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The Fourth Estate in the Digital Age:
Formulating a new role for journalists based in theories of civic discourse


Prepared for
AEJMC Conference Presentation
Communication Theory and Methodology Division
San Antonio, TX
August 2005

Author information:
Jack Rosenberry
St. John Fisher College
Rochester, NY
[log in to unmask]
(585) 385-8206

Abstract
       Ideas drawn from theories of cyber-democracy, or use of the 
Internet's interactive nature to foster political discourse, can be 
used to define new ways in which online journalists can become 
facilitators of that discourse. Cyber-democratic theories, sometimes 
criticized for being too idealized, are connected with a realistic 
set of practices that online journalists can engage in, such as 
putting institutional credibility behind citizen voices, providing 
places for citizens to interact with each other and civic officials, 
and using interactive devices to present public affairs information 
serving the surveillance function. This online discourse model helps 
to define a new role for journalists in covering public affairs 
differently and restoring some of the luster to the tarnished role of 
the Fourth Estate.



Introduction
       A poll sponsored by ABC News and the Washington Post in late 
2003 reported that 49 percent of the respondents in a national survey 
of 1,200 adults were dissatisfied with the U.S. political process. In 
another poll a month earlier, sponsored by Cable News Network and USA 
Today, half the respondents said the U.S. political system needed 
either a complete overhaul [17 percent] or major reforms [33 
percent]. More than half of the respondents in another survey from 
around the same time rated the media's overall performance as only 
fair [43 percent] or poor [12 percent] (Public Opinion Online, 2003). 
This evidence supports the view that traditional political 
communication and its relation to self-governance and civic 
engagement have become dysfunctional, such as the appraisals offered 
by Gans (2003),  Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001), and Fallows (1996), 
who titled his critique "Breaking the news: how the media undermine democracy."
       This happens against a backdrop of a dramatic change in the 
journalistic environment with Internet emerging as a news source 
(Stempel and Hargrove, 2004). Interactivity is what separates the 
Internet from traditional media; it also can be used as a tool to 
create shared constructions of meaning, which is crucial to public 
deliberation. As Singer succinctly put it, "The Web offers both 
citizens and journalists new options related to information, 
discourse and decision-making. ... Journalists who see their role as 
crucial to democracy have an opportunity to expand that role in a 
meaningful way" (2003).
       But journalists who assume that engagement will naturally flow 
from online presentation fall into the same trap of 
techno-determinism that plagues so-called cyber-utopians -- an 
if-you-build-it-interactively-they-will-come assumption. The goal of 
this research is to move beyond mere presumptions of this nature and 
derive a theoretical basis that predicts and explains how online 
journalism's interactive nature can have greater efficacy and value 
in creating a place for public sphere discourse than traditional 
print and broadcast approaches. This will be accomplished through 
melding traditional theories of journalism, democracy and political 
communication with emerging theories of online communication, 
especially its application to political discourse.
       An integrative theory such as this follows suggestions of 
earlier research toward advancing the field. For example, Singer and 
Thiel (2002) found that theory and methods had followed very 
traditional orientations during the first 10 years of research into 
online journalism, which made sense for scholars approaching a new 
phenomenon. But they concluded that taking scholarship to a higher 
level would require synthesis of new theories in multidisciplinary 
ways. Similarly, Boczkowski (1999) has sought to merge theories of 
computer mediated communication (CMC) and journalism.
       The purpose of this research– to paraphrase the quote from 
Singer above – is to define and describe how expanding journalists' 
role in democracy in a meaningful way can be developed, using a 
multidisciplinary approach to provide evidence of how the 
capabilities of the interactive online environment can create 
conditions for more effective civic discourse. This incorporates some 
of the more positive aspects of cyber-democratic theory, while 
avoiding technological determinism in favor of a measured, realistic 
and practical approach rooted in facilitating online discourse within 
the context of the online news site. The result is a new, integrated 
theory of how interactive journalism can mitigate limitations that 
hamstring more time-worn theories of political communication and 
citizen engagement to explain how journalists might better fulfill 
their eroded Fourth Estate role.
Online journalism and interactivity
       As the Internet diffused through U.S. society in the mid- to 
late 1990s, newspapers rapidly adopted it as a presentation platform. 
