Abstract
This thesis explores the changing audience-journalism relationship by taking a dual perspective on news audiences and news organizations. With an empirical focus on young adults’ news and information practices, the thesis investigates how news audiences attune to a world of news and journalism in a high-choice media landscape. Secondly, from the perspective of journalism, the thesis explores how increasingly datafied news organizations in Denmark make sense of audiences, their needs and wants, and how they seek to become audience-centric as a response to the epistemic uncertainties surrounding digital news audiences and the future viability of the industry. By looking at the audience-journalism relationship from both sides, this thesis adds new knowledge about (in)congruences in news organizations’ approaches to audiences (Loosen & Schmidt 2015, Kramp & Loosen 2017, Costera-Meijer 2021) and audiences’ processes of developing news and media habits (LaRose 2010).
Theoretically, the thesis draws on two strands of literature: the ‘audience turn’ (i.e. Costera Meijer 2020, Swart et al. 2022) in journalism studies and the ‘material turn’ (De Mayer 2016) in digital journalism studies. Building on the former, the thesis deploys the idea of media repertoires (Hasebrink & Hepp 2017) and a process-based framework for investigating change in news audiences (Peters & Schrøder 2018) in order to capture the complexity of media use as it is situated across time and space in everyday life. This focus in the thesis adds to debates around digital news use in a landscape of ‘plenty’ (Becker & Schönback 2011). The latter strand of literature, which is centered around the social-materiality of news, inspired by science, technology and society studies, highlights the role of both technologies and human agents in the transformation of journalism. In this regard, the thesis adds to debates about datafication and metrification in news organizations (i.e. Tandoc 2019, Christin 2020) and what role non-journalistic actors, such as ‘peripheral actors’ or ‘journalistic strangers’ (i.e. Holton & Belair-Gagnon 2018) play in news organization’s efforts to systematically attune to digital news audiences.
The empirical data collection is designed to investigate the changing audience-journalism relationship in two different empirical domains: one focusing on news audiences’ experiences and relationship with news over time, and one focusing on technological transformations taking place within journalism, which ultimately shape how audiences are understood and pursued by news organizations. Methodologically, the audience study deploys Q-methodology, think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews on a quota sample of Danish youth. This abductive approach has resulted in the first two articles in the thesis. The second study is comprised of exclusive i nterviews (Bruun 2016) focusing on a much-over-looked group of media actors, namely audience-oriented but non-journalistic actors working within news organizations. The sample encompasses 15 interviews with such actors, and six interviews with journalistic actors to ensure validation and context across three different types of news organizations in Denmark: 1) a public service media outlet; 2) a legacy media outlet; and 3) a successful digital born startup media outlet. This study has resulted in the two last articles in the thesis.
The first article, News as They Know It: Young Adults’ Information Repertoires in the Digital Media Landscape (Peters et al. 2021) takes an emic and non-media centric approach in order to understand what role news and journalism play in the lives of Danish youth. Doing so, it outlines five types of media repertoires, the “Online Traditionalist”, “Depth-Seeking Audiophile”, “Digital News Seeker”, “Interpersonal Networker” and “Non-News Information Seeker”. Moreover, it shows tensions between young adults’ normative ideals of digital news use and conceptions of what news is, and their actual digital media practices.
The second article, Exploring Changing News Repertoires: Towards a Typology (Vulpius et al. 2022) begins from the assertion that the concept of ‘change’ is too often dealt with on a commonsensical basis. From this cue, the article develops a conceptual and methodological approach to study change in news and media repertoires, outlining three key aspects to take into consideration in relation to change: how a change is deliberate (or not), the scale of change in relation to the repertoire, and the repertoire’s development over time. Finally, it presents a typology of changing repertoires that elaborates on processes of (repertoire) change: emergences, disappearances, and maintenance.
The third article, The Role of Audience-Data in Becoming Audience-Centered (Vulpius 2022) makes a conceptual contribution and brings research on audience-centrism in news organizations into conversation with research on metrics and datafication. By conceptualizing the growing use of audience data as an organizational epistemic resource, the article presents a temporal model of the uses of audience data in different epistemic processes, highlighting data’s interpretive flexibility and technological actors’ agency. Doing so, it argues for investigating audience-centrism and datafication outside newsrooms and across temporal contexts.
