Audiences are vital for journalism. While this relationship is nothing novel, it has gained new significance online, not least due to economic challenges, constant mutual observability, and intermediaries. This book takes both a theoretical and empirical look at this changing relationship, examining online-journalistic orientation toward audiences. The theoretical model builds upon the dynamic-transactional approach, thereby focusing on intermediaries as new actors as well as mutual observability. Empirically, a multi-method approach consisting of expert interviews and an automated online observation is applied. The findings show a differentiated orientation toward audiences, often based on click rates, usage times, and access channels (e.g. social networking sites). Importantly, there is no imbalance between quality reporting and click rates. In addition, adaptation strategies can be observed, which indicate the alignment of editorial processes along various intermediaries’ premises. Journalists are confronted with changing demands, both by resource-weak newsrooms, which are dependent on a lot of attention, and resource-strong newsrooms, which are able to dedicate personnel and software decisively to the orientation toward audiences and thus also attribute great importance to attention. Due to these demands, a necessity for anticipating consequences of online journalism has emerged, which may be corroborated by the supposedly empirical evidence of constant audience observation. Possible implications for follow-up research, education and teaching as well as democratic societies are discussed.

Haim, M. (2019). Die Orientierung von Online-Journalismus an seinen Publika. Anforderung, Antizipation, Anspruch. [The orientation of online journalism toward its audiences. Demand, anticipation, claim.] Wiesbaden: Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25546-6. (content_copy)