By now most U.S. dailies have some sort of Web edition; Greer and 
Mensing (2004) put the number at 1,279 in 2003. But making best use 
of the unique characteristics of the online environment -- and truly 
incorporating its interactive power to fulfill some of journalism's 
important normative roles -- is another matter entirely. For online 
newspapers to perform most successfully they must manage audience 
engagement with the news content, and the real issue for online 
journalism is adapting the role of journalists and the practice of 
the craft to incorporate this concept. But the large body of work 
into online formats shows newspapers have been slow to adapt to the 
opportunities that online presentation lays before them. This is 
despite the urgings of leaders in the field such as former Gannett 
Corp. editor Bob Giles (2000), who called Web news a "fundamentally 
different culture built on interactivity."
What and where: investigating site characteristics
        Gubman and Greer (1997) conducted a content analysis of some 
of the earliest newspapers to go online and reported that the 
structure and characteristics of the sites were mostly shallow -- not 
many links or layers – and were dominated by print-style writing and 
made little use of interactivity. Kamerer and Bressers (1998) 
investigated whether online journalism was growing in sophistication. 
Using longitudinal content analysis from two time periods six months 
apart, they determined that papers were becoming more sophisticated, 
moving from simple repurposing of content to greater degrees of 
interactivity, which they saw as beneficial.
	But other researchers concluded this shift was not happening in 
meaningful ways. Tankard and Ban (1998) used a content analysis and 
survey of editors responsible for online editions to discover that 
features such as immediacy, interactive stories (hyperstories), and 
user control of content were not widely adopted. "It appears that 
many online newspapers are simply using the online site to mirror or 
reproduce the content of the print newspaper," they wrote. Another 
content analysis of newspaper sites revealed little use of 
interactive tools or options in online papers (Schultz, 1999). As Web 
technology advanced, so did online newspapers' use of it, according 
to DiBean and Garrison (2000), who did a longitudinal study of use of 
technological devices in 1998 and 1999. However, they reported, most 
of the interactive options were consumer oriented, such as searchable 
ads, rather than being oriented toward news or storytelling.
Who and how: investigating audience reactions
       On the audience side, an early study of online activity 
determined that time spent with online media did not cut into use of 
traditional media (Bromley & Bowles, 1995). This study also reported 
that connectedness and interactivity held promise for building and 
ascertaining public opinion on community topics. Mings (1997) did a 
quasi-experimental study from a uses and gratifications approach to 
see what uses people would make of online media, and determined that 
the gratifications sought from print products would carry over into 
online news. But Hsiang and Lasorsa (1999) investigated users' 
perceptions of online papers and concluded that users saw online and 
traditional media as complementary. Their prescriptive conclusion was 
that online papers should build on this by using the online edition 
to provide benefits, such as interactivity, unavailable in print versions.
       As online readership became more common and news sites became 
more sophisticated, audience research advanced as well. Sundar (1999) 
evaluated audience perceptions of news content, and determined that 
similar factors were used to evaluate print and online content. 
However, Tewksbury and Althaus (2000) investigated another difference 
of online news – that it lacks certain "cues" such as headline size 
and page placement that print readers are familiar with – and 
concluded that the reduced cuing inherent in online presentation can 
adversely affect the surveillance function regarding important 
political news. This means people may learn only what they want to, 
not what they need to, because when papers do not indicate importance 
readers substitute their own interests in deciding what to read. In 
another look at how audiences evaluate stories online, Sundar and 
Nass (2001) in an experiment showed that an online user's perception 
of story source affected perception of story quality; specifically, 
when users thought other users had selected a story for inclusion on 
the site, they rated the story higher.

Cyber-democracy emerges
       Even as journalists were wading slowly into interactive 
presentations, theories of "cyber-democracy" were developing on a 
somewhat parallel but separate track that said the Internet's ability 
to close gaps of time and distance with electronic connectivity would 
have the power to make institutional journalism at least 
anachronistic, and perhaps even unnecessary (Morris, 1999). These 
ideas emerged from the concept that the Internet can break down the 
barriers of physical distance and message "reach" that limit access 
to information dissemination, retrieval and exchange. Communication 
could be much more fluid and interactive in cyberspace, regardless of 
whether two individuals were in the same room, the same town or even 
on the same continent. At the same time, everyone could have access 
to a virtually unlimited information bank, literally at their 
fingertips, indexed and organized with hypertext links. These 
conditions, the thinking went, would offer a new paradigm for 
self-governance that would address the breakdown of the traditional 
U.S. political communication system. (London, 1995).
