Measurable Journalism Digital Platforms, News Metrics and the Quantified Audience

This book explores ways in which the increasingly ?measurable? news audience has had an impact on journalistic practices, in an era when digital platforms provide real-time, individualizable, quantitative data about audience consumption practices.

Considering the combination of digital technology that makes measurable journalism possible, the contributors to this volume examine the work of various actors involved in aspects of measurable journalism both inside and outside the newsroom and confront the normative implications of the data-centric trends of measurable journalism. Including examples from across the globe, the book balances hopes for increased engagement or impact with fears that economic prioritization will hurt journalism?s standing in the public sphere.

This book will be of interest to those studying journalistic practices in the modern world, as well as those studying media consumption and emerging digital technologies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

Introduction: Confronting Measurable Journalism 1. Quantified Audiences in News Production: A synthesis and research agenda 2. The Audience-Oriented Editor: Making sense of the audience in the newsroom 3. Selecting Metrics, Reflecting Norms: How journalists in local newsrooms define, measure, and discuss impact 4. Dimensional Field Theory: The adoption of audience metrics in the journalistic field and cross-field influences 5. Boundary Work, Interloper Media, and Analytics in Newsrooms: An analysis of the roles of web analytics companies in news production 6. Analytics-Driven Journalism? Editorial Metrics and the Reconfiguration of Online News Production Practices in African Newsrooms 7. Engineering Consent: How the design and marketing of newsroom analytics tools rationalize journalists’ labor 8. The Elusive Engagement Metric

Matt Carlson is Associate Professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, USA. His most recent book is Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era (2017). He is the author of over 50 journal articles and book chapters.