Citizen journalism and community building: predictive measures of social capital generation

Abstract

A survey (N=102) of citizen journalism readers explored the relations between motivations for reading (content and process gratifications), personal attitudes (interpersonal trust and life contentment), and three measures of community participation (civic engagement, interpersonal trust, life contentment. The gratifications and personal attitudes were highly predictive of community participation. Only a few differences were observed between citizens who contributed journalism and those who only read it.