Discussions about what journalism provides and what the audience selects have a long tradition in communications research, and are routinely part of public debate on journalism’s (in)ability to meet the demands and needs of its audience. Most would agree that journalism’s purpose cannot be reduced to “giving the people what they want”, while at the same time warning journalism’s practitioners not to ignore its audience’s preferences. In essence, these debates are about the appropriate or functional degree of proximity and distance between journalism and its audience (Görke 2014). But what does “appropriate relation” mean, and who is going to decide on that and to what end? More generally, how do we define proximity and distance between journalism and audience, and how can we measure and assess it? And from a fundamentally theoretical perspective: What kind of relationship is it overall?

These questions are becoming even more pressing as media practices in the age of the internet blur the boundaries between news producers and consumers as well as between production and consumption. In particular, the integration of social media into the media repertoires of individuals and media organizations urges us to rethink these categories, which are so fundamental, even constitutive, for journalism and audience research alike. The fluidity and processual nature of these developments has also been captured in hybrid terms: “mass self-communication” (Castells 2009: 58-70), “produsage” (Bruns 2008), “personal media” (Lüders 2008) or “personal publics” (Schmidt 2014) are new concepts that try to address the shifting relationship between professional journalism and active audiences and the “de-boundarizing” of spheres that used to be regarded as separate (Loosen 2015).

About the authors

Wiebke Loosen
PD Dr. Wiebke Loosen is a Senior Researcher for journalism research at the Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research (Hamburg, Germany) and lecturer at the University of Hamburg. Her main research interests cover journalism’s transformation in the digital age as well as research methods and methodology.

Jan-Hinrik Schmidt
Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt is a Senior Researcher for Digital Interactive Media and Political Communication at the Hans Bredow Institute (Hamburg, Germany). His main research interests cover Social Media and their impact on the public sphere, as well as the communicative construction of software technologies.