       One of these paradigms was based on a populist or 
direct-democracy model, in which political interaction as exemplified 
by ancient Athens or colonial New England would take place in 
cyberspace. The difference was that direct democracy in those 
idealized settings faced limits imposed by physical location of 
meeting sites and distance separating the participants. The Internet 
could make such limits irrelevant, thereby altering the scope and 
scale over which such democracy could be implemented; everyone who 
could link up could participate in the decision-making.
       The other model was based on deliberative democracy akin to 
the public sphere discourse suggested by German philosopher Jurgen 
Habermas. The "cyber-salon" would provide a virtual setting to 
replace the physical one in which participants could engage in 
deliberative discourse according to clearly specified rules of 
engagement to produce well-reasoned outcomes -- again, with the 
benefit that anyone, anywhere could participate.
The electronic plebiscite
       The concept of an electronic democracy analogous to ancient 
Athens was promoted by no less than Vice President Al Gore, who made 
the comparison in remarks at a conference covered by the Economist 
magazine (June 17, 1995; quoted in Gaynor, 1996). Delli Carpini and 
Keeler said the Internet's "ability to provide information to a 
citizen and permit him or her to act on that information ... is a 
radically new feature of the information environment" (2003, p. 148). 
One observer called the Internet "a powerful technology for 
grassroots democracy" and said that "by facilitating discussion and 
collective action by citizens [the Internet could] strengthen 
democracy" (Klein, as quoted in R. Davis, 1999) while another 
observer said that "Today's telecommunications technology may make it 
possible for our political system to return to the roots of Western 
democracy as was first practiced in the city-states of ancient 
Greece. Tomorrow's telecommunications technology almost certainly 
will" (Grossman, 1995, p. 33).  He added: "The electronic republic 
cannot be as intimate or as deliberative as the face-to-face 
discussions and showing of hands in the ancient Athenians' open-air 
assemblies. But it is likely to extend government decision making 
from the few in the center of power to the many on the outside who 
want to participate" (Grossman, 1995, p. 49). Political consultant 
Dick Morris was even more optimistic in his assessment of Internet 
direct democracy, predicting that the Internet would "lead to a 
system of de facto government by referendum. The town meeting style 
of government will become a national reality" (D. Morris, 1999, p. 28).
Deliberation online
       But electronic plebiscites were just one democratic 
transformation envisioned by Internet enthusiasts. Another was 
creation of electronic forums in which deliberative democracy could 
flourish. Even those who were not convinced that Internet-facilitated 
direct democracy was either feasible or desirable found this position tenable.
       London succinctly summarized the differences between the 
populist or plebiscite model, which he called "teledemocracy," and a 
more deliberative approach. In his view, teledemocracy was closely 
aligned with the traditional liberal democratic model in that it was 
designed to aggregate individual preferences and provide a 
marketplace of ideas upon which decisions rest.  Or, as another pair 
of analysts explained it, "Plebiscitary democracy … is not democratic 
deliberation but simple head counting" (Hill & Hughes, 1998). London 
pointed out that proponents of deliberative democracy "are skeptical 
of this view. ... the purpose of democratic deliberation is to 
resolve or even transcend the conflict, not aggregate a myriad of 
pre-established interests" (London, 1995). Rheingold (1994) supposed 
a similar role for online interaction, noting that "The technology 
that makes virtual communities possible has the potential to bring 
enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost -- 
intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most 
important, political leverage. But the technology will not in itself 
fulfill that potential; this latent technical power must be used 
intelligently and deliberately by an informed population."
       Gaynor (1996) and Dahlberg (2001) both invoked Habermasian 
principles for effective deliberative discourse, and argued that 
Internet forums provide a fruitful place for them to take root. "The 
dispensal of traditional hierarchies which occurs on the Internet 
appears to make possible the type of categories necessary for 
Habermas' 'ideal speech situation' to occur" (Gaynor, 1996). This was 
largely because issues of individual status, social rank and even 
race offered fewer barriers in the realm of virtual communication. He 
further noted that "Virtual communities created on-line can serve as 
alternatives to or reinforcements of actual physical communities in 
their functions as public spheres. By utilizing the transcendence and 
speed of electronic technology these communities can also spur 
political action by citizens, especially on the grassroots level" 
(Gaynor, 1996).
       This approach was partially shared by Dahlberg, who reviewed a 
set of six normative conditions for public sphere discourse -- such 
as autonomy from state and economic power, exchange, critique of 
validity claims, and discursive inclusion and equality -- and 
concluded that while online discourse "replicates the basic structure 
of rational-critical debate and in various ways approximates the 
requirements of the public sphere, it nevertheless falls short of 
truly replicating the public sphere model" (Dahlberg, 2001).
