"It is not the metrics, it is how they are put to use"

Looking back in journalistic history, the audiences were not very present in the newsroom, both due to a lack of information and a journalistic disregard towards the readers' opinion. However, with the growing datafication of audiences and their now constant presence in the newsrooms through audience metrics, they have become impossible to ignore. This was what peaked Angelé Christin, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, when she began to explore newsroom, coming from a general interest in metrics and how they are becoming more and more ubiquitous. 

In her new book, Angelé explores just how audience metrics are changing journalistic practices. More importantly, the book demonstrates the complexity and ambivalence towards the usage of metrics in editorial decision making and how attitudes towards them differ in the two newsrooms, drawing links to how the journalistic fields in these different countries have very different origins and developed in different ways.

“There is both many signs of convergence in the way metrics are employed in the newsrooms across the world, but also signs of divergence. In the US newsroom the metrics were used by editors who emphasised their importance to the newsroom, but they were met by passive resistance by the journalists who did not consider them valuable in determining good journalism. Contrary, in the French newsroom there was a critical attitude towards the metrics in the discourse, but they were the journalists were very affected by them in their work and paid much more attention to them. When looking at metrics and algorithms it is, therefore, important to avoid technological deteminism, because it is not the metrics themselves that do something, it is how the different news organisations put them to work that matter for how they take part in transforming journalism,” she explained when giving an inspirational webinar on her book and research on algorithms on Thursday the 5th of November.

Inspiration for future research

The webinar served as an occasion for the researchers involved in the Data Publics project, but also other researchers interested in the datafication of journalism, to gain insights into Angelé's work and ask question in relation to her and their own research on similar topics.

“Datafication is such a difficult topic to grasp, and we must understand it from multiple angles. Today Angelé Christin offered a fascinating take on the country differences and how institutional differences also matter. As one of our subprojects focuses on the intersection between journalistic practices and the usage of algorithms, this talk and the work by Angelé also offers direct insights into this important relation, which we can use moving forward investigating similar algorithmic projects in Danish media organisations,” says DataPublics-PI, associate professor, Jannie Møller Hartley, after the talk.

The book is based on an extensive ethnographic fieldwork at both the media organisations and multiple interviews with current and formers employees as both organisations. It is available in English and a podcast where Angelé Christin is interviewed about the book is also publicly available here or in podcast apps under New Books in Critical Theory. The book will also be reviewed by DataPublics-PI Jannie Møller Hartley in the upcoming special issue of MedieKultur.