War journalism in the digital age: The interaction between professionals and user-generated content

The research aims to study the attitudes of professional journalists to user-generated audiovisual content and to understand its role in war coverage. A cross-sectional study was used to answer the research questions using a mixed-methods approach. The approach incorporated a close-ended questionnaire and in-depth interviews with 12 professional journalists. The findings showed that user-generated audiovisual content is widely used in war journalism to complement news stories, fact-checking, publishing, research, and real-time reporting. Telegram and Facebook are extensively utilised to source user-generated audiovisual content. To verify user-generated audiovisual content, consulting with experts, cross-referencing official sources, geolocation, reverse image search, and implementation of visual verification platforms are used. Both benefits and challenges characterise user-generated audiovisual content. For example, these benefits include enhancement of the ability to cover stories in inaccessible areas, providing unique perspectives on events, more effective engagement with the audience, and seeding up the news. At the same time, the findings showed that most participants face difficulties verifying the authenticity of user-generated audiovisual content, particularly challenges in maintaining professional standards, technical problems, the necessity to verify the authenticity, and the use of sensitive content. The recommendations on integrating user-generated audiovisual content in war news reporting were developed to maximise the effect of user-generated audiovisual content. Some include using user-generated audiovisual content to report on war zones, avoiding user-generated content as the sole source, implementing legal standards for using user-generated content, avoiding misinterpretation, introducing fact-checking tools, and assessing source credibility. The outcomes can be implied in journalism, media studies, and conflict reporting.