Author: Angele Christin
When the news moved online, journalists suddenly learned what their audiences actually liked, through algorithmic technologies that scrutinize web traffic and activity.
Has this advent of audience metrics changed journalists’ work practices and professional identities? In Metrics at Work, Angele Christin documents the ways that journalists grapple with audience data in the form of clicks, and analyzes how new forms of clickbait journalism travel across national borders.
Drawing on four years of fieldwork in web newsrooms in the US and France, including more than 100 interviews with journalists, Christin reveals many similarities among the media groups examined—their editorial goals, technological tools, and even office furniture.
Yet she uncovers crucial and paradoxical differences in how American and French journalists understand audience analytics and how these affect the news produced in each country.
