In an Open Relationship: Platformization of Relations Between News Practitioners and Their Audiences

Past studies conceived of journalists-audience relations as largely dyadic, highlighting the interaction between two sides. The current study argues that such a conceptualization should now be modified to fit today’s media environment, where these interactions obtain on social platforms. Through process platformization—the subjugation news production logic—these platforms are reshaping journalists’ and social-media editors’ conceptions regarding audience, its role in production, expectations vis-à-vis newsroom. These beliefs translate into professionals’ everyday practices concerns contact with audiences, ultimately influence production. Based interviews 18 editors 24 journalists, demonstrates how each above relational aspects has been line media’s economic, governmental infrastructural logic. It also shows how, due their diverging goals, organizations journalists have come cultivate semi-autonomous relationship audience members, thus introducing new tensions