7. Another structural transformation of the public sphere? CC-BY-SA-3.0, Wolfram Huke - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JuergenHabermas_crop2.jpg CC-BY-SA-3.0, Takk, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Televison_Hungarian_ORION_1957.jpg
16. Identity Management for articulated social networks Statements on self-disclosure online (2008; 12-24-year-olds; agree/fully agree in %) Source: Schmidt/Paus-Hasebrink/Hasebrink 2009
17. Structure of personal publics Personal Publics emerge when and where users make available/filter information which is… (a) personally relevant to them , [instead of being selected according to news factors / news values] (b) directed to an (intended) audience of strong and weak ties , [instead of a disperse and unknown audience] (c) presented to engage in conversation . [instead of to publicise] Personal publics are public in the sense of „accessible“, but not necessarily in the sense „of general interest“
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19. Journalistic Publics & Personal Publics Within the personal publics, Anschlusskommunikation (=„follow-up communication“) of the former audience is becoming visible: Users comenting, linking, bookmarking, (re-)tweeting, digging, sharing or liking content provided by mainstream media Online-platforms of established media outlets get a lot of attention within these new publics Personal publics and the „traditional“ public sphere are complementing each other „ Twittercharts“ nach Verweisen
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Notas do Editor
Notizen:
One of the most commonly used metaphors with regard to the new forms of public communication is the changing nature of the sender receiver relationship – and this especially with regard to the relationship between journalism and its audience. This relationship was always complicated, and in a way it is paradoxical: On the one hand, journalism provides a public service and needs an audience. On the other hand, this audience only plays (or should one better say: used to play?) a subordinate role in everyday newsroom routines. In a lot of studies journalists have been criticized for being geared more to their colleagues than to their audience (e.g. Donsbach 1982). But almost all of the referring studies here, have been conducted under the conditions of mass communication. And previous journalism studies on the journalism-/audience-relationship are based on the assumption, that journalists’ attitudes towards their audience are unavoidably almost exclusive of direct experiences and interactions. So one can say that traditional journalism research and particular research on the journalism-/audience-relationship is based on mass medial assumptions . And these take an asymmetry between journalism and audience as a basis. Due to social media these circumstances have totally changed : Participation and interaction have become relevant sources that influence journalists’ perceptions of the audience (Domingo et. al. 2008; Thurman 2008). Nevertheless, the audience's role within journalism (and within journalism studies) has not been incorporated in detail, and with regard to the new conditions of (online) communication. The sociological theory of inclusion, in my opinion, has good prospects to bridge this gap:
The Journalistic gatekeeper monopoly is based on the asymmetry between professional role and an audience role, which is (almost) restricted to selective use. But this asymmetry can no longer be sustained. And even though t raditional news organizations are still very important to their consumers, the ability to include the audience is decreasing : Traditional news media are losing audiences. What has been observed is a loss of coverage, acceptance and credibility. These trends affect particularly newspapers, and the younger age groups . This leads to the conclusion, that journalism has to deal with two factors : firstly, the restriction of journalism’s ability to include the audience, and secondly the increasing demands for inclusion of the audience. These observations were the starting points of a research project which I have conceptualized together with a colleague of mine at the Hans-Bredow-Institut, Jan Schmidt. Our key questions are :
As we have seen so far the audience has played an inferior role within journalism research. Therefore we have chosen a perspective for the intended project, which combines communicator oriented research with audience research in the context of new forms of public communication. Here we differentiate between ‘inclusion performance’ and ‘inclusion expectations’ – each seen from the perspective of journalists and the audience/users. Inclusion performance (or inclusion service) of journalism contains different forms of audience participation, which are expressed in the journalistic products and output. All of require adapted work processes and newsrooms routines. Inclusion expectations of journalists are the basis for their attitudes towards the audience and the self-perception of their professional role. Also of importance here is the strategic relevance of audience participation and the priority it has in the newsrooms for economic and journalistic reasons. Inclusion performance, seen from the audience’s perspective stands for different practices of participation. They can have different degrees of community orientation depending on whether the user regards it as a individual act or as part of an aggregated expression of ‘the audience’. Inclusion expectations of users become manifest, on the one hand, as motives for participation, and on the other hand, as perceived possibilities having influence on the news. The comparison of the ‘inclusion performance’ of these two groups is interpreted as ‘inclusion level’ , and the degree of compliance between the ‘inclusion expectations’ of journalists and that of users is interpreted as ‘inclusion divergence’ . I have to admit that I’m not sure if these terms are felicitous translations from German into English – maybe we can discuss that later on. Against the background of this model we are planning to conduct four case studies in tv newsrooms and in their associated online newsrooms with the involvement of the respective users of their services. This model might also be useful to systematise existing studies in the field which often refer to only one of the elements differentiated here. As we have limited time I leave it at that for now . Let me finish with a brief conclusion : (I‘m really looking forward to the presentation of Karin Wahl-Jorgensen and her colleagues on Friday because they have already done on BBC what we are planning to do in our research.)