“HAVE THEY GOT NEWS FOR US?”

Abstract

The BBC elicits and uses a number of different types of audience material, but the corporation has most wholeheartedly embraced what we call Audience Content (eyewitness footage or photos, accounts of experiences, and story tip-offs). Indeed, when the term user-generated content (UGC) is used by BBC news journalists it usually denotes only this kind of material. Audience material is often described by commentators and practitioners as having revolutionised journalism by disrupting the traditional relationships between producers and consumers of the news. In the main journalists and editors see material from the audience as just another news source, a formulation which is perpetuated by the institutional frameworks set up to elicit and process audience material as well as the content of the corporation's UGC training. Our data suggest that, with the exception of some marginal collaborative projects, rather than changing the way most news journalists at the BBC work, audience material is firmly embedded within the long-standing routines of traditional journalism practice.

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