Liisa Ovaska: From permissive to resistive tactics: How audience members act, make sense and cope with audience-datafied journalism

We are pleased to invite to a seminar about Liisa Ovaska’s research paper on how audience members respond to audience-datafied journalism. Preliminary findings reveal a spectrum of strategies, ranging from resistance to acceptance, in how users engage with data-driven systems while consuming news.

Liisa Ovaska is a doctoral researcher at Tampere University. In her dissertation Ovaska studies the effects of audience metrics on audience members’ relations to digital journalism.  

Where and When:

At MediaFutures, 22.september at 12:00

Abstract:

Although there exists a consensus of the fact that the usage of audience metrics has changed journalism, the audience’s perception to audience-datafied journalism has received less attention. In the newsrooms, metrics are used to collect data from audience and its behaviour, and further used to adjust the news outputs. 

This talk will present Liisa Ovaska’s research paper, which examines how the audience members make sense, act and cope with audience-datafied journalism. Preliminary results suggest that the tactics varied from resistive to permissive: users tried either act against the datafied systems and minimise its impact to their news consumption or complied with the system by accepting it. The article is based on audience research conducted in the spring 2023. The data was produced by using group interviews and instant messaging group chats in which the participants reported of their encounters with datafied journalism for one week.