How can we determine for ourselves whether we act as audiences, consumers, users or citizens in our everyday preoccupation with news media? This question came up after re-reading Blumler and Coleman‘s essay about ‘Democracy and the Media’ (2015). Jay Blumler has always assumed an active role of citizens in the ‘demand side of democracy’, approaching citizens as ‘possessing a capacity to exercise control over their lives, individually and collectively, by acting upon the environment in a goal-directed manner’. Because Blumler and Coleman (2015: 111) emphasize that ‘values are always at stake in how political communication is organised, practiced and received’, they invite attention to the values citizens themselves rely on in their relation to media and democracy. How can we as citizens reflect normatively on the things we do and don‘t do to maintain the vitality of journalism for democracy? I fully endorse Blumler‘s (1979) statement that ‘it is the distinctive mission of uses and gratifications research to get to grips with the nature of audience experience itself’. Yet, to investigate their ethical experiences, we may need to develop some sensitizing concepts first. Ethics can be defined as ‘the analysis, evaluation, and promotion of correct conduct and virtuous character in light of the best available principles’ (Ward, 2020: 308). If this definition theoretically includes people‘s practices of news consumption, journalism ethics is commonly understood to refer to something else: the quality of the content and the professionality of the production procedures of journalism. Even though research on news audiences has increased since Blumler and colleagues developed their Uses and Gratifications approach, while journalism scholars and practitioners acknowledge an audience turn in journalism (see Costera Meijer, 2020), the responsibility for ethical behaviour in journalism tends to be put one-sidedly with the news organisations and the journalists. The increasing professional practice of measuring users’ news interest through clicks on news items or the amount of time people spend on particular journalism provides ample reason for sustained reflection on the values at stake in our everyday news Article

中文翻译：

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分担道德责任的重担：为新闻用户制定道德标准

在我们日常关注新闻媒体的过程中，我们如何确定自己是充当受众、消费者、用户还是公民？这个问题是在重读 Blumler 和 Coleman 关于“民主与媒体”的文章（2015 年）后提出的。杰·布卢姆勒一直在“民主的需求方”中扮演公民的积极角色，将公民视为“通过以目标为导向的方式对环境采取行动，拥有对自己的生活进行单独和集体控制的能力”。由于 Blumler 和 Coleman (2015: 111) 强调“价值观始终与政治沟通的组织、实践和接受方式息息相关”，因此他们提请注意公民自身在与媒体和民主的关系中所依赖的价值观。作为公民，我们如何能够规范地反思我们为保持新闻业的民主活力而做和不做的事情？我完全赞同 Blumler (1979) 的声明，即“掌握观众体验本身的本质是使用和满足研究的独特使命”。然而，为了调查他们的道德经历，我们可能需要首先发展一些敏感概念。道德可以被定义为“根据最佳可用原则分析、评估和促进正确行为和美德”（Ward，2020：308）。如果这个定义在理论上包括人们对新闻消费的实践，那么新闻伦理通常被理解为指的是别的东西：内容的质量和新闻生产过程的专业性。尽管自从 Blumler 及其同事开发了他们的“使用和满足”方法以来，对新闻受众的研究有所增加，而新闻学者和从业者也承认新闻业的受众转向（参见 Costera Meijer，2020 年），但新闻业的道德行为责任往往被归为一类——站在新闻机构和记者一边。通过点击新闻项目或人们花在特定新闻上的时间量来衡量用户对新闻兴趣的专业实践越来越多，这为持续反思我们日常新闻中所涉及的价值观提供了充分的理由 文章 新闻业的道德行为责任往往偏向新闻机构和记者。通过点击新闻项目或人们花在特定新闻上的时间量来衡量用户对新闻兴趣的专业实践越来越多，这为持续反思我们日常新闻中所涉及的价值观提供了充分的理由 文章 新闻业的道德行为责任往往偏向新闻机构和记者。通过点击新闻项目或人们花在特定新闻上的时间量来衡量用户对新闻兴趣的专业实践越来越多，这为持续反思我们日常新闻中所涉及的价值观提供了充分的理由 文章