Media performance is constitutive for functioning democracies. But what is the situation regarding media performance in the age of digitalisation? And how can media performance continue to be assured under the current difficult economic conditions for the news industry? In this essay, we give a short overview of how media performance research has developed from the introduction of private broadcasting to the spread of the Internet and social media. In the course of this development, the initial focus of media performance research on media content has broadened to include media quality from the user perspective. We show how the contributions to this thematic issue relate with existing lines of media performance research, but also add new facets to them. Finally, we point to the directions in which research on media performance should evolve in order to keep pace with current developments in the media market.

中文翻译：

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比以往更重要的今天：媒体绩效研究的过去，现在和未来

媒体表现是民主国家运转的基础。但是，在数字化时代，关于媒体表现的情况如何？在当前新闻业困难的经济形势下，如何继续确保媒体表现？在本文中，我们简要概述了从私人广播的引入到互联网和社交媒体的传播，媒体性能研究是如何发展的。在这一发展过程中，媒体性能研究对媒体内容的最初关注点已扩大到从用户角度考虑媒体质量。我们将展示对该主题问题的贡献如何与现有的媒体性能研究领域联系起来，同时也为它们增加新的方面。最后，