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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

A newly published magazine highlighting research shared at the Between Ideals and Practices conference captures the state of a media landscape in perpetual transformation. 

Shaped by factors such as technology, multiplatform delivery, and a years-long pandemic, journalists and news outlets across the world have adapted in different ways to a shifting political and cultural landscape. However, in journalistic cultures everywhere, the values journalists prioritize in their work aren’t always present in their journalism, and those values are changing. 

With the goal of better understanding the significance of the gap between journalistic ideals and practices, researchers from around the world gathered in the School of Journalism at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University to talk about changing journalistic roles. 

The conference included keynote addresses from Dr. Claudia Mellado, principal investigator of the international Journalistic Role Performance (JRP) Project, and from Dr. Daniel C. Hallin, a pioneer of media systems research. 

Presentations at the conference covered journalistic practice in a wide range of countries in the Global South and North, with topics including the politically-driven polarization of media, the shift of news outlets to an online environment, the experiences of different groups in increasingly diverse newsrooms, and burgeoning local-language reporting in previously-colonized countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

The English and French versions of the magazine are both available in print and online.  To access the online versions, follow the hyperlinks in the previous sentence then click the red “read now” button. Use your arrow keys or click the light gray arrow in the black border on the far right of the screen to flip pages. There is also a small pull tab at the bottom centre of the screen which lets you read through the pages in any order. PDF versions of the magazine can be accessed on this website.

Each article also has a recorded version that is accessible by QR code. This is in keeping with the goal to make academic conferences more accessible. The magazine includes a best practice guide from the conference’s accessibility coordinator, Sama Nemat Allah, that details how to create more inclusive spaces, including recognizing that audiences are diverse from the get-go and budgeting for accessibility services and venues when planning a conference.

The conference and the magazine were supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as The Creative School, Centre d’études sur les médias, the Journalism Research Centre at TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

Registration is now open and the preliminary program is available for Between ideals and practices: Journalistic role performance in transformative times. This is a one-day international pre-conference to ICA 2023 that will explore the factors shaping journalism in an industry facing critical resource shortages, political polarization, and a years-long pandemic. Journalists now often work in precarity, with a narrated ideal to fulfill a public service role, but a reality that might involve more time spent entertaining than acting as a watchdog, and a growing segment of the audience that does not trust in news or chooses to avoid it.

Key information:

• The conference will be held in The School of Journalism in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) on Wednesday May 24th, 2023 (just a 15-minute walk from the location of ICA 2023)
• Scholars from around the world will be presenting
• There will be presentations in both French and English covering a wide range of topics including reporting during the pandemic;  the impact of technology on newsroom practice; journalism and democracy; journalists as influencers and activists; and evolving methods to study journalistic roles
• Dr. Daniel Hallin and Dr. Claudia Mellado will both give keynote addresses 
• The registration fee of $75 Canadian (+ tax), $25 for students (+tax) includes breakfast, lunch and snacks
• There are also a limited number of affordable rooms available to book in TMU’s residence for up to a one-week stay for registered conference participants* ($57 + tax/night for shared washroom; $90 + tax/night for private washroom)
• Journalists will also be invited to participate in panels/discussions to build bridges between academic researchers and practitioners

Questions? Get in touch with us at canada.jrp@gmail.com.

This conference is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as The Creative School, Centre d’études sur les médias, the Journalism Research Centre at TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso. 

The Canadian branch of the JRP team has highlighted its preliminary findings in an academic article published in Facts and Frictions that is summarized and built upon in a story featured in J-Source, a version of which you can read below.

By: Nicole Blanchett and Anna Maria Moubayed

How does the journalism produced in Canada compare to journalistic ideals and journalism practice the world over? In a first-of-its-kind study in Canada, after poring over thousands of stories, we’re beginning to get a better understanding. Canadian journalism is audience-focused and more reliant on expert opinions than journalism in many other parts of the world. And while there are few distinctions between English and French news media in Canada, those differences are noteworthy. For example, English journalists in our sample referenced emotions and cited community members’ (what the study refers to as “citizens”) voices more than French journalists. 

The Journalistic Role Performance project is an international partnership with 36 other countries. This is its second wave; Canada didn’t take part in the first. Researchers of this complex study collected almost 150,000 stories (3,700+ in Canada) published in 2020 from hundreds of media organizations in the Global North and South, and used a tested methodology to see what journalistic roles were present in those stories: watchdog, interventionist, civic, service, infotainment, and/or loyal facilitator. 

