The public and local media journalists: an expected relationship
The public and local media journalists: an expected relationship

Author(s): Cassandre Burnier
Subject(s): Media studies, Theory of Communication, Applied Sociology, Crowd Psychology: Mass phenomena and political interactions
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: Local media; local audience; journalism; newspapers; multimedia;
Summary/Abstract: In a hyper-competitive media context (Charron & de Bonville, 2004), the news consumer is confronted with a wide range of media content, offers and formats. This is why audience capture and retention have become crucial issues for the success as well as survival of media companies (Demers, 2012). “Knowing one’s readers” is a recurring maxim in journalistic discourse (Montañola & Souanef, 2012) and forces the agents of news production to get better at understanding who their readers are. However, their understanding remains largely limited to audience studies and other statistics (circulation figures, online traffic data, etc.) in order to quantify and increase the audience (Anciaux, 2015). As for the sociology of the publics, publics are usually unilaterally defined from a media-centred perspective, meaning the readers for the newspapers; the viewers for the television, etc. This way of thinking “does not allow to take into account the tastes that connect the individuals to the consumption of this kind” (Figeac, 2009, p. 68). There is therefore a lack of knowledge in understanding media audience more complexly. This linear way of conceiving media practices does not allow one to analyse them from a multi-media point of view: in other words, the television researchers analyse television consumers; the press researchers analyse press readers, etc., yet the practices of the publics are multiple and often at the same time multi-dimensional.

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