When local media reconnect with their audiences: an overview of initiatives in French-speaking Europe.
Nathalie Pignard-Cheynel, David Gerber, Laura Amigo (AJM, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland)
The LINC project brings together French, Belgian and Swiss researchers who study how local media outlets are trying to reinvent the relationship with their audiences. Over a year, we have identified about 250 media initiatives through a crowdsourcing campaign. We sorted them by type of expected audience involvement, and created 8 categories of engagement.
Deterioration of trust, durable declines in newspaper circulation and subscription, shifting consumption patterns: the information media are facing a deep multifaceted crisis. How do they deal with the fact that a growing part of their audiences no longer trust them, consume less of their content, or feel out of step with traditional editorial offers and turn to other players in the production and distribution of content?
Media outlets seem to have become aware that they need to reconnect with their readers, viewers, listeners or users. This momentum is amplified by digital technology, which promotes a participatory (Jenkins) culture that encourages exchanges, conversation and expression for a wider spectrum of actors.
Toward the end of the 2000s, “participatory journalism” was booming and inspired professionals and researchers. But hopes and promises have waned, giving way to a sense of disenchantment. Gradually, commentary spaces have been outsourced or even closed, as have media blogs. Other participatory sites and sections are also disappearing (e.g. in France, Rue89, Le Post, Le Lab, etc.). One cause of this partial failure is the difficult integration of participatory approaches into rather rigid professional organizations and practices, which ultimately lead to a “clash of cultures” (Hermida, Thurman, 2008).
However, an expectation for more horizontal forms of information remains. And this is the starting point of the LINC project (see section below) which aims to explore this issue at the local level. Why local media in particular? Because they are generally less favored by research (French-speaking at least), but above all because they are, historically, organizations with a built-in sense of proximity and of maintaining social ties in a given territory. The local level is also perceived by digital giants as an important challenge for their expansion.
The LINC project (Local, News, Innovation, Community)
This collective project, based at the Academy of Journalism and Media of the University of Neuchâtel, brings together several researchers from Belgium, France and Switzerland. It’s research objective is to study the practices and strategies of local media actors towards their audiences on three levels: the actions and methods of audience participation and media engagement, their integration into editorial processes, and the role of digital solutions.
To this end the project is divided into 3 phases:
- An inventory of local media initiatives towards their audiences.
- A series of case studies on a selection of French-speaking media outlets in France, Belgium, Switzerland
- Analysis of the digital tools used to cultivate the relationship between media outlet and audiences
In addition to the research objectives above, the project aims to federate a network of professionals and researchers interested in local media and engagement with audiences.
An inventory of initiatives carried out by local media
In order to analyze the actions, strategies and practices of local media in terms of their relationship with audiences, a first — and delicate — task is to identify the material to be studied. We used an approach combining a crowdsourcing campaign and our own online research to compile an ongoing list of what we call “initiatives” by local media organizations. An online form allows any person (media professional, researcher, expert or even ordinary citizen) to publicize an initiative (action, device, event, etc.) of a French, Walloon or French-speaking Swiss media, aiming to rethink their relationship with the audience. Initiatives are only selected if they are carried out by media that can be considered local in a broad sense (in short: producing information on and for a territory smaller than the national one) and employing at least one professional journalist. In addition to this crowdsourcing approach, the team itself contributes to the database and performs verification and editing work on the proposed entries. By mid-october 2019, around 270 initiatives have been identified and the list keeps growing.
The database offers some interesting study perspectives. A publicly available list provides access to our categorization of each entry by type of initiative. For instance one can sort and filter to find initiatives that use a common format (for example, a readers’ café, an open editorial meeting, a call for contributions, etc.).
How is the audience involved in media initiatives?
Beside compiling such initiatives, we were more specifically interested in the way in which audiences are involved. We grouped 95% of the initiatives into eight distinct categories. These categories were made to be as exclusive as possible, identifying the dominant feature of each initiative. They should however be considered as elastic and encompassing a plurality of practices.
This paper won’t look at the bottom three types of initiative listed in Figure 1, which are commercial (benefits/discounts, contests, etc.), economic (financial support, particularly through crowdfunding or membership models) and event-driven (without an explicit informational perspective).
The five categories inside the dotted box are for initiatives which involve audiences in some part of the editorial process, although to varying degrees. Here’s how we distinguished them:
Observation
This category of audience involvement represents about 9% of the initiatives identified (as of 25 June 2019). Audiences are offered an overview of one or more aspects of the editorial process (choice of topics, content production, distribution and promotion, etc.). This gives them an observer status, in other words a rather passive role. The media makes an effort to be transparent or educational by opening up but maintaining a relatively high level of control. These are often communication actions about practices, occupations and editorial choices. They tell the story and show the backstage of the information construction process, responding to expectations of audiences who often ignore the internal workings of information media. This category includes initiatives such as editorial visits, open houses, opportunities to attend editorial conferences, making of or information pedagogy type content. Digital tools and platforms (such as Facebook lives) can be mobilized here to offer the user this observer status.
