
This chapter proposes a qualitative and exploratory look at User-Generated Content (UGC) in news sites from Latin America. The discussion focuses on the integration of these contents into storytelling. We selected four websites from each Latin American country during two stages, totaling 80 news sites, in which we searched for examples that fit our criteria. We located a diverse type of contributors and different profiles of contributions that allowed us to make inferences about the use of UGC by Latin American outlets. We understand that multiple factors influence the adoption of these contents by newsrooms, which include journalistic values, ethics, and the capacity to verify it. When UGC is used in journalism, there is always a process of mediation, implied and active, that varies over three levels: minimal, medium, and maximal. In the end, each news organization deals with UGC differently, and how successful they are in including the public in the news process is up to them; though there are interesting cases of application of UGC in the storytelling in Latin America, most news organizations apply a discourse of participation, but do not actually open the spaces for the public beyond the basic, such as comment sections.
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Notes
- 1.
Link to the news story featured on Jornal Nacional , one of the biggest newscasts in Brazil, of a girl who fell out of her third-floor apartment and was saved by a neighbor. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://g1.globo.com/pr/parana/noticia/2020/07/28/vizinho-salva-crianca-de-2-anos-que-caiu-da-sacada-do-3o-andar-de-predio-no-parana-video.ghtml.
- 2.
Link to a news story featuring the video of the delivery-man being harassed while working. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://g1.globo.com/jornal-nacional/noticia/2020/08/07/entregador-e-vitima-de-agressoes-verbais-e-racismo-em-valinhossp.ghtml.
- 3.
Link to a news story featuring videos made by users of the explosions in Beirute. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2020/08/04/explosao-em-beirute.ghtml.
- 4.
Similar Web is a company that provides, amongst other things, rankings of news sites by region. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://www.similarweb.com.
- 5.
Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is a reference for news and information about journalism and press freedom in Latin America and the Caribbean since it started covering those issues with a blog launched in 2003. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/en/blog.
- 6.
Sembra Media is an NGO that seeks to make visible and promote digital native media in Latin America, with a thorough directory of digital native media. Accessed 12 Oct 2020. https://www.sembramedia.org/directorio-de-medios.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter has been funded by JOLT—Harnessing Data and Technology for Journalism (H2020—MSCA-ITN-2017; grant number: 765140).
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Sanseverino, G.G., Carpes, G. (2021). Do You Help Us Make the News? A Discussion of the Uses of User-Generated Content by News Sites in Latin America. In: Salaverría, R., de-Lima-Santos, MF. (eds) Journalism, Data and Technology in Latin America. Palgrave Studies in Journalism and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65860-1_6
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