Media accountability in the age of social media: participatory transparency of the audience in Spain

Abstract

The mass media is increasingly promoting public participation. Taking as a starting point the participatory transparency concept enunciated by Karlsson (2010), our research studies the audience’s active role in holding Spanish media to account through a range of online tools. We study the role of the audience by analyzing the perceptions of two main actors: journalists and citizens. A two-fold methodology was adopted: a questionnaire survey of 228 active journalists in Spain and six focus group panels with media users. The main results show that the journalists are not optimistic about the effectiveness of accountability instruments used by the audience. The users value positively being able to participate in the journalistic process, although they believe that journalists should ultimately perform the role of fact-checkers of user-generated content.