There’s been a big shift in how journalists consider their audiences in newsrooms. That big shift is largely due to audience data – lots of audience data.
Journalists experience almost constant feedback about the content they create. It doesn’t matter if they’re working in television or are considered a “print” reporter. They’re delivering to multiple platforms and every day they’re exposed to quantitative data – metrics that measure audience behaviour on websites and social media – and qualitative data – such as audience comments on social media.
As one television journalist told us, “You know exactly how far someone scrolls down a page, how many seconds they’re spending on a page, what device you’re using, we know so much about our audience, just like Google knows about our audience.”
But what impact does all of this data have on how journalists perceive their audiences and the content they publish?
That’s what we explore in a newly published paper examining audience-oriented journalism.
There are three audience oriented roles: infotainment – or journalism that uses narrative strategies and style that align with more entertainment-based media; civic – journalism that focuses on educating citizens on their rights or advocating for their demands; and service, news you can use types of stories that can promote products or help you solve everyday problems.
Previous analysis showed that Canada ranks highly compared to other countries in the performance of audience-oriented roles. But in this latest paper, we dig a bit deeper into why and how.
We used three different data collection methods to figure it out. Content analysis of more than 3,700 stories from 2020, a survey of 133 journalists performed in 2020 and 2021, and interviews with 13 journalists during the same time period as the survey. All of our survey and interview participants were granted anonymity to ensure candid responses.
The news organizations we studied were the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post, CBC, CTV, Global News, La Presse, HuffPost Canada, TVA, and Radio-Canada. Having worked in newsrooms ourselves, we were able to contextualize our results through our own experiences.
What we found is that audience data has a big impact on practice in Canadian newsrooms. At the now defunct HuffPost Canada, for example, the audience was segmented into specific “types” of readers based on audience data. As one editor described, “We do X, Y and Z for this type of story for this type of person.” How a story was written depended on who it was being written for.
Reporters were also aware of the importance of audience data from a business perspective. As noted by one newspaper reporter,
“This is all algorithm stuff that I don’t entirely understand, but it does help the eggheads figure out how to customize your user experience when you go to the website. So it’s showing you stuff you’re interested in much the same way of Facebook and Twitter, which keeps people engaged with your website, which means more subscribers, which means I get to stay gainfully employed.”
Survey responses that included journalists from all our sites of study supported the importance of audience data in the selection, development and promotion of stories and in measuring their value. Based on other studies, we also know that journalists can lowball the importance of data in making editorial decisions, so there could be even greater impact than we measured.
Figure 1. Q139: Using metrics and analytics, such as pageviews and time spent, to inform the selection, development, and promotion of stories
Figure 2. Q140: Using ratings, circulation numbers, or traffic metrics to measure the relevance/value of a story
There is frequent critique that the ubiquity of data in newsrooms has resulted in a push for clickbait or more sensationalized stories at the expense of more relevant stories to boost traffic – and sometimes that happens.
Sensationalism is part of infotainment. However, our content analysis revealed that, for our sites of study anyway, a lot of what qualifies as infotainment in Canadian journalism involves descriptive language and sharing relevant, personal details about the subject being written about. Done appropriately this can give greater nuance and context to a story.
As well, infotainment in Canada is often used in conjunction with the “educator” part of the civic role. For example, one editor described how they look to find the “more fun” (infotainment) aspect of a story that can give a “point of entry” to inform the public about things like rules of Parliament.
The civic and service roles are also often performed together, with news you can use that might impact someone’s understanding of political processes or stories about their rights as citizens.
Figure 3. Distribution of audience-oriented roles in content sample
In our full sample of stories, nearly 80 per cent had at least one audience-oriented role present, and almost 40 per cent had more than one. This provides strong evidence that the audience is top of mind in newsrooms. Our conversations also revealed that even if newsrooms aren’t always able to accurately interpret what the audience wants, they’re spending a lot of time and resources trying to do so.
Social media is also having a big impact on practice. Most reporters we talked to used it – whether they wanted to or not – because they recognized it as an important tool to reach the audience, find sources, and promote their work. More than 78 per cent of the journalists surveyed agreed it was an important tool to connect with the audience.
Figure 4. Q138: Using Social Media to Connect with An Audience
However, reporters also noted the downsides of social media, particularly related to political polarization. One newspaper reporter said, “While it [social media] provides a venue to find an audience, which is what we absolutely need to do, it has also created a forum with which to attack journalists and attack the free press.”
That hostile environment resulted in another reporter being careful about her choice of words so she could reach a wider audience:
“I deliberately go out of my way to try to reach the people who are trying to ignore me. Like, that’s the target audience as you write, you know. So you’re avoiding unnecessary use of terms that get spun into shit, not because we don’t deserve to use those terms…but because what you’re actually attempting to do is to reach those people.”
With media conglomerates slashing jobs, programs and publications and growing news avoidance and perceived issues of trust in journalism, finding ways to catch, engage and retain an audience is a matter of survival. There’s evidence, though, that even if people might not “trust” a certain media organization, that doesn’t mean they can’t recognize or appreciate quality journalism.
Canadian journalists have to find ways to understand and reach an audience that may not always want to listen. They’re trying really hard to do so. Whether it works, and the lasting impact of their efforts on journalistic standards, remains to be seen.
*Graphics by Stuart Duncan
**An edited version of this article was first published on The Conversation Canada