Critique of the cyber-democratic model
	Dahlberg was not the only one to see a dark cloud around the silver 
lining of the cyber-utopians' visions. Barber (1997) noted that 
technology and new communication tools cannot correct every defect in 
a political communication system, and in fact are contrary to some of 
the characteristics of effective democracy. Computers are fast and 
binary; democratic reasoning is slow and nuanced. Deciding what type 
of contribution technology should make to democracy is a crucial 
prerequisite for implementing it; the technology cannot be left to 
develop on its own. Wilhelm (2000) made a similar argument: that 
technology does not automatically support effective operation of a 
public sphere. "The primary defect of this overly optimistic 
viewpoint is that it ignores the threats posed by the discontinuities 
between the dizzying rhythm of information and communication 
transmission and the deliberative pace of discussion within the 
public sphere" (Wilhelm, 2000, p. 54). Echoing some of the other 
critiques, he argued that: (a) deliberation is more than the 
aggregation of preferences; (b) access to information is not the same 
as mobilization; and (c) the Internet creates the potential for 
disempowered people or groups to be further marginalized. Removing 
barriers is a necessary but not sufficient condition to building 
political dialogue; in his view editing and filtering of the 
information and facilitation of discourse were required as well. 
Wilhelm called for "structures and policies that promote real 
progress in greater democratic deliberation, not platitudes about the 
illusion of progress because of the 'gee whiz' qualities of new 
technology." (p. 9)
	Although one defining characteristic of the Internet -- to quote a 
famous New Yorker magazine cartoon -- is that "nobody knows you're a 
dog," disembodied computer mediated communication does not 
automatically lead to more polite, reasoned discourse; in fact, lack 
of physical contact between was seen by some as degrading the quality 
of discourse rather than improving it (Buchstein, 1997; Barber 1997). 
Bimber (1998) argued that new ways of passing information back and 
forth do not automatically enhance the quality of that information. 
He concluded that neither the populist nor deliberative models would 
be likely to emerge, and instead predicted political communication on 
the Internet would tend toward reinforcement of the narrow-interest, 
fragmented power structure besetting the traditional liberal 
democratic model. Hill and Hughes (1998), Norris (2002), and Kamarck 
(2002) all reached similar conclusions: that the Internet supplements 
existing political discourse rather than providing a new paradigm. 
Oblak explored the relationship of interactivity and participation, 
especially with regard to the direct democracy model, and concluded 
that what are promoted as participatory platforms often end up as 
just information-sharing spaces not unlike classical mass media. "To 
provide deliberative and recursive communication between citizens and 
government is a much more difficult engagement than simple provision 
of information" (Oblak 2003). This view is congruent with 
Yankelovich's (1991) conclusion that merely inundating voters with 
information is not enough to encourage what he called effective 
public judgment.
       These researchers thus demonstrated that online communication 
does not automatically equate to interactivity, and although access 
to information comes more easily on the Internet, acquisition of it 
fills about the same role as getting it from traditional mass media. 
In a case-study of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Davis, Elin 
and Reeker (2004) concluded that existing political institutions used 
the Internet as a new medium or channel, but did not make dramatic 
impact on political life. Levine (2003) similarly reported that voter 
information sites and candidates' campaign sites serve a potentially 
useful informational role -- but offer no guarantees people will find 
and use that information.
       According to Winner (2003) "The ideal of democratic discourse 
as seen in the ancient polis, seen in the New England town meeting 
and celebrated in the writings of John Dewey and Jurgen Habermas … 
are not characteristic of participation on the Internet." A quote 
from Gaynor (1996) summarizes the situation even more succinctly: 
"The prospect of a virtual society in which members have equal voice 
and access remains dim."
Significance of structure
	A common thread among these critiques of the cyberutopian view is 
that it is essentially technological determinism. Just because the 
network makes certain actions and interactions possible, critics say, 
does not make them inevitable. "The removal of obstacles to the free 
flow of ideas is a necessary but insufficient condition to achieving 
a deliberative dialogue" (Wilhelm, 2000, p. 42).  But the 
cyber-utopians, in a way, were on to something. Barber acknowledged 
the prospects for technological interaction to help improve 
democratic performance, but quickly added that "there are forms of 
control and intervention, like editing, facilitation and education, 
that are necessary to democratic utilization of the Net and amount to 
positive or legitimate forms of gatekeeping" (1997, p. 210).  Coleman 
(1999) proposed similar mechanisms, including virtual public spaces 
under the sponsorship or auspices of neutral organizations, reliable 
on-line information upon which discussions could be based, 
educational material to help guide citizens in their deliberation and 
a link between the governed and the governors.