Then, we compared what was found in that content analysis to a survey of journalists from around the globe that measured the importance they placed on these roles and how often they perceived these roles were being performed in their newsrooms. In Canada, findings were further contextualized with interviews with journalists. Sites of study had to be of national relevance. We looked at 12 mainstream news outlets:

Television: CTV National News; CBC: The National; Global National; TVA Nouvelles 22h

Newspapers: Toronto Star; National Post; Globe and Mail

Radio: CBC Radio: World at Six; ICI Radio-Canada Première: L’heure du monde

Online media: La Presse; CBC.ca; HuffPost Canada (which closed in March 2021)

All types of news stories, from court reporting to politics to sports to lifestyle and entertainment were examined, as long as the stories were produced by a journalist who worked for one of the sites of study. Stories published or broadcast that were solely generated from another news outlet or a news agency, such as Canadian Press, were not included. Neither were editorial and opinion pieces. Preliminary findings of the Canadian team were recently published in Facts and Frictions.

One practice that stood out was the use of experts in Canadian reporting: they were seen twice as often than the average of other countries in the study.  However, all the former journalists on the research team felt getting an expert — defined by the JRP as “specialists in their specific area” —  to give context was a newsroom norm in Canada, and seemed even more pertinent within the context of a pandemic. Here’s what else we’ve found so far, with a brief explanation of what each of the journalistic roles looks like in practice. 

Watchdog

The watchdog role is one that is central to journalistic ideals: holding power to account. However, it’s also the role where we see the biggest gap between its stated importance to journalists, their conception of how often it’s done and the amount of watchdog reporting that actually happens. Journalists interviewed for the study pointed to lack of resources as an important factor in what and how stories were covered. Talking about holding power to account, one reporter said, “I don’t expect all journalists to be able to live up to their ideals. I don’t think we have an industry structured in a way that supports them in that. So I don’t see people who have time to do that as morally superior to people who don’t have time to do that.” 

This lack of resources also might explain the minimal amount of investigative reporting found in the stories analyzed in Canada and internationally. Shrinking newsrooms and increasing workloads were highlighted by another reporter who said, “When you read the job descriptions for what is expected it’s like you’re asking for a superhero.” 

Civic Role

The civic role focuses on amplifying the viewpoints and rights of citizens. It’s often seen  in stories where a journalist might cover a protest or get the opinion of ordinary people on political decisions. Journalists in Canada performed the civic role more often than almost all other countries – ranking second out of the 37 participating in the JRP study. 

But there were certain elements of reporting within this role that drove its high ranking, including the use of citizen reactions and references to how political decisions might impact a particular social community (for example, based on race or gender). There were also differences in reporting between French and English news organizations. For example, English media had more stories referring to local impact, which we found somewhat surprising as we were studying primarily national media and had expected relatively more regional reporting in Quebec. 

Platform of delivery also mattered. For example, TV news had the most civic-style reporting overall, with online close on its tail. Broadcast (radio and TV) content included more information on citizen activities, such as protests. Citizen voices were found least in newspapers. Online news had more reporting that included information educating people on their duties and rights as citizens compared to all other platforms. In the civic role, we also saw the second-biggest gap between its perceived importance and how often it was performed. 

Interventionist

With the interventionist role, a journalist is present in a story’s narrative, something measured, for example, by use of first-person or describing cause and effect without quoting a source. This is another role where Canada has a high global ranking, third of 37 countries. There were two particular facets of interventionist-style reporting that drove this result: interpretation and the use of qualifying adjectives. Words like “epic” referring to a snowman or “apocalypse” referring to a budget were both coded as qualifying adjectives. But those two examples show what might be an issue with the measure – while “epic” may be a good descriptor for a giant snowman, the use of “apocalypse” seemed more exaggerated and opinion-based. Overall though, after analysis, we feel the interventionist role in Canada is less about a journalist’s viewpoint, and more about helping the audience understand complex events or issues.

Also of note with regards to the interventionist role — it represents the smallest gap between ideals and practice compared to all of the roles. Still, the journalists we talked to ranged in their opinions on what was considered balanced reporting. For example, one said, “I still think you should be impartial, just tell the story. Now columnists have their opinions and that’s a different thing.” Another said, “I don’t agree with the objectivity part and giving equal space to all parties in a story. That’s fallen by the wayside, I would say, and that’s good.” These remarks reflect shifting attitudes towards traditional expectations of “objectivity” being grappled with across the industry.

Infotainment 

In the infotainment role, entertaining the audience can take priority over informing them — but this doesn’t necessarily mean facts and reporting fall by the wayside. Sometimes stories may cross over into sensationalism, where there is exaggeration and unwarranted use of drama. But often, infotainment means engaging the audience on fact-based reporting utilizing basic storytelling techniques, such as references to sources’ personal experiences and emotions. 

