Interviews with representatives of national media organizations paint a somewhat diversified picture of citizen participation in the news process. The public broadcasters have experimented with open newsrooms and present a great deal of background material / extra material about controversial publications (raw interview transcripts, etc.), but have not yet reached as far with public participation in the news process. They are at present struggling to find ways to achieve more participation without compromising quality aspects.
The online operations of the newspapers have been much more active during recent years in finding ways to implement user participation. A recent study (Karlsson 2010) shows that reader comments, links to external blogs and user contributions of texts, pictures and videos have multiplied from 2005 to 2010. National interviews contain some examples: Aftonbladet (tabloid) listed 34 separate mechanisms for user participation on its site. The newsroom rewards reporters who are active in comment sections and who engage in dialogues with the readers. Svenska Dagbladet (morning paper) has developed a prizewinning investigative project online built on a combination of traditional reporting and user suggestions/participation. regional media try to increase public participation by the same means. However, the regional public service TV station acknowledges participation as one of the major problems in regional online news, as the policy is to deny the public access to news commentaries.
Generally speaking, the main reasons given for user participation are democratic values, more perspectives, more value for readers in online forums discussing the relevance of news and possibilities to develop new forms and formats of journalism.