Dialogue
This category of audience involvement includes many initiatives (approx. 18% of our corpus) that try to respond to mistrust or disconnection with the audience by organizing face-to-face or digital meetings in order to establish a dialogue between journalists and the audience. The years 2018 and 2019 concentrate a large part of the actions that take the form of meetings, debates and cafés, inside the newsroom or in other places. There are also initiatives outside the editorial offices that intend to invest places little or not covered by the media in its coverage of the territory. This is the case of itinerant meetings organized on the occasion of specific events (elections, major national debates, etc.) offering the possibility of staging these actions and dialogues in editorial production.
Contribution
This category includes initiatives involving content contribution from audiences. It is the largest in terms of quantity, representing nearly 35% of the census. This is due in particular to the importance of participatory journalism in the digital development of media over the past twenty years. Another explanation is the great plasticity of this category, which involves occasional audience testimonials, publications of editorial productions (such as blogs), comments, opinions or the sharing of image and video contributions. However, the common point is that journalists control the editorial process, which is not delegated, as the research on participatory journalism points out.
Finally, there has been a recent development in this category with contribution mechanisms exploring specific themes that perceived as particularly “engaging” for the audience (environment, waste management, major national debate, unhealthy housing, etc.) for which the contribution is valued as an integral part of journalistic work (this is the case in particular for collaborative surveys).
Consultation
Unlike the three previous categories, the one relating to audience consultation (11% of the initiatives identified) may involve an influence (which varies from one case to another, however) in the editorial process (choice of subjects, angles, formats, editorial offers, etc.). The oldest form is the readers’ panel, which offers the possibility of consulting samples of readers/listeners/viewers to explore their perceptions and opinions about the media. In a renewed form (and based on digital voting devices, online groups and community management, etc.), consultation is more extensive, leading to final choices of audiences (for example, for topics to be addressed by the editorial staff) and partial delegation of editorial control.
Co-creation
Co-creation is the category that pushes collaboration between journalists and audiences the furthest. It concerns only 5% of initiatives and is mainly expressed in the co-production of content, sometimes preceded by writing training sessions. These initiatives are often carried out in specific territories, considered deserted by the media (suburbs, isolated rural areas, disadvantaged neighborhoods, etc.).
“From participatory journalism to engagement journalism?”
This categorization of the place given to audiences provides a first overview of the initiatives identified to date in our study. It responds to an initial objective of academic research, but it also aims to stimulate the imagination of media professionals by marking out the field of possibilities, to provide them with concrete examples of what is being invented in other media outlets — local and beyond (once again, our database is freely accessible).
This first analysis provides insights into the diversity of existing projects and to start thinking about ongoing changes in local newsrooms. But it also calls for more in-depth explorations. This is addressed by a second phase of the research currently underway. It consists of a dozen qualitative case studies of Belgian, French and Swiss media, to understand the practices of the organizations and individuals who work in them and the (digital) tools they use. These interview-based studies also look at the history and specific culture of the various outlets concerned and sheds light on how such initiatives are integrated into existing organizational structures, how they impact professional practices and journalistic values.
These case studies will explore a key question of the LINC project: is what could be called “engagement” journalism emerging? “Engagement” being understood as distinct from click measurements on social networks, and broader than militant or political engagement: engagement with audiences or a community, implying reciprocity in the relationship between media and audiences.
A possible answer has already been surfacing in our census. Based on those initiatives where a date is provided, four successive (and not exclusive) waves seem to emerge: first those that refer to the principles of participatory journalism (2010–2015), then the arrival of crowdfunding initiatives (from 2014), and finally a focus on dialogue and transparency actions (from 2017), and the integration of audiences into the editorial process (few and rather recent, from 2018). These last two waves might be indicating the emergence, in French-speaking Europe, of a journalism of commitment or engagement, which has already been a topic for a few years in the Anglo-Saxon field (see in particular the work of the Engaged Journalism Accelerator and of Batsell).
Our project provides an initial response, but also opens up pressing questions: how are the attempts to reach out to audiences integrated into preexisting processes and organizations? With what sustainability (are they temporary fashions or deeper transformations)? How do journalists appropriate these reflections and how can they really impact the editorial production of media? Have local media, in their stated desire to reconnect with audiences, learned lessons from the relative failure of participatory journalism? And in the end, what tools can research bring to support the media in this transformation?
The LINC project is still ongoing. We’d be happy to hear from you if you’ve found our database helpful or if you’d like to get in touch for further information or perhaps even collaboration.
If you are aware of any initiative aimed at audiences -whether you are a specialist, professional or simply interested in media- you can publicize it here.
A French version of this article was initially published on the European Journalism Observatory, under a CC-BY-ND license.
