Changing News Use: Unchanged News Experiences?

Abstract

What makes people use journalism? Making sense of changing news use has become crucial for the survival of journalism. Based on fifteen years of audience research, Changing News Use provides an in-depth description of what people do with news and how this has diversified over time: from reading, watching and listening to a broader spectrum of 24 user practices including checking, scrolling, tagging, and avoiding. By emphasizing people’s own experience of journalism, this book also investigates what two prominent audience measurements – clicking and spending time – mean from a user perspective. While news user practices are diversifying, the pleasures that people derive from journalism prove to be more durable than one might expect. Exploring news enjoyment (and news dissatisfaction) provides important clues for supplying a service people may pay for in attention and/or money. Becoming more sensitive to users’ experiences (including their material and sensory dimensions) in addition to gaining a critical understanding of news user metrics may be a way to build a more lasting and constructive relationship with one’s audience. Changing News Use argues that a genuine audience turn is needed that replaces the question how to reach people by the question how to be of service to them.

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