Coping with Audience Hostility. How Journalists’ Experiences of Audience Hostility Influence Their Editorial Decisions

Abstract

In digitalized media societies, many journalists encounter audience hostility in publicly visible channels. Scholars theorized on the spiral process of the influence of audience feedback on journalists’ editorial work. In this spiral, audience feedback on past news coverage influences ongoing news coverage, producing audience feedback that influences ongoing news coverage, and so forth. We study an empirically accessible, meaningful sequence of this process–influences of journalists’ significant previous experiences of publicly visible audience hostility on the ways in which they cope with resulting anticipations of audience hostility in their editorial work. Based on a survey of German print journalists (n = 323), we find hints that journalists’ significant previous experiences of publicly visible audience hostility can influence their news coverage in two ways. In line with previous research, we find that some journalists reacted to past significant incidents of publicly visible audience hostility with negative emotions and appraisals. This explains their proneness to complying with anticipated audience hostility. Other journalists took pleasure in significant previous incidents of publicly visible audience hostility and viewed them as a professional success. This explains their proneness to defying anticipated audience hostility. We discuss these findings in light of the political polarization of societies.