       Cyber-utopians posited that because the Internet breaks down 
barriers of distance and access to information, and allows 
individuals to interact in new, more fluid ways it would bring about 
the existence of an electronic agora and/or virtual cyber-salon. 
Critics of these views pointed out that although Internet-based 
interactions can allow online deliberation to take place, such 
behavior will not materialize on its own. But they also argued that 
it could, given managed structures designed to facilitate such 
interaction. Online journalism can help to provide such facilitation 
and interaction.

A role for journalists
Common threads
	The threads of theory and research traced out so far can be fused 
logically to develop a new, integrated theory of online discourse 
with journalistic facilitation. Research into online journalism 
demonstrates that audience interaction with the information is the 
crucial concept. The works by Sundar, by Mings, and by Hsiang and 
Lasorsa cited earlier can be interpreted as meaning that people will 
look to online newspapers for the same types of information that they 
would seek in a traditional newspaper. But what meanings they 
construct or attach to it depend on both form and content, as 
Sundar's later work with Nass indicated, as did that of Tewksbury and 
Althaus. The large body of work into online formats shows newspapers 
have been slow to adapt to the opportunities online presentation sets 
before them. Meanwhile, cyber-democracy, whether of the "electronic 
town meeting" variety or the public-sphere cyber-salon, does not 
present itself as a feasible alternative, either. To the degree that 
online interaction can support democratic discourse, it is best 
fostered by facilitation, research such as Dahlberg's indicates.
       But who should the facilitators be, and where are they to be 
found? Anyone can post a Web page with his or her political views, 
invite and even moderate discussion. But what credibility will they 
have with respect to the community at large? With respect to 
political discourse, this is where a new role and function for 
journalists could emerge, using the interactive power of new models 
of online journalism.
       Prescriptive views
       The "missing link" in the traditional model of journalism and 
democracy is citizen engagement, what Gans (2003) speaks of as 
"disempowerment." The missing links in cyber-democratic discourse are 
structure and facilitation. But the power and promise of online 
journalism come from interactivity, tapping into an audience that is 
already actively engaged in construction of meaning in the messages 
and doing some of the gatekeeping for itself. Their participation in 
the process already provides a certain structure and base of common 
knowledge based on surveillance of the environment through exposure 
to the news site.
       If facilitation of discourse (provision of forums and tools 
for engagement, and establishing rules and norms) is what it takes to 
have effective on-line civic discourse, then doing just that among an 
already "captive" and engaged audience is an approach online 
journalists can use to reclaim their eroded Fourth Estate role in 
ways that are not possible under traditional 
source-message-channel-receiver models of mass communication. As 
Gurevitch and Blumler put it, "more serious forms of political 
discourse and coverage could strike neglected chords and find an 
audience ready and willing to attend them" (1990, p. 287).
       What that requires, however, is a willingness of journalists 
to reformulate their approach to political journalism. Proponents of 
change say it is a step they should be willing to take. "If 
journalism-steered-by-news-values converts so readily into 
news-management-for-politicians, something will have to be done from 
within to put this right," according to Gurevitch and Blumler. They 
continue: "Again a need to rethink the journalistic role arises. Too 
often the alternative to the conventional journalistic role of 
'gatekeeper' has been posited as one of 'advocate' … Other 
possibilities exist and should be explored, including the role of 
'democratic midwife' " (1990, p. 286). Online and off, journalists 
already can and do fulfill important roles regarding surveillance and 
social cohesion/construction of common knowledge. Combining these 
with facilitated discourse can add up to a more powerful impact on 
public opinion and a more powerful process for reconnecting the 
public with public life than any of the three alone.
       Two crucial features separate this approach from notions of 
basic cyber-democracy. One is the framing and backgrounding of basic 
information provided by the news coverage. As Kovach and Rosenstiel 
describe it: "As citizens encounter an ever-greater flow of data they 
have more need – not less – for identifiable sources dedicated to 
verifying that information, highlighting what is important to know 
and filtering out what is not … The role of the press in this new age 
becomes working to answer the question 'where is the good stuff'? 
