Misfortunes, memories and sunsets: non-professional images in Dutch news media

In the professional news media, invitations to submit photos and video material are the most common means of allowing citizens to participate in the content production, as opposed to merely commenting on professional material. Based on interviews with leading journalists in different media in the Netherlands, this study examines how professional journalists respond to the phenomenon of amateur photography, how it is assessed in
terms of journalism’s values and how amateur images are used in the established news media, both in the online context and in the broadcast or print context.
Our primary question is what amateur photography means for ‘participatory journalism’, understood in terms of conversation, collaboration and the democratization of news media.