This dissertation is concerned with the impact online news readers comments have on the role of journalists and the implication it carries in shifting private sentiments onto a public space. Online news readers comments have recently grown in popularity and journalists across the United States are divided on how best to host this new public space. Drawing perspectives from new forms of journalism, sociological studies in race and gender, critical race and feminist studies, this dissertation focuses on a) the challenges of news organizations as hosts of this new public space and b) the racist and sexist discourse generated by audiences of certain online news stories. This dissertation employs a multi-method research design that combines a large scale survey of journalists in the United States, in-depth interviews with journalists, content analysis and a discourse analysis of online news readers comments from five selected news stories with strong race and/or gender elements in order to 1) gain journalists’ perspectives in this new electronic landscape and 2) examine the content of the comments that pose the most challenges to journalists in terms of hosting this space. The survey and interviews revealed how journalists are divided in wanting to serve their public by providing a space for dialogue but yet refusing to host hate. Faced with this challenge within the new electronic landscape, a majority of journalists are left on their own to determine how best to handle this new public space with hardly any guidance or support from news managers. The analysis of the comments showed that the articulations of race and gender in the discourse were not erratic expressions of a minority but instead repertories of racism and sexism that mirrored the string of findings from race and gender scholars. This dissertation finds that online news readers comments section have emerged as the space for unconstrained expressions to flourish without the constraints of political correctness and within the safe confines of anonymity. / text

The title enlightens the difficulties of democratic transition that Cambodia experiences post Khmer Rouge. Media in transitional democracies is often described as a forced compromise between what is ideal and what is actually possible. This thesis aims to understand how political agency and technological advances have affected journalistic agency in a transitional democracy. Three research questions were decided upon: How do journalists in Cambodia perceive their role in a democratic transition? What restrictions and limitations do journalistic practices face in Cambodia? And how do journalists in Cambodia perceive the impact of social media on democratic development? A field study was conducted in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For ten weeks, eight editors and journalists currently active in Cambodia were interviewed and observed in their working environment. Normative media theory and developmental democracy theory have been used to analyze and understand the material that was generated through a combination of unstructured observations and semi-structured qualitative research interviews. Important findings were that the complicated structures of transitional democracies make journalists take on different roles, from very collaborative to extremely radical. Their different stand on journalistic practices is a mixture of their own choice and the force of historical, political and social constraints. Political power players treat them differently, which further separates them and has led to a segregated journalistic community. Even though they seem to share the same fundamental ideal of what journalism should be journalists are therefor unlikely to cooperate. Social media has been a catalyst for change in democratic development in Cambodia. By offering a place for uncensored conversations it has given the opposition access to media. Social media has brought along many new dilemmas though and is probably more beneficial to journalistic development than to democratic development. There is a lack of tolerance of diversity in Cambodia due to the fragile state of democratic transition. Therefor the immediate and unrestricted ways of expression in social media partially works against creating the social capital necessary for consolidation – fully completed democratization.