Subscribing to Transparency: Trust-Building Within Virtual Newsrooms on Slack

Abstract

Online Collaborative Software (OCS), most notably the platform Slack, have become embedded in the infrastructure of modern newsrooms affording a flexible and innovative way for newsrooms to coordinate their workflows and communicate across geographical distance. More recently, several media outlets have experimented with how the platform can be opened up to their audiences in an effort to build community and provide transparency in their newsmaking. This article utilizes a case study of one newsroom’s such experimentation with Slack in order to explore the normative assumptions behind newsmakers attempts to build consumer trust and the extent to which technological interventions like Slack can help achieve aims of greater trust. Analysis points towards several emergent trends, namely the limitations of pursuing trust through enhanced transparency, the ways in which relational trust can assist newsmakers attempting to grow their outlets and how the use of external technological platforms structures relationships within virtual spaces of newsmaking.

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