Verification and synthesis become the backbone of the new gatekeeper 
role of the journalist, that of the 'sensemaker'" (2001, p. 48).
       The other factor is that the involvement of the paper, a 
community institution, gives the information exchanged and expressed 
there a certain traffic level and institutional credibility that 
makes the interaction more meaningful in a deliberative sense than 
would be accorded, for example, to bloggers who are doing the same 
thing -- but who may or may not be working with accurate, credible 
information and whose work may or may not even be noticed by any sort 
of larger public, much less institutional decision makers. This is 
not meant to be disparaging of all those who work outside the 
institutional media settings, many of whom do extensive and high 
quality work, as documented by Gillmor (2004). But rather, as 
Christian Science Monitor editor Tom Regan pointed out in online 
journalism's formative days: "As the number of news sites on the 
Internet grows, people will continue to fall back on trusted sources" 
(Regan 1997). By bringing online public discourse under the tent of 
the newspaper's institutional credibility, journalists can reclaim 
the Fourth Estate role that has been eroded away by public cynicism 
about politics, "the process" and the media's place within it.
	In a piece of research done in the wake of the 2000 presidential 
election, Singer extensively quoted one of her survey respondents who 
stated the case eloquently:
"This medium is about the empowerment of our community, to facilitate 
interaction with interesting or meaningful people, to house 'forums' 
in which users can exchange ideas and information, to focus on the 
local angles, to give people a voice … Newspapers have always been 
the bridge between newsmakers and readers. With interactive Internet 
applications, we have a way to enhance that role and make that bridge 
a two-way thoroughfare. This is good for the newspaper, good for the 
online service and good for the users. We're muddling through the 
continuing chaos of [the 2000] election in which roughly half the 
voting public is going to feel disenfranchised, no matter what the 
outcome. This is a good time to be in the 'enfranchisement' 
business." (Singer 2003)

Online papers as a venue for cyber-democratic engagement
	But how should this "enfranchisement business" be conducted? What 
specific prescriptions should online papers use to help enhance 
public discourse?
	A logical starting point is to recognize the role of the paper as an 
institutional actor within the political communication system. 
Schudson suggests this starts with seeking out "a plausible political 
mission for news institutions" that "starts with realistic models of 
democracy in a contemporary setting, rather than simplistic ideals of 
democratic behavior" (1983, p. 3).  Davis offers a similar view, 
describing how the Internet offers vast opportunity for citizen 
involvement in policy processes (the standard cyber-democratic 
approach). But he weighs that against the need for structure in 
providing for the process to operate effectively. "Structure will be 
provided by the very players who offer structure to news and 
information dissemination off line" including the media (R. Davis, 
1999, p. 39). Cohen, in seeking to describe how deliberative 
democracy could realistically develop, emphasized the same 
institutional imperative. "The ideal deliberative procedure provides 
a model for institutions, a model they should mirror so far as 
possible … [to] make deliberation possible" (Cohen 1997, p. 79). He 
elaborated on the concept, saying: "At the heart of the 
institutionalization of the deliberative process is the existence of 
arenas in which citizens can propose issues for the political agenda 
and participate in debate about those issues … The problem is to 
figure out how such arenas might be organized" (p. 85). One way to 
answer that question is to say that online papers should put their 
institutional credibility behind citizen voices and provide coverage 
that that may combine institutional and citizen voices.
	Another aspect of the new role online journalists could adopt 
extends from the recognition that simply supplying information is not 
enough. This limitation may be directly related to the complexity and 
fragmentation of contemporary society. "If the job of the press is to 
inform the public, and the public has become too fragmented for 
information to be useful, then the role of the journalist has to be 
restated – not necessarily changed, mind you, but elaborated. 
'Informing the public' is too limited, too narrow. … Only citizens 
can create publics, but journalists can ask themselves the following 
question: How do we align our practices with the ways that citizens 
form publics so that there are more publics and a stronger public 
life?" (Mathews, 1996, p. 39).
       Similar themes have been addressed by Gans, who made 
suggestions for journalistic practices with the "ultimate aim of 
enhancing the citizens' role in the country's politics" (2003, p. 
91). These included making news out of what people consider the 
important issues and shifting from top-down, official-source-oriented 
news to focus on proposed or ongoing opportunities for public 
participation. Gans noted that this would go beyond traditional 
approaches to a new model he called "participatory journalism." 
