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  • Publication
    Accès libre
    (Re)connecting with audiences. An overview of audience-inclusion initiatives in European French-speaking local news media
    This paper explores how local news organizations seek to strengthen their bond with audiences in French-speaking Europe (Belgium, France, and Switzerland). It does so by suggesting a new methodological approach focusing on the different ways in which this bond can be observed, i.e., the “initiatives” implemented by the news organizations. The study identifies 20 types of initiatives undertaken to (re)connect with audiences and presents a model of audience inclusion in news media in line with the literature on modalities of audience participation in news media. The discussion identifies changes in the positioning of local news organizations and journalists towards audiences regarding existing literature on participatory journalism but also on new practices more rooted in engagement, dialogue, and transparency towards audiences.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Reinventing the wheel? How local newsrooms try (or not) to rethink their relationships with their audiences
    (2021-9-23) ;
    Standaert, Olivier
    ;
    Sebbah, Brigitte
    ;
    This communication discusses the results of an international research project investigating how local media outlets develop initiatives to empower their relationships with their audiences. Conducted in the European French-speaking landscape (France, French-speaking Switzerland and Belgium), this research is part of a twofold questioning at the heart of Journalism Studies, that is 1) to what extent new technologies are able to modify these relationships (Barnes 2016) and 2) how journalists can address the problem of news avoidance and the decline of trust in news (Reuters Institute 2019). We focus on local news media, particularly concerned by issues of proximity and links to the audience, since they position themselves as key players in the weaving of social ties in a given geographical space (Hess & Waller 2017; Jenkins & Nielsen 2020). A crowdsourcing campaign with local media outlets from France, Belgium and Switzerland allowed us to identify around 550 initiatives over the last 2.5 years. The full list can be consulted online at: https://www.unine.ch/ajm/recensement-linc. On this basis, we inductively created a typology of 26 types of initiatives according to their purpose (editorial/commercial) and their format (reader café, editorial conference, crowdfunding campaign, etc.). We then categorized the editorial initiatives in order to highlight the degree of audience integration in the editorial process, ranging from the most “passive” to the most engaging kinds of relationship (observation – dialogue – consultation – contribution- co-creation). Among the 550 initiatives, 110 of them specifically focus on actions undertaken by local news outlets during the Covid-19 pandemic. This very particular context allowed us to highlight specific modalities of engagement with audiences, in particular initiatives that foster solidarity and mutual support between people and those that develop social links within the local community (e.g. during lockdowns). This shows local media capacity to play new or less prominent roles in recent years, that have been revived during this exceptional situation. We then conducted 45 in-depth interviews (Kaufmann 1996; Demazière and Dubar 1997) with staff members in charge of these initiatives in 10 media outlets from the three markets studied. This allowed us to study how these attempts to reach out to audiences are integrated into pre-existing processes. We sought to determine if they correspond to temporary fashions or deeper organizational transformations. Our results show that these initiatives are implemented according to strategies and means that vary greatly depending on the type of media. Journalists justify their deployment for equally varied reasons: commercial purposes (strengthen audience loyalty, attract new subscribers) rub shoulders with editorial concerns (to better understand audiences, evolving with the public’s uses). At their most advanced stage, reflections gathered during the interviews echo the moving epistemologies of journalism, especially in times of crisis (Ward 2018). Journalists discuss the very purpose of local journalism through the complex and shifting power relations between the newsrooms and what they try to define as their “audience(s)”: At the heart of this issue, we find the tensions between the willingness to support/represent/act for local communities and the more normative roles of journalism (Hanitzsch & Vos 2018; Standaert et al. 2019), as well as the (in)dependence of the journalists on their audiences.
