Abstract

The use of metrics and analytics is becoming pervasive in newsrooms the world over. However, there is a lack of consistent terminology in scholarly literature with regards to such practice and a dearth of studies that compare practice on a wider scale that prevents more holistic understanding of how audience data are being used on the newsroom floor. These issues are addressed with the development of a new participative gatekeeping model with three previously unidentified channels of gatekeeping specifically related to the use of audience data: promotional, for the type of short-term gatekeeping done on news site homepages that involves tracking real-time metrics to position content, often tied to traffic targets; developmental, or longer-term strategies that shape future coverage and are grounded in hypotheses of audience behaviour gleaned from analytics; and a third more porous channel of experimentation where such hypotheses are tested. These channels were observed in ethnographic research in six newsrooms in three different countries at media outlets with diverse sources of revenue: Norway’s public broadcaster, NRK; Canada’s subscriber-based national news agency, The Canadian Press (CP); and two local newsrooms working within larger media organizations, The Hamilton Spectator in Canada, and The Bournemouth Daily Echo in England. Through a sociological lens, this article distinguishes language to best document the complex processes interconnected with audience data, identifies similarities in practice that override media or revenue systems, and explores how the audience, through the participatory mechanisms of metrics and analytics, shapes newsroom practice.

摘要

指标和分析的使用在世界各地的新闻编辑室中变得越来越普遍。然而，学术文献中缺乏关于此类实践的一致术语，并且缺乏在更广泛的范围内比较实践的研究，从而无法更全面地了解新闻编辑室如何使用受众数据。这些问题通过开发一种新的参与式把关模型得到解决，该模型具有三个以前未知的把关渠道，特别与受众数据的使用相关：促销，用于在新闻网站主页上进行的涉及实时跟踪的短期把关类型定位内容的指标，通常与流量目标相关；发展，或塑造未来报道的长期战略，并以从分析中收集的受众行为假设为基础；以及第三个更多孔的实验通道，用于测试此类假设。这些频道在三个不同国家的六个新闻编辑室的人种学研究中得到了观察，这些媒体的收入来源各不相同：挪威的公共广播公司 NRK；加拿大以订阅者为基础的国家通讯社加拿大新闻社 (CP)；和两个在大型媒体组织内工作的当地新闻编辑室，加拿大的汉密尔顿观众和英国的伯恩茅斯每日回声。通过社会学视角，本文区分语言以最好地记录与受众数据相关的复杂过程，确定实践中超越媒体或收入系统的相似之处，