Another reform suggestion from a former public 
journalism-editor-turned-educator called for development of "a public 
knowledge model, in which citizens, experts and journalists 
collaboratively pool their intelligence" (Campbell, 2004). This fits 
with Sundar and Nass's (2001) findings that users rated stories more 
highly if other users had selected them for inclusion. Taken 
together, these ideas reinforce the notion that a new role for online 
journalists ought to include helping citizens interact with officials 
in politics and government, but also providing ways for citizens to 
interact with each other.
	Providing information is not a sufficient condition for creating the 
conditions under which discourse can flourish, but it still is a 
necessary one. Indeed, developing a common base of knowledge is seen 
as a key component of effective deliberation (Fishkin 2000). Or as 
another set of researchers described it, "Emphasizing that the 
audience is an active player in the communication process provides 
both reassurance and opportunity for journalists. … Virtually 
everyone can and does learn something from the news media. 
Journalists have a responsibility to recognize and augment the 
capacity of the audience to learn politically relevant information" 
(Neuman, Just & Crigler, 1992, p. 120). So another part of the model 
includes providing surveillance-style information about government 
and political officials and institutions. But adding the capabilities 
of the online environment offer previously unavailable approaches 
that have the potential to transform political communication (Graber, 
McQuail & Norris, 1998), so this concept should include providing 
surveillance information in interactive ways such as hyperstories and 
links to augment traditional, linear story-telling approaches.
Online newspapers' discourse model
       These theoretical bases – summarized in the passages 
emphasized  above -- allow for construction of a set of model 
practices that online journalists can undertake to create conditions 
for fostering public discourse and civic engagement. They take the 
form of employing particular interactive devices that online 
journalism research says are feasible and realistic, yet offer the 
types of engagement postulated by theories of cyber-democracy 
augmented by using the institutional umbrella of the online paper to 
provide structure and facilitation. The model consists of:
1. Putting institutional credibility behind citizen voices. This 
includes devices such as citizen blogs, posting of letters to the 
editor on the Web site (and its corollary, accepting them via e-mail) 
and online polls on public affairs issues.
2. Joining institutional and citizen voices. This might include, for 
example, using citizen input (e.g. from message boards and blogs) in 
stories and editorials and offering "talk back" opportunities on 
stories, editorials or letters.
3. Providing places for citizen interaction with officials, including 
chats and e-mail links to candidates, officials and institutions.
4. Providing spaces for citizen interaction on public affairs issues, 
such as message boards about public affairs as part of the online 
news site itself as well as links to sites such as "e.thePeople" 
(http://www.e-thepeople.org), which bills itself as "a public forum 
for a new democracy conversation."
5. Using the power of the Web to present public affairs information 
serving the surveillance function in ways that go beyond what is 
possible in print. These include layering or hyperstory formulation 
of stories on civic issues or elections; interactive presentations 
about issues of public importance (e.g. candidate quizzes, and 
"games" where users can make hypothetical decisions about budgets, 
government programs, campaigns, etc.); and links from the online 
newspaper to government sites with other citizen resources; electoral 
information such as candidates' campaign sites; and third-party 
information/ advocacy sites, e.g. Factcheck.org, Vote-Smart.org, and 
Move-On.org.
       Such a model helps to integrate the online news environment 
more effectively and productively into the 
information-interaction-impact model of public opinion development 
described by Yankelovich (1991) and overcome some of the systemic 
constraints on effective operation of the political communication, 
such as the ones described by McLeod, Kosicki and McLeod (1994). It 
also incorporates some of the more valuable parts of deliberative 
democracy and cyber-democracy as a theoretical basis for why these 
practices could be effective, while avoiding the technological 
determinism that plagues the latter in favor of a measured, realistic 
and practical approach.
	The practices described in this model are fairly close to the roles 
and goals of public journalism, which seeks to frame and structure 
news coverage in ways that create an active, engaged audience and 
leverage that interest into community action. In a way, the model can 
be viewed as an argument that taking the practices of public 
journalism online can help to overcome conditions that have limited 
it in traditional media venues. Public journalism's effectiveness is 
limited at least in part by the inertia created by the one-way nature 
of traditional media; in contrast, the interactive nature of the 
online arena provides more fertile ground for engagement to develop 
through public discourse.
       Using interactive tools also helps to address the criticism 
that public journalism takes reporters and editors too far from their 
traditional role as observers and chroniclers to turn them into 
promoters and advocates. In the online environment, audiences can 
take more responsibility for organizing themselves using the tools of 
interactivity. Journalists still must do more than provide 
"shovelware" news coverage. But the roles of "facilitator" and 
"sense-maker" may be more palatable within in the field than the 
advocacy role often associated with public journalism. The natures of 
their respective media mean online journalists are better positioned 
logistically to help this happen than their print counterparts, and 
the online discourse model proposed here provides a kind of roadmap 
for them to get there.