The fourth article, ‘We Need to Think About Their Real Needs’: Examining the Auxiliary Work of Audience-oriented Intralopers in News Organizations” (Vulpius 2023, in review) ventures outside the newsroom, interviewing audience-oriented, non-journalistic actors, such as designers, data analysts and developers as a way to investigate how they shape the audience-journalism relationship from within. It explicates four defining features of such actors’ work and influence: 1)translating what the audience ‘really’ wants to other organizational actors, 2) organizationally ‘gatekeeping’ audiences in innovation processes, 3) engineering audience interaction, and 4) shaping the organizational data culture. Overall, the article argues that such actors import a specific audience-centric ideology that foregrounds form over content matters as they focus on engaging audiences through digital features
Theoretically, the thesis draws on two strands of literature: the ‘audience turn’ (i.e. Costera Meijer 2020, Swart et al. 2022) in journalism studies and the ‘material turn’ (De Mayer 2016) in digital journalism studies. Building on the former, the thesis deploys the idea of media repertoires (Hasebrink & Hepp 2017) and a process-based framework for investigating change in news audiences (Peters & Schrøder 2018) in order to capture the complexity of media use as it is situated across time and space in everyday life. This focus in the thesis adds to debates around digital news use in a landscape of ‘plenty’ (Becker & Schönback 2011). The latter strand of literature, which is centered around the social-materiality of news, inspired by science, technology and society studies, highlights the role of both technologies and human agents in the transformation of journalism. In this regard, the thesis adds to debates about datafication and metrification in news organizations (i.e. Tandoc 2019, Christin 2020) and what role non-journalistic actors, such as ‘peripheral actors’ or ‘journalistic strangers’ (i.e. Holton & Belair-Gagnon 2018) play in news organization’s efforts to systematically attune to digital news audiences.
The empirical data collection is designed to investigate the changing audience-journalism relationship in two different empirical domains: one focusing on news audiences’ experiences and relationship with news over time, and one focusing on technological transformations taking place within journalism, which ultimately shape how audiences are understood and pursued by news organizations. Methodologically, the audience study deploys Q-methodology, think-aloud protocols and semi-structured interviews on a quota sample of Danish youth. This abductive approach has resulted in the first two articles in the thesis. The second study is comprised of exclusive i nterviews (Bruun 2016) focusing on a much-over-looked group of media actors, namely audience-oriented but non-journalistic actors working within news organizations. The sample encompasses 15 interviews with such actors, and six interviews with journalistic actors to ensure validation and context across three different types of news organizations in Denmark: 1) a public service media outlet; 2) a legacy media outlet; and 3) a successful digital born startup media outlet. This study has resulted in the two last articles in the thesis.
The first article, News as They Know It: Young Adults’ Information Repertoires in the Digital Media Landscape (Peters et al. 2021) takes an emic and non-media centric approach in order to understand what role news and journalism play in the lives of Danish youth. Doing so, it outlines five types of media repertoires, the “Online Traditionalist”, “Depth-Seeking Audiophile”, “Digital News Seeker”, “Interpersonal Networker” and “Non-News Information Seeker”. Moreover, it shows tensions between young adults’ normative ideals of digital news use and conceptions of what news is, and their actual digital media practices.
The second article, Exploring Changing News Repertoires: Towards a Typology (Vulpius et al. 2022) begins from the assertion that the concept of ‘change’ is too often dealt with on a commonsensical basis. From this cue, the article develops a conceptual and methodological approach to study change in news and media repertoires, outlining three key aspects to take into consideration in relation to change: how a change is deliberate (or not), the scale of change in relation to the repertoire, and the repertoire’s development over time. Finally, it presents a typology of changing repertoires that elaborates on processes of (repertoire) change: emergences, disappearances, and maintenance.
The third article, The Role of Audience-Data in Becoming Audience-Centered (Vulpius 2022) makes a conceptual contribution and brings research on audience-centrism in news organizations into conversation with research on metrics and datafication. By conceptualizing the growing use of audience data as an organizational epistemic resource, the article presents a temporal model of the uses of audience data in different epistemic processes, highlighting data’s interpretive flexibility and technological actors’ agency. Doing so, it argues for investigating audience-centrism and datafication outside newsrooms and across temporal contexts.
The fourth article, ‘We Need to Think About Their Real Needs’: Examining the Auxiliary Work of Audience-oriented Intralopers in News Organizations” (Vulpius 2023, in review) ventures outside the newsroom, interviewing audience-oriented, non-journalistic actors, such as designers, data analysts and developers as a way to investigate how they shape the audience-journalism relationship from within. It explicates four defining features of such actors’ work and influence: 1)translating what the audience ‘really’ wants to other organizational actors, 2) organizationally ‘gatekeeping’ audiences in innovation processes, 3) engineering audience interaction, and 4) shaping the organizational data culture. Overall, the article argues that such actors import a specific audience-centric ideology that foregrounds form over content matters as they focus on engaging audiences through digital features
| Original language | English |
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| Place of Publication | Roskilde |
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| Publisher | Roskilde Universitet |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2023 |