The Role of Audience Data and Metrics in Becoming 'Audience-Centred'

The aim of this chapter is to expand understanding of datafied knowledge production in news organizations at the intersection of metrification and peripheral journalism and nuance the debate on the use of audience metrification. Surprisingly little research have examined how the use of audience metrification emerges and is used outside the newsroom in the wider news organization. The chapter first describes the use of data and metrics in the newsroom by journalistic and editorial staff and then unfolds how non-journalistically trained professions spearhead and contribute to metrification processes. Framing audience metrics as an organizational knowledge production process, the chapter then theorizes the epistemic role of audience representations in analytical processes of the news organization. It argues that the increasing use of non-journalistic professions in strategic and operational processes is shaping fundamental aspects of the news organization, including how journalists and editors can perceive their audiences through data.