Social Media Editors and the Audience Funnel: Tensions between Commercial Pressures and Professional Norms in the Data-Saturated Newsroom

Neilson, Tai; Gibson, Timothy A.

doi:10.1080/21670811.2021.2004553

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The greater focus on audiences and their interests in the news industry has been, in part, driven by a business imperative, particularly as many news organizations have become more reliant on reader revenue than traditional advertising over the past decade (Benson, 2019;Newman et al, 2023). In response to the shift toward subscription and membership models in the news industry, editors have adjusted engagement strategies to build loyalty and increase subscriptions (Neilson & Gibson, 2022). However, digital-based revenues, for the most part, remain quite low in comparison to previous times (Chyi & Ng, 2020), and there is a significant imbalance across the industry in generating reader revenue (Newman et al, 2023).…”

Section: The Audience Turn In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jobs-to-Be-Done and Journalism Innovation: Making News More Responsive to Community Needs

Lewis,

Hermida,

Lorenzo

2024

MaC

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Developing successful innovations in journalism, whether to improve the quality and reach of news or to strengthen business models, remains an elusive problem. The challenge is an existential concern for many news enterprises, particularly for smaller news outlets with limited resources. By and large, media innovation has been driven by never-ending pivots in the search for a killer solution, rather than by long-term strategic thinking. This article argues for a fresh approach to innovation built around the “jobs to be done” (JTBD) hypothesis developed by the late Clayton Christensen and typically used in business studies of innovation. However, attempts to bring the JTBD framework into the news industry have never taken hold, while scholars, too, have largely overlooked the framework in their study of journalism innovation. We argue that the JTBD approach can foster local journalism that is more responsive and relevant to the needs of local communities. It reorients journalism by focusing on identifying and addressing the underserved needs of communities, as understood by the communities themselves. It suggests that a bottom-up approach to appreciating the “jobs” that community members want done offers a model that supports both the editorial and business imperatives of local news organizations.

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Section: The Audience Turn In Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jobs-to-Be-Done and Journalism Innovation: Making News More Responsive to Community Needs

Lewis,

Hermida,

Lorenzo

2024

MaC

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“…For example, they count the number of "Likes" to check whether certain posts were "successful". Moreover, a recent study by Neilson and Gibson (2022) found that social media editors did not simply function as mediators between various METRICS IN ACTION 6 institutions in the news organization, but that they also incorporated data from audience metrics to affect the whole news production process. In parallel, the adoption of social media as platforms of news circulation has made these engagement metrics even more central in shaping news content production.…”

Section: Media Responsiveness and Journalistic Newsroom Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Metrics in action: how social media metrics shape news production on Facebook

Mukerjee

Tian

Peng

2023

Journal of Communication

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Social media metrics allow media outlets to get a granular, real-time understanding of audience preferences, and may therefore be used to decide what content to prioritize in the future. We test this mechanism in the context of Facebook, by using topic modeling and longitudinal data analysis on a large dataset comprising all posts published by major media outlets used by American citizens (N≈2.23M, 2015–2019). We find that while the overall effect of audience engagement on future news coverage is significant, there is substantial heterogeneity in how individual outlets respond to different kinds of topics. A handful of right-wing media outlets are more likely to respond to audience engagement metrics than other outlets, but with partisan politics topics and not with entertainment-oriented content. Our research sheds new light on how social media platforms have shaped journalistic practices and has implications for the future health of journalism in the United States.

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“…Various studies have signalled marketing functions becoming endemic in contemporary newsrooms, including the role of SMEs as ‘marketeers’ of news content across online platforms which harms the traditional gatekeeping role of mass media (Neilson and Gibson, 2021; Tandoc and Vos, 2016). This ties in with the evolution of audience participation and engagement having become firmly embedded in all aspects of the news production process and journalistic practices (Loosen, 2019).…”

Section: The Role and Responsibility Of Social Media Editorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

News packaging during a pandemic: A computational analysis of news diffusion via Facebook

Hendrickx¹,

Remoortere

Opgenhaffen

2023

Discourse & Communication

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Facebook remains the most important platform where social media editors package and try to ‘sell’ media outlets’ online news articles to audiences. In one of the first studies of its kind, we assess how this practice was effectuated during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use computational analysis to determine the polarity, subjectivity and use of some linguistics features in the status messages of 140,359 Facebook posts of 17 mainstream and alternative news titles from Flanders (Belgium) between March 2020 and 2021. Among other things, we find that status messages score considerably higher than headlines in terms of polarity and subjectivity, and that they, along with the use of question and interrogation marks, peaked in the first months of the pandemic. We contextualise our findings within existing scholarship and wider trends in increasingly digitised and globalised media societies.

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Social Media Editors and the Audience Funnel: Tensions between Commercial Pressures and Professional Norms in the Data-Saturated Newsroom

Cited by 17 publications

References 25 publications

Jobs-to-Be-Done and Journalism Innovation: Making News More Responsive to Community Needs

Jobs-to-Be-Done and Journalism Innovation: Making News More Responsive to Community Needs

Metrics in action: how social media metrics shape news production on Facebook

News packaging during a pandemic: A computational analysis of news diffusion via Facebook

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