Ethical Pitfalls of Audience Metrics

Heikkilä, Heikki

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-95073-6_8

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…That said, newsrooms are working to find ways of managing disruptive innovations sustainably. For this, a balance must be struck between the technoeconomic domain where "technology solutions can solve any crisis of journalism" (Russell, 2019: 644) and the journalistic domain that tries to uphold the public's trust (Heikkilä, 2022). Our material suggests that balancing elements might be found in the ways in which journalists exploit the innovation possibilities in core journalistic tasks but also in those efforts wherein the gaze is zoomed out from the intra-organisation landscape to encompass facets of extra-organisational power relations.…”

Section: Stress Worry and Irritationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Web analytics was established not for journalism but for digital marketing; however, side effects of this innovation created a new market, where analytics companies could sell their services to newsrooms to support editorial decisions (Petre, 2018;Tandoc, 2019). News organisations in the Nordics and elsewhere have established partnerships with such companies with aims of understanding and gaining a foothold among digital news audiences (Andreassen et al, 2021;Heikkilä, 2022).…”

Section: Introduction: Disruptive Innovations In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For many practitioners, the metrics represent a new, game-changing digital tool for rethinking how news professionals can connect to their audiences and those audiences' presumed needs and interests (Costera Meijer, 2020). Yet, researchers have simultaneously noted that the stress on metrics has disrupted journalistic practice by bringing in the technology realm's logic, to the extent of realigning physical spaces in newsrooms to accommodate dashboard screens (Tandoc, 2019) and generating unanswered ethics questions about the right to monitor readers in a fashion akin to surveillance (Heikkilä, 2022). Hence, news professionals have been drawn into a sensitive process of sense-making surrounding the significance of metrics.…”

Section: Introduction: Disruptive Innovations In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Audience metrics as disruptive innovation: Analysing emotional work of Finnish journalism professionals

Ahva,

Ovaska

2023

Nordicom Review

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Audience metrics in journalism can be seen as a disruptive innovation: a technological invention that boosts journalism but at the same time disturbs it. The use of metrics has therefore drawn journalists into a sensitive sense-making process: They do emotional work to be able to manage the metrics-related requirements of their work. To further assess why metrics in Finland remains a sensitive issue, in this article we ask: 1) What is the Finnish news professionals’ emotional work about metrics directed at? 2) What is the relationship between this emotional work and the cycle of disruption and innovation? The empirical material consists of nine qualitative interviews with Finnish news managers and a set of open-ended survey responses from the editorial staff of the largest Finnish daily, Helsingin Sanomat. In addition, eight background interviews with third-party analytics providers were used as supportive material. We conclude that the emotional work is centred on relief, excitement, and stress, and it is directed at seeing the audience as an algorithmic conception, increasing the organisations’ capabilities through learning, and maintaining autonomy, respectively. Emotional work thus alleviates and stimulates, as well as balances journalism's relationship with the disruptive innovation of metrics.

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Section: Stress Worry and Irritationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Disruptive Innovations In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Disruptive Innovations In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Audience metrics as disruptive innovation: Analysing emotional work of Finnish journalism professionals

Ahva,

Ovaska

2023

Nordicom Review

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From permissive to resistive tactics: How audience members engage with and make sense of datafied journalism

Ovaska

2024

Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Med

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While audience data are pivotal to producing journalism, audiences’ perspectives on the issue have received relatively little attention. Addressing this gap, the paper examines audience members’ tactics for making sense of and engaging with the datafied journalism into which they contribute with their data. Empirically grounded in group interviews and instant-messaging group chats with 21 readers of prominent Finnish tabloid Iltalehti, the author identified four tactics, along a continuum from permissive to resistive: an audience member may 1) happily benefit from datafied journalism; 2) be resigned to it yet reflect critically on it; 3) act to prevent effects on personal news-consumption patterns, by curating the content; or 4) entirely restrain themselves from engaging with it. Awareness of these tactics, which help individuals cope with and navigate the datafied-journalism landscape, facilitates grasping the factors in audiences’ relations to datafied journalism and, thereby, understanding their consumption of news and their relationship with journalism.

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Ethical Pitfalls of Audience Metrics

Cited by 2 publications

References 22 publications

Audience metrics as disruptive innovation: Analysing emotional work of Finnish journalism professionals

Audience metrics as disruptive innovation: Analysing emotional work of Finnish journalism professionals

From permissive to resistive tactics: How audience members engage with and make sense of datafied journalism

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