Seminar: Exploring media experience: why is it important to media innovation? Irene Costera Meijer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Irene Costera Meijer, Professor of Journalism Studies at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, (The Netherlands) and Professor II at the University of Bergen will talk about why we should regard audience experience as key to both innovation and quality.

TITLE: Exploring media experience: why is it important to media innovation?
WHEN: Thursday, 17 June 2021, 13:00-14:00
WHERE:https://uib.zoom.us/j/61527564041?pwd=M25Qay8ybHpSZVRjaVdxQXJRbHgwQT09
Meeting ID: 615 2756 4041
Passcode: erM6f2uy

ABSTRACT: In today’s world, innovation appears to have replaced quality as the dominant concept in metajournalistic discourse. Innovation guards the distribution of financial resources – more investments in technology – and working conditions –more freelance journalists as a flexible workforce. Innovation also works as a distinctive mark of professional status and is at the center of antagonistic labor relations  – e.g. the introduction of robot journalism.

The shift from quality discourse to innovation discourse involved a change in the journalistic perception of audiences: from being irrelevant (if not a negative concern) to being main targets.

Although the question of how to reach audiences seems to be still dominant, news organizations appear to become more open and sensitive towards finding out how to become valuable to audiences, how to open up their minds, how to broaden their horizon, and how to provide them with a quality experience that will enlighten them with reliable information considered worthwhile.

In this talk I will answer the question how innovation discourse and quality discourse may meet by focusing on what audiences experience as valuable journalism. I will demonstrate how it crystallized over the years into three key experiences: Learning something new, Getting recognition and Increasing mutual understanding.

BIO: Irene Costera Meijer is Professor of Journalism Studies and head of the Journalism Studies section at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a world leading journalism and media scholar having recently set the agenda for the audience turn in journalism studies. Her research appeared in many journals and books and focuses on what news users value about journalism.  She also works as a professor II at the Research group for Media Use and Audience Studies of the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at University of Bergen.

Her research interests focus on audience studies and in particular on the impact of digitalization on changing practices of media consumption, media experiences and news use. When doing research she often collaborates with media organisations.  This makes it easier to translate scholarly results into relevant suggestions for every day professional practices and vice versa, understanding the fundamental dilemmas of professional practices and translating these into academic publications. Costera Meijer is also on the editorial board of the academic journals Digital Journalism and Journalism Practice.