In recent years, we have witnessed an increase in the spaces for content written
by audiences in the news media and the growing integration of such material in
areas that had been reserved for news professionals until now. And, without a
doubt, political issues have been one of the ones that have generated the most
debate on the networks. And, without a doubt, political issues have been one of
the issues that have created the most citizen participation. To contribute to this
debate, the article summarizes findings of a broader project on the activity of
audiences employing qualitative research of the users’ comments collected from
the political blogs of Elpais.com, Guardian.co.uk, Lemonde.fr, and Repubblica.it.
As results indicate, the patterns of the audience’s participation varied across
countries. Still, it coincides in that there are lower levels of dialogue between
participants as well as of involvement of the authors-bloggers than expected.