Download the eBook (8.25 MB) - ECREA Thematic Sections

Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
local topics, special interest programs and programs for minorities such as gay, lesbian
or transsexual people.
That project is publicly funded by the LfM. The program is actually disseminated by
cable TV with a potential audience of 1.5 million households in NRW and also
distributed online as a live stream and to mobile phones. There is a weekly scheme,
and the scheme is repeated during the day and during the week depending on the
actual length of the programs sent in. In 2010, the length of the first broadcasted
programs varied between 14 and 43 hours per month with an average of 26 hours of
original programming.
Method
This study reveals the first data about the content of the participatory television project
nrwision. The data is based on a content analysis of nrwision’s 2010 programming
schedule. The unit of analysis was one whole program. Each program was coded only
once on its first broadcast and not again when it was repeated. Teasers and trailers
were excluded from the content analysis. Thus, in total 801 programs first broadcast in
2010 were included in the content analysis. That corresponds to 306 hours of
programming.
The coding process was conducted by just one person. 90 The intra-coder reliability
according to Holsti was calculated based on two weeks in 2010 that were selected by
random choice. The intra-coder reliability was good with a value of at least 0.87 or
above for each variable.
Findings
Producers
The findings show that most of the content was delivered by ordinary citizens. 91 They
produced 70.3% of the channel’s programming (N=801) (see Figure 1). If the duration
90 The authors would like to thank Mike Kortsch for collecting and analyzing the data for the content
analysis.
91 Here, the paper follows the official definition of three different categories of producers by the LfM.
But it has to be said that in the category of ordinary citizens there were also a few university project
teams. In contrast to the university project teams in the separate category they did not get financial
support by the LfM and therefore did not belong to that category according to the official definition.
320