Conditional acceptance
       At heart, the model's main function is to create the 
conditions under which discourse may develop. Is that enough of a 
reform? Cohen argued that creating such conditions was a crucial 
element in development of a deliberative model in an institutional 
setting. "A theory of deliberative democracy aims to give substance 
to this formal ideal by characterizing the conditions that should 
obtain if the social order is to be manifestly regulated by 
deliberative forms of collective choice" (Cohen, 1997, p. 73). Using 
the metaphor of a mirror, he later noted that "the ideal deliberative 
procedure provides a model for institutions, a model they should 
mirror, so far as possible … the key point about the institutional 
reflection is that it should make deliberation possible" (p. 
79).  Sirianni and Friedland (undated) offer a similar approach, 
saying that deliberative democracy hinges on "expanding the 
opportunities of citizens themselves to deliberate." Fishkin 
addresses the same issue, noting that "The fact that our present, 
quiescent, disengaged public has not bothered to think enough about 
politics to have public opinions (rather than political preferences) 
worthy of the name does not mean that it might not arrive at more 
informed and more deliberative opinions under conditions designed to 
truly engage it" (1991, p. 58). Luskin and Fishkin (2002) noted that 
even drawing a relatively small number of participants into a 
deliberative process can make those who participate into "better 
citizens," as their article title put it.
Conclusion
       Having journalists adopt and employ an online discourse model 
will not be a panacea for dysfunctions of the American political 
system. The ideas suggested here follow and in certain ways build 
upon past critiques and suggestions for press reforms. The debates 
between Lippmann and Dewey over the role of the press in democracy in 
the 1920s, the ideas of the Hutchins Commission in the 1940s, and the 
public journalism movement in the 1990s all proceeded along the same 
basic track, saying that journalists needed to approach their way of 
doing business in different ways to contribute more effectively to 
democracy. But what is significantly different here is incorporation 
of technology to facilitate the reforms, without resorting to the 
kind of technological determinism that says discourse and engagement 
will automatically emerge simply because the Internet allows 
interactive communication irrespective of certain barriers of time, 
distance and information availability.
	Rather, the model goes to the heart of a question posed by Schudson 
about defining a plausible "political mission" for news institutions 
(1982, p. 2). He emphasized the role of institutions in crystallizing 
opinion and providing a basis for political action, and suggested the 
media should "imaginatively respond to the realities of contemporary 
politics … Helping citizens toward 'adequate understanding' [of 
political issues] has long been and still should be a leading aim of 
the news media" (p. 12-13).
       The online discourse model proposed here suggests specific 
tactics for creating the conditions under which discourse may emerge. 
The technological determinist (or cyber-utopian) might reply: "so 
does the network." The key difference is that the online discourse 
model starts with the network's capabilities but then employs human 
artifacts – notably rules of engagement and institutional credibility 
and connections – to channel the power of the technology for human 
ends, i.e., more effective self-governance through improved civic 
discourse. But at the same time it does not ignore the ideas that 
underlie theories of cyber-democracy. Rather, the model seeks to 
integrate promising aspects of the cyber-democratic approach but at 
the same time to place them in a realistic and practical framework 
that can provide a new set of normative practices for journalists.
	"The new technology of the Internet makes it possible to build a 
publicly held and publicly controlled space of local civic 
communication," according to Friedland (2004). He further suggested 
the philosophies of collaboration between journalists and with 
citizens that drove the original public journalism movement offer a 
guidepost for how these spaces may develop. In such a situation, 
"Citizens will have a process and a place to develop their own 
reporting and problem solving (and take responsibility for sustaining 
it. News media will have the opportunity to partner with citizens and 
tap into voices they may not have been hearing." The online discourse 
model supplies a template for making such collaboration a reality.
Future directions
	A model such as this, no matter how well grounded in theory, will be 
most valuable if it can be validated in practice. Ideas for 
validation that could be the subject of future research include case 
studies and/or content analyses of online papers that employ the 
devices outlined within the model, to assess their effectiveness in 
promulgating discourse; surveys of journalists about adoption of the 
new roles outlined within the model; and surveys of online news 
consumers about their engagement with the practices defined by it.
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