From permissive to resistive tactics: How audience members engage with and make sense of datafied journalism

Abstract

While audience data are pivotal to producing journalism, audiences’ perspectives on the issue have received relatively little attention. Addressing this gap, the paper examines audience members’ tactics for making sense of and engaging with the datafied journalism into which they contribute with their data. Empirically grounded in group interviews and instant-messaging group chats with 21 readers of prominent Finnish tabloid Iltalehti, the author identified four tactics, along a continuum from permissive to resistive: an audience member may 1) happily benefit from datafied journalism; 2) be resigned to it yet reflect critically on it; 3) act to prevent effects on personal news-consumption patterns, by curating the content; or 4) entirely restrain themselves from engaging with it. Awareness of these tactics, which help individuals cope with and navigate the datafied-journalism landscape, facilitates grasping the factors in audiences’ relations to datafied journalism and, thereby, understanding their consumption of news and their relationship with journalism.