Wiebke Loosen, Julius