Imagined Audiences
Many believe the solution to ongoing crises in the news industry--including profound financial instability and public distrust--is for journalists to improve their relationship with their audiences. This raises important questions: How do journalists conceptualize their audiences in the first place? What is the connection between what journalists think about their audiences and what they do to reach them? Perhaps most importantly, how aligned are these "imagined" audiences with the real ones?
Imagined Audiences draws on ethnographic case studies of three news organizations to reveal how journalists' assumptions about their audiences shape their approaches to their audiences. Jacob L. Nelson examines the role that audiences have traditionally played in journalism, how that role has changed, and what those changes mean for both the profession and the public. He concludes by drawing on audience studies research to compare journalism's "imagined" audiences with actual observations of news audience behavior. The result is a comprehensive study of both news production and reception at a moment when the relationship between the two has grown more important than ever before.
Reviews
“Imagined Audiences provides an important and timely framework for thinking about the industry-wide embrace of—and ambivalence about—audience engagement, particularly with respect to audiences traditionally overlooked by mainstream news.”—Regina G. Lawrence, University of Oregon
“Nelson presents a must-read account of how journalists may variously see their audiences as a source of frustration or a source of inspiration, and why those imaginations and the complications and contradictions surrounding them are at the heart of the most consequential debate about the future of news happening today.”—Seth C. Lewis, University of Oregon
“As journalism faces a profound structural crisis, Nelson’s timely and nuanced ethnographic analysis provides an invaluable roadmap for understanding the ever-shifting relationships between different kinds of audiences and different types of journalists. ”—Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania
“Read this book all the way to the end: You will not be disappointed and might even come away with an idea for how to fix news media.”—Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Scholarly reviews
Choice Connect (“A well-written, timely book about the decline of trust in news organizations.”)
Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research (“Makes a case for a new genre of ethnography, a journalistic ethnography: one that uses tools from journalistic research and combines them with journalistic narrative storytelling.”)
Electronic News (“Investigates core questions about modern-day audiences and offers valuable insights into understanding journalists’ perceptions of the audience.”)
International Journal of Communication (“Nelson explores the underlying assumptions of community engagement efforts and the lack of certainty about what characteristics the audience actually has.”)
International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics (“Excellent … the rare academic book that could be read and appreciated by journalists as well as academics.)
Journal of Communication Inquiry (“Nelson’s writing, both in its thoughtfulness and argumentation, make this text appropriate for … academics and professionals.”)
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (“The book illustrates that news organizations can easily conflate attention for motivation as an indicator of engagement.”)
Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication (“A thought provoking and engaging read that fills an important gap in previous audience engagement and journalism practice research.”)