A Participatory Journalism Management Platform: Design, Implementation and Evaluation

During the last two decades, citizens’ participation in news production process has attracted significant interest from both academia and the media industry. Media production and consumption have been altered considerably and traditional concepts, such as gatekeeping, have been under discussion. Many news organisations include in their websites tools and applications that allow users to be active consumers or even co-producers of journalistic content, by liking, sharing, commenting and submitting material. At the same time, large amounts of user-generated content are uploaded every day on social media platforms. Subsequently, media organisations must deal with continually available information which requires management, classification and evaluation not only to keep high journalistic standards, but also to avoid problems. The latter category can include grammar mistakes, fake or misleading information and hate speech. All the above-mentioned parameters highlight the obvious need for platforms that can support journalism manage practice. Such a platform should utilise semantic technologies, which can support organised collection and moderation of content in an effective way and in short time. This study discusses the design and the implementation of a participatory journalism management platform.