A sociologist goes to journalism school
Four interdisciplinary takeaways from my first quarter at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.
I’ve haven’t yet worked in a professional newsroom, so I knew I’d be starting from scratch during the first quarter of my journalism graduate program. Although experimenting with on-the-ground-reporting was exciting, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I felt right at home during my favorite class discussions, which involved audience behavior, identity and motivation. The media industry calls it “audience development” but what we were really talking about was sociology, aka my undergraduate major.
I wasn’t a big fan of my coursework during undergrad, so I was thrilled to learn a fresh new way to use sociological concepts to build better media products. It makes sense if you think about it — sociology is the science of human interaction, and all media producers want humans to interact with their products. Personally, my favorite interactions are always interdisciplinary. So, here are 4 sociological takeaways from the first quarter of journalism school:
1. People choose media that reinforces the kind of person they believe they are. (Social Identity Theory)
In a globally connected world, where location is no longer the biggest determinant in community formation, it’s imperative for media producers to consider the identity of audiences, not just their demographics. Social identity theory means that people use group membership (however they define that) to reinforce their own personal and social identity — trendsetter, entrepreneur, parent, activist, woman, Latinx — the list of personal and social identifiers goes on and on. Now that social media and smartphones connect us all day, all the time, those communities are more likely to be driven by identity factors than location. Group membership helps people identify themselves through similar qualities in other people. But more important, groups allow people to define themselves by who isn’t part of the group. “That’s not me,” is a strong factor of identity. Because we all like to feel good about ourselves, people choose groups that reinforce who they want to be, not necessarily who they are.
To use social identity theory most successfully, media companies should think of themselves like groups — what identities are they inviting in? And what identities are they keeping out? Every facet of a media product can signal social identity — from the host of a show to the story topic to the midroll ads to the images to the font style.
2. You don’t interact with a media product because you just happened to see it. You interact because somebody told you about it. (2-step distribution theory)
This factoid makes sense to me as a community organizer, too! The communities we choose (based on our social identities) are influenced by, well, influencers! In one of my classes, we called these people “opinion leaders.” They’re knowledgeable, good at communicating, and are connected. You’ll never reach a community through organic one-to-one interactions between you and all its members, whether you’re a political candidate, Netflix show or news article. If media producers can identify the opinion leaders within their target audiences, and reach them, the opinion leaders will reach the rest of the community. Usually, those opinion leaders are already trusted and respected by the community, enabling a more effective flow of information and social interaction…in two steps!
3. News organizations aren’t just competing with other news organizations. They’re competing with literally anything people can spend their time doing.
This is another reason why social identity theory is so important to understand. News consumption — or really any media consumption — isn’t hard-wired into people’s day. This is hard for me to believe sometimes, as someone who’s constantly glued to Twitter, and subscribes to multiple email newsletters…just for fun. But that time I spent scanning a newsletter could just as well be spent watching a Netflix show. Or reading a book. Or calling my mom. Many journalists out there won’t be surprised by this fact, but it surprised me to realize just how vast the competition is for peoples’ attention. That’s why being dialed into exactly how a product reinforces someone’s social identity (and why, and how, and when) will differentiate flash-in-the-pan media products from those that survive.
4. Building media habits means identifying and targeting the behavior of your users.
I often talk a big game about “meeting users where they are,” but it wasn’t until one of my classes visited the Chicago Tribune that I learned what that actually means in a media context. Turns out, the most successful audience engagement editors operate just like sociologists — they identify an existing habit, and work to understand what it means. Instead of publishing a sociological study, they work to incentivize their audience to perform that same habit with their media product. Here’s an example from that brought it all home for me, courtesy of the Chicago Tribune’s Managing Editor of Audience, Chrissy Taylor. Tribune Publishing used to own the “Dear Abby” syndicated advice column. Yahoo featured “Dear Abby” on its homepage for a while, where it enjoyed a steady stream of clicks. When Yahoo changed their homepage layout, traffic plummeted. But, the audience team realized that their highest driver of “Dear Abby” traffic was Google searches. There was a loyal audience that was searching for the advice column every day. The team took that behavior — “Dear Abby” Google searches — and targeted that audience with asks to sign up for a special Dear Abby newsletter. They tried to turn the behavior of searching into the behavior of opening an email newsletter. And according to Chrissy, the email newsletter had close to a 70% open rate! That’s unheard of in the biz. But that success wasn’t due to someone’s hunch, or responding to an industry trend. Just like in sociology, the newsletter strategy was revealed by analyzing behavioral data.
So take that, haters — my liberal arts degree is paying off! Learning practical applications of sociological concepts was an academic dream come true. Now as part of Medill’s media innovation specialization, I’ll get to put these lessons to the test during my second quarter internship with the audience team at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. I’ll be spearheading the re-design of their email newsletter, and you better believe that understanding the social identity of their audience will be my first step. Want to see how a sociologist re-designs an email newsletter? Sign up now and see for yourself!
Special thanks to my instructors Rachel Davis Mersey and Kayli Plotner, whose courses laid the groundwork for this article. Keep in touch with me on Twitter: @cegalles
