Emotional Dimensions of the Adoption of Audience Analytics: Results from a Survey of Austrian Journalists

Abstract

Audience analytics have been a vital development in the digital transformation of the journalistic field over the past decades. Journalism scholarship has paid ample attention to this, albeit mostly focusing on the impact analytics have on news production, typically against the background of a fear that their increased use would lead to a dumbing down of news. Fewer studies have, however, been concerned with how individual journalists adapt to the increased use of analytics from a professional and emotional perspective. Applying the Coping Model of User Adaptation (Beaudry, Pinsonneault. 2005. “Understanding User Responses to Information Technology: A Coping Model of User Adaptation.” MIS Quarterly 29 (3): 493), this paper focuses on journalists’ emotional appraisal of analytics and their impact on job satisfaction. Through a survey of 180 Austrian journalists, we find that journalists acknowledge analytics’ potential to improve their relationship with their audiences but also reveal skepticism towards the new technology, particularly regarding journalists’ emotional well-being and their overall job satisfaction. Additionally, we identify the importance of editorial autonomy in these processes.