(Re-)Discovering the Audience

Abstract

RE-)DISCOVERING THE AUDIENCEThe relationship between journalism and audience in networked digital media Current technological, organizational and institutional changes fundamentally alter the relationship between journalism and its audience -with consequences not only for journalistic practice, but also for theoretical and methodological issues of media research. After briefly recounting three perspectives on the audience, the paper outlines key aspects of the sociological theory of inclusion and explicates them in a novel and comprehensive heuristic model of audience inclusion in journalism. It introduces two constructs which apply both to journalism and the audience:(1) inclusion performance subsumes inclusion practices and their manifest results, and (2) inclusion expectations subsume attitudes, norms and perceptions with respect to audience inclusion in journalism. The degree of congruence between performances of journalists and audience members is interpreted as inclusion level; the degree of congruence between the expectations is interpreted as inclusion distance. This model can serve as a heuristic for empirical operationalization, helps to systematize existing and future research on digital networked media and journalism into a coherent sociological framework and is also open for comparative research on participation in other social systems.

Expecting reciprocity: Towards a model of the participants’ perspective on participatory journalism

“…It complements previous audience studies in which patterns of moderate use of participatory features were found (Bergström, 2008;Chung and Nah, 2009;Hujanen and Pietikäinen, 2004;Larsson, 2011) by suggesting an additional explanation for not, or no longer, participating: the viability of participatory projects could also be diminished by a need and wish for, but a factual lack of, reciprocity. This article, thus, further emphasizes the value of the notion of reciprocity (Lewis et al, 2013;Loosen and Schmidt, 2012) for the study and practice of participatory journalism.…”

“…Note that journalism as a social system only functions well if the actors that are part of the system have 'reciprocal expectations' of each other's 'roles' (Loosen and Schmidt, 2012). Traditional journalism was such a functioning social system, because expectations of journalists as gatekeepers and audience as receivers were 'fairly stable and reciprocal' (Loosen and Schmidt, 2012: 870).…”

“…This notion plays a role on two levels: the level of ethics, elaborating on the idea of 'reciprocal journalism' (Lewis et al, 2013), and the system level, building on the idea of journalism as a 'social system' (Loosen and Schmidt, 2012).…”

Users’ Encounter With Normative Discourses on Facebook: A Three-Pronged Analysis of User Agency as Power Structure, Nexus, and Reception

“…Different concepts have been suggested to capture this new reality: "recursive publics" (Kelty, 2005), "networked publics" (boyd, 2011), or "ad hoc publics" (Bruns & Burgess, 2015). Loosen and Schmidt (2012) suggest the apparition of new forms of public spheres that are provisionary, formed, for example, around a Facebook page created spontaneously about a specific issue. Blondeau and Allard (2010) suggest that, through their reflexive engagement on social media, users constitute themselves as public of texts, and by the same token contribute to define and expand these texts.…”

Africa in the click stream: audience metrics and foreign correspondents in Africa

“…Feedback is instant" (quoted in Este et al 2008, 17). Research suggests that news editors are increasingly using this feedback to guide their news production -for example, if metrics show that a particular story is popular, placing it prominently on the website homepage, and commissioning stories on a similar topic in the future (Anderson 2011a(Anderson , 2011bBoczkowski, 2004;Bright and Nichols 2014;Dick 2011;Loosen and Schmidt 2012;MacGregor 2007;Peters 2010). …”