The Swedish audience has only modest interest in participatory journalism, write Michael Karlsson, Christer Clerwall, Karin Fast, all of Karlstadt University, and Annika Bergström, of University of Gothenburg (names not in original order). The authors used data from large-scale, national surveys and a longitudinal study of the features on online news services.

Over time, the possibility of contributing to journalistic pieces through comments and blogs rose, and then plummeted. The availability of the features follow the newsrooms’ emphasis on audience participation, the authors write. Meanwhile, audience interest in participation remained low. The authors conclude, that the main obstacle to participatory journalism seems to be the audience’s passivity, not the journalists’ unwillingness to relinquish their monopoly.

The results were published as an online-first article of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. It can be accessed here (abstract public). The article is also freely available on Academia.edu, here.

Edited on 17.2.2015: An alternative link to the article on Academia.edu was added.