  • Publication
    Métadonnées seulement
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    (R)engaging with audiences: local news media's initiatives in French-speaking Europe
    In response to the current context of citizens' “crisis of faith in journalism” (Zuckerman, 2017) and of disruption of news media economic models, news organizations are exploring innovative ways to reconnect with audiences (Jenkins & Nielsen, 2018). They seek to adapt to their expectations of horizontal information and of a dialogue-based relationship, rather than a one-way lecture format (Deuze, 2007); a momentum amplified by the web participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). For local news media, proximity to the audience is an essential feature, since they position themselves as key players in the weaving of social ties in a given geographical space (Hess & Waller, 2017). However, little attention has been paid to study how these expectations and changes in the news ecosystem are affecting local news media -in comparison to national outlets- (Nielsen, 2015). This paper discusses the results of an international research project investigating how local news organizations in French-speaking Europe (Belgium, France and Switzerland) try to rebuild a trusted relationship with their audiences. The first phase of the project consisted in the elaboration of a database of initiatives launched by radio, television, press or digital-only media concerned by the perimeter of our study and aiming to reinforce the links with their audiences. The research team carried out an inventory of initiatives no matter what their nature was (economic, editorial, communicational, etc.). This work was completed by a participatory form in order to gather as many initiatives as possible. From February 2019 to December 2020, we listed 550 media's initiatives. The analysis consisted of manually coding each initiative based on a double inductive categorization referring to two research questions. What are the recurring formats of the media's initiatives towards audiences? We classified them in 26 formats according to their main characteristics (editorial conference, subscribers' club, crowdfunding campaign, etc.). What role is assigned to the audience and what is the extent of its involvement, particularly in the editorial process? We identified 5 different levels of audience involvement (observation, dialogue, contribution, consultation and co-creation). Our work builds up on previous research on participatory journalism, defined as the overall process of audience engagement with journalists in the construction of news (Paulussen et al., 2007; Thurman & Hermida, 2010; Singer et al., 2011). It aims to offer a complementary view to the studies on the resistance of journalists to release control over the editorial process (Hermida, 2011) as well as on organisational difficulties against this approach. Thanks to its longitudinal perspective, our research highlights the rise (before the Covid-19 pandemic) of initiatives that not only allow participation but also dialogue and transparency in the news building process. It also shows that initiatives launched during the pandemic foster solidarity between people and development of social links within the local community. More broadly, the results shed light on the rise, in French-speaking Europe, of engaged journalism, defined as practices integrating a regular and more horizontal link with audiences, even taking into account their expectations and needs, as well as committing in a reciprocal relationship with them.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Les liens entre médias et publics repensés: vers un journalisme d'engagement?
    Si les publics sont souvent présentés comme un élément central du journalisme (par exemple dans les manuels d’écriture), plusieurs études ethnographiques en rédaction ont relativisé cette perception. Dans les pratiques quotidiennes des journalistes, le lecteur est une figure plus floue, voire absente, quand elle ne fait pas l’objet d’une représentation caricaturale. La bascule vers le numérique, entamée depuis deux décennies, s’accompagne d’une intégration incertaine, par les médias, de la culture participative promise par le Web 2.0. Dans un contexte marqué en outre par un désamour de certains publics et des incertitudes persistantes sur les modèles économiques viables, la question d’un nouvel engagement des publics mobilise et fédère de plus en plus d’acteurs et de discours sur le journalisme contemporain, à travers des projets et initiatives qui revendiquent d’une posture plus horizontale, inclusive et participative qu’auparavant. Notre communication interroge cette évolution dans le cas de la presse régionale. La relation aux publics est en effet un trait essentiel des médias locaux, de par leur vocation historique de cohésion sociale et de construction d’identité territoriale. Une vocation qui semble s’actualiser ces dernières années dans des initiatives mises en place en vue de renforcer leurs liens avec leurs publics et le territoire. Dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche qui documente les manières dont les médias locaux francophones en Europe cherchent à renouer des liens avec leurs publics, nous interrogeons l’émergence d’un journalisme d’engagement. Nos premières observations (issues d’un recensement des initiatives menées par des médias locaux à l’égard de leurs publics, en France, Belgique et Suisse francophones) révèlent des pratiques qui gagneraient à être considérées à la lumière de la littérature, pour évaluer dans quelle mesure une conception singulière du journalisme se donne à voir, ou dans quelle mesure, au contraire, il ne s’agit que d’une nouvelle itération de phénomènes plus anciens tels que le journalisme de communauté, le public journalism, ou plus récemment le journalisme participatif et le journalisme citoyen.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    European French-Speaking Local Media’s Relationship with Audiences. A Strategic Challenge between Diluted and Integrated Organizational Modalities
    (2023)
    Olivier Standaert
    ;
    ;
    This article studies local news media’s relationship with audiences from an organizational perspective. It is based on 45 semi-structured interviews conducted in eleven local news organizations in European French-speaking countries (France, Switzerland and Belgium), that explored the implementation of actions aiming at revitalizing the link with audiences, the role of the hierarchy and the allocation of human and material resources to this end. Findings reveal two organizational modalities that characterize how the issue of audiences is taken into account in local news media. A proactive and integrated modality describes news media that tend to include the issue of audiences in the internal organization in a tangible, visible and structured way. A reactive and diluted modality describes news media that tend to favor a more variable and opportunistic approach to audience relations. This typology, built empirically from our data, does not claim to situate a news outlet in a definitive manner, but rather suggests a reading grid for questioning the degree of formalization of the issue of audiences within the organizational process of local news media.