THE PROCESS AND USERS’ PARTICIPATION IN NEWS REPORTING ON THAI CROWDSOURCING PLATFORMS

Abstract

The research is aimed to study 1) the process of news reporting on the crowdsourcing platforms of the Bureau of Networking and Public Participation, Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS), and the Southern Cities Climate Change Resilience Network Foundation, 2) factors affecting users’ participation in news reporting on Thai crowdsourcing platforms, and 3) the development of the structural equation model of factors affecting users’ participation in news reporting on Thai crowdsourcing platforms. The study applied mixed methods of both qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research was conducted by documentary analysis and in-depth interviews with 3 groups of key informants: the organizations’ crowdsourcers, users who were platform members, and 21 scholars in the field of digital journalism, while the quantitative research was conducted by survey questionnaires with 100 samples.

The findings show that the news reporting process of the C-Site and Hatyai City Climate Platforms is a process designed for the interaction between a proposing organization or an initiator and users, which is mutually beneficial relationship with 3 main sub-processes: 1) Input: the importing of data for distributing problem issues or news pieces and creation of motivation to stimulate users to participate in news reporting news and operation on three kinds of the public sphere, namely virtual, physical, and mass media; 2) process: session, crowd, content, and technology management, and 3) output, which is completed work or news pieces, guidelines for problem-solving, and common benefits of the organization and users.

The factors found to affect users’ participation in news reporting on Thai crowdsourcing platforms are personal motivation, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, the interaction between crowdsourcers and users, organizational factors, and users’ intention to participate.

The developed structural equation model of the factors affecting users’ participation in news reporting on Thai crowdsourcing platforms is found to be congruent with the empirical data, analyzing from the following congruence indices: x2 = .170, df = 1.122, CFI = .988, TLI = .984, RMR = .028, and RMSEA = .035, which pass the determined criteria. From the analysis of direct, indirect, and total effect of variables in the structural model, only one causal variable, namely intention to participate, is found to have a positive direct effect on users' participation in news reporting at a significance level of 0.01.

-