Le défi de la construction d’un public pour le journalisme au temps de Google Analytics

Abstract

This article draws attention to one of the many transformations of contemporary journalism : the actors involved, especially professionnal journalists, increasingly replace their representation of the public as being composed of citizens by a view in which the public is a mass of target-recipients to be found.This shift is the direct result of the instability of the media’s current « hyper-competitive » environment : developing a public and keeping it is now a major challenge, for the media and for journalism. In response, the media tries to mobilize computing tools that monitor each day more intensively and extensively consumer behaviors on the Internet. This text begins by revisiting the traditional link between journalism, as a gatherer of publics, and the media industry. It then examines the central role that the representation of the public as citizens, already undermined, plays in the relations between professionnal journalists and the media that use their production. Finally, it discusses the audience recruiting and retention efforts and disappointments of three Canadian media that the author has been close to during the last few years : Reader’s Digest Canada, Voir and the website Graffici.ca.