Infotainment shouldn’t be seen as a singularly negative ranking when you take a closer look at the way stories are coded. For Canada’s ranking, use of emotions in a story, either by someone being quoted or by the journalist, was seen nearly twice as often compared to most other countries and more frequently in English media and television news. Examples of emotion range widely, from a hard-news story about a family member expressing anger at lack of access to medical care for a teen who died in custody, someone crying in a television story, or the use of words like “happy” in a story about a young Canadian performer on American Idol. The fact that emotion is expressed in a story does not, necessarily, mean that a reporter is trying to “entertain” the audience in a way that is inappropriate. Stories in this study are being coded based on research literature that defines six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise, often used in entertainment-based content to make a story more engaging by giving the reader or viewer a sense of how something feels. However, another factor that contributed to overall scores, use of sensationalism, was much less frequent in Canadian stories in our sample compared to most other countries, although seen a bit more in French media. Overall, there is significant infotainment in Canadian reporting – we ranked eighth out of  37 countries. 

The small gap between the importance journalists placed on the infotainment role in their survey answers and how often it is actually performed suggests journalists in Canada are somewhat accepting and aware of how infotainment is used. And our analysis overall suggests that news can be both entertaining and informing – multiple roles can be at play, even within one story. “Let’s make sure we are the first ones there with information that is useful to them and contextual and interesting and you know, fun, when appropriate, serious when not,” said an editor interviewed.

Service Role

Service is the “news you can use” of journalistic roles – the type of reporting where journalists offer practical advice and recommendations. Canada ranked fifth worldwide in this style of reporting. This could be another area where the pandemic impacted the prevalence of a particular journalistic function. Due to the timeframe of our collection (over the course of 2020 as the pandemic erupted) there were frequent stories about, for example, the best masks and hand sanitizers. 

Service journalism was also a role that seemed highly impacted by the platform of delivery. The prominence of formats like listicles could help explain why more stories online offered tips and advice, compared to other platforms. Consumer information was also seen much more often in online and in print, compared to television and radio. News that involved impact on everyday life was most common in online content and television reporting, but seen significantly less in radio and print. In terms of the gap between ideals and practice, it was moderate – but the role was more important to journalists surveyed compared to how often it appeared in the stories studied.

Loyal facilitator

Acting as loyal facilitators, journalists support the narrative of governments or elite members of society. Based on the stories we coded, it rarely happens in Canada and, from an international perspective, has little presence in most countries. It’s more common, though, in places with lower political, legal, and economic freedom. In the JRP study, an example of the loyal-facilitator role in action would be a sports reporter talking up a star player. It’s also coded for stories that support people in positions of power, including politicians. Keeping in mind the scarcity of the loyal-facilitator role within the Canadian media sampled, and the unprecedented circumstances of the pandemic, there was a very slight increase in this type of reporting in Canada when it came to COVID coverage. An example would be a reporter supporting government initiatives around masking, outside of citing a public health official. As one journalist described: 

“If a public health authority person says, listen, you have to avoid big crowds or cohorts … that’s good enough for me, and I’m going to push that message and reinforce it, you know, if I’m asked … I don’t feel pressured to do that. I just think it’s the responsible thing to do as a human being.”

It’s also of interest that subsequent to that minimal increase in loyal-facilitator reporting in COVID-related stories over the course of the pandemic, other research found a drop in audience trust in news and increased perceptions that media were not acting independently of political and business pressures.  

Based on our sample of stories, there is such little evidence of the loyal-facilitator role in Canadian reporting that these perceptions concerning political pressures, or what might be described as inappropriate or unwarranted support of government narratives, do not seem to be supported. As noted previously, though, our sample only included news stories, not more polarizing opinion and editorial pieces. However, there is lots of research to show that the audience doesn’t distinguish between news and opinion, even when content is labeled, or between news and native advertising. Therefore, news organizations need to consider how all of the content they publish might impact audience perceptions. From a platform perspective, the loyal-facilitator role was more notable in online content in Canada. 

More to come

We have collected a lot of data over the past few years, and there’s much more we hope to do with it. For example, we have evidence that when it comes to police and crime stories, based on analysis of the factors that measure the interventionist role, such as the use of qualifying adjectives or interpretation, this role is more prevalent in French than English media. Overall, the interventionist role is performed much more frequently in stories related to campaigns and elections in Canada. So are certain journalistic roles, and specific aspects of those roles, more prevalent in certain types of stories and does that differ based on language?  

