Analytics-Driven Journalism? Editorial Metrics and the Reconfiguration of Online News Production Practices in African Newsrooms"

Moyo, Dumisani; Mare, Admire; Matsilele, Trust

doi:10.1080/21670811.2018.1533788

Cited by 80 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…News media organisations quickly followed suit in the now infamous pivot-to-video, hiring video producers and laying off other staff (Madrigal and Meyer, 2018) in order to maintain a consistent level of traffic referrals from Facebook. Alongside these developments, news media organisations began to give credence to social media metrics and other web-based analytics, to the extent that they informed the kind of stories that were being pursued (Moyo et al, 2019; Tandoc, 2014).…”

Section: Using New Institutionalism To Understand Facebook and Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facebook, news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms

Meese

Hurcombe

2020

New Media & Society

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is a growing concern around the dependency of news organisations on platforms like Facebook for audience traffic. However, scholars are still working out the extent of this dependency and how it manifests in practice. In this article, we draw on interviews with Australian news professionals and industry fieldwork to provide a nuanced account of this phenomenon. We find that news media organisations have recently started to diversify their distribution strategies and the business models associated with them in response to Facebook’s algorithm changes. While Facebook remains important, we suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the complex relationships that news organisations have with platforms. This article ends by considering the implications of these findings for international policy discussions centred around the prospect of platform regulation.

show abstract

Section: Using New Institutionalism To Understand Facebook and Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facebook, news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms

Meese

Hurcombe

2020

New Media & Society

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…What does it mean to willingly engage in journalism and not consider oneself as a journalist? These technologies now attracting the attention of journalism practitioners and researchers were not developed specifically for journalism (Moyo, Mare, & Matsilele, 2019). So, it might also be that for the technological field, journalism is at the periphery; that for these technology-oriented actors whose influence across fields is increasing, journalists and what they do are at the periphery.…”

Section: Journalism At the Peripherymentioning

confidence: 99%

Journalism at the Periphery

Tandoc

2019

MaC

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The increasing influence of actors who might not fit into traditional definitions of a journalist but are taking part in processes that produce journalism has attracted scholarly attention. They have been called interlopers, strangers, new entrants, peripheral, and emergent actors, among others. As journalism scholars grapple with how to refer to these actors, it is important to reflect on the assumptions that underlie emerging labels. These include: 1) what journalistic tasks are involved; 2) how and why these journalistic tasks are performed; 3) who is making the definition; and 4) where and when these actors are located. However, journalism being the centre of our investigation should not automatically assume that it is at the centre of social life. So, it might also be that for the technological field, journalism is at the periphery; that for these technology-oriented actors whose influence across fields is increasing, journalists and what they do are at the periphery. For a field that supposedly plays an important role in public life, this has important implications.

show abstract

“…Tandoc and Ferrucci (2017) found that next to journalists' personal attitudes toward audience feedback and their perceived level of skill to use analytics effectively, also the organizational policy predicts journalists' intended and actual use of audience metrics in their news work. The role of organizational policy has also been emphasized in other studies, showing that journalists are mostly socialized into using audience analytics by their editors (Moyo et al, 2019). Zamith et al (2020) highlight the role of superiors in conveying the norms around the use of audience analytics and metrics within the newsroom.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 93%

Do Metrics Drive News Decisions? Political News Journalists’ Exposure and Attitudes Toward Web Analytics

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As newsrooms are increasingly using web analytics to monitor news behavior, journalism is likely to become increasingly “metrics-driven.” Research suggests that analytics are commonly used by web editors to decide on the distribution and promotion of news stories, but how does this affect the news practices of journalists? To what extent are audience metrics taken into account by individual journalists and reporters who work in a specific news beat? This paper explores this question through a survey of political journalists in Belgium. The study examines the level of access that political news journalists have to audience metrics, and to what extent their level of exposure to and use of metrics affects their attitudes toward analytics in news work. Results show that while three quarters of the political news journalists are nowadays exposed to audience metrics on a regular basis, more than half of them report to never make direct use of web metrics in their daily work. Younger journalists are more likely to be exposed and to use web metrics than their senior colleagues, but journalists working for commercial media do not use metrics more intensely than journalists from public service media. Journalists who actively use metrics themselves tend to hold more positive attitudes toward web metrics, whereas the passive exposure to metrics seems to make journalists more skeptical or negative about them.

show abstract

Analytics-Driven Journalism? Editorial Metrics and the Reconfiguration of Online News Production Practices in African Newsrooms"

Cited by 80 publications

References 23 publications

Facebook, news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms

Facebook, news media and platform dependency: The institutional impacts of news distribution on social platforms

Journalism at the Periphery

Do Metrics Drive News Decisions? Political News Journalists’ Exposure and Attitudes Toward Web Analytics

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About