Journalism & Audience Datafication: How Audience Data Practices Shape Inequity

Abstract

Datafication is embedded in cultural, economic, and political power structures which reinforce social inequities. Instead of simply providing news professionals with insights on user behavior, datafication may facilitate maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresentation. Applying justice theory on audience data practices based on n = 31 interviews with news professionals working for global and national news organizations (including BBC World, The Guardian, Al-Jazeera English, and The New York Times), this study examines their experiences and perceptions of how audience data practices mitigate and/or reinforce inequity in journalism. Findings show that maldistribution, misrecognition, and misrepresentation are manifest in journalistic audience data practices, as inequities are reinforced when data is transformed into economic capital. At the same time, news professionals who possess cultural and economic resources can both mitigate inequity and use data for greater recognition and representation. The article thus contributes to the literature by (1) conceptualizing audience data as a cultural, economic and political good, (2) connecting data practices to both the reproduction and mitigation of social inequity, and finally, (3) examining these processes on a global scale.

Keywords:

• Datafication
• audience data
• audience analytics
• digital journalism
• justice
• inequalities

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Alexa Robertson for her generous support as a PI. Further, I would like to acknowledge that Yanthe Zebregs and María de le Huerga helped to procure, conduct, and transcribe the interviews — thank you to both. I am also very grateful to Juliane A. Lischka, Jacob L. Nelson, David Cheruiyot, Ida Willig, Jannie Møller Hartley, and Karen Khodzhayev who provided valuable feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. Finally, I am thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions for improving this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet (grant #1054707).