The information we’ve been gathering can also help us better understand what student journalists need to know before heading out into the field and, perhaps, most importantly, how to improve the narrative of an industry fighting to retain its relevance and maintain trust with the audience.

There will be an international conference at Toronto Metropolitan University this spring, where scholars from around the world will come to share their research on how journalistic roles are changing in these transformative times. Journalists will also be invited to both hear about the research and provide crucial context from a practice perspective. This is because building better bridges between academics and newsrooms makes for better research and, potentially, better journalism. If you’re a journalist who’s interested in attending, just let us know.

Between ideals and practices: Journalistic role performance in transformative times, is a one-day international pre-conference that will explore the factors shaping journalism in an industry facing critical resource shortages, political polarization, and a years-long pandemic. Journalists now often work in precarity, with a narrated ideal to fulfill a public service role, but a reality that might involve more time spent entertaining than acting as a watchdog, and a growing segment of the audience that does not trust in news or chooses to avoid it.

The conference will be held in The School of Journalism in the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) on Wednesday May 24th, 2023 (just a 15-minute walk from the location of ICA 2023), and have presentations in both French and English. Journalists will also be invited to participate in panels/discussions to build bridges between academic researchers and practitioners.

Dr. Daniel Hallin and Dr. Claudia Mellado will give keynote addresses. A registration fee of $75 Canadian ($25 for students) will include breakfast and lunch. There will be a limited number of affordable rooms for up to a one-week stay in TMU’s residence for registered conference participants*.

Calls for papers/panels:

Submissions can be made through this form for panels (with no more than four presenters) and/or individual papers. Panel submissions should include a 250-word description of the panel theme and abstracts of no more than 400 words for each presentation therein. Individual presenters should submit an abstract of no more than 400 words. French and English submissions will be accepted. Presentations/panels will be selected by peer review. Deadline for submission is December 15, 2022. Presenters will be notified their submissions have been accepted by February 1, 2023. Conference participants are also encouraged to submit their papers for a special issue of Journalism Practice. The following themes are suggested for pre-conference submissions:

• Pandemic reporting: How has the pandemic affected roles performed by journalists? How has journalistic content creation changed/evolved and how has a global pandemic impacted the ways journalists view their roles within their respective organizations? 
• News and technology: How has technology and AI modified news media practices and consumption? How has the digital transformation of journalism impacted the application of journalistic roles?  
• Organizational impact on journalistic role performance: How do newsroom environments influence journalistic role performance relative to more general societal factors? How are converged newsrooms that deliver to multiple platforms changing traditional roles?
• Political impacts: What are the political, social and economic implications of the performance of journalistic roles? How does the (dis)connection between journalistic ideals and practice affect political landscapes? 
• Methodological challenges of studying journalistic roles: What are the best practices to engage with and gain access to journalists and for data collection and analysis in the study of journalistic role performance? 
• Gatekeepers and gaps: Where are the biggest gaps between journalistic ideals and practice? How has the proliferation of digital media altered journalistic gatekeeping, including content creation and distribution? 
• Positionality, power, and privilege: How does an individual’s social location and standing affect their journalism? How do systemic barriers and lived experience impact journalistic role performance and how journalists interact with their audience and the sources used in their stories?
• Journalists as activists and influencers: How are changing norms surrounding objectivity impacting journalistic role performance? And are those changes consistent across media systems?

Questions? Get in touch with us at canada.jrp@gmail.com.

**Rates for rooms in residence are not set for spring but will be approximately $65/night for a room with shared bathroom and $90/night for a room with a private bathroom. Details available at the time of registration.

With the use of metrics and analytics embedded in practice at most newsrooms, efforts are shifting to develop processes that target specific audience segments. Traffic still matters, but the time spent metric has gained gravitas, and views from loyal readers are more valuable. Hence, more importance is placed on creating content that will engage and retain these readers/viewers and/or monitoring conversion data that show the types of stories that turn a content sampler into a paid subscriber. Meanwhile, social media data are used to monitor what’s being shared, when it’s being shared, and how comments might reflect engagement with content. However, the relevance of particular audience data is highly tied to an individual outlet’s revenue model and management priorities. This presentation explores how multiplatform delivery and concepts of engaging the audience through the use of audience data continue to push the evolution of  journalism.

Presentation slides from the 72nd annual International Communication Association Conference

This presentation, from the 2022 RUBIX conference at Toronto Metropolitan University, introduces the JRP project and situates preliminary findings within the Canadian context. Listen to research assistant Sama Nemat Allah briefly unpack and examine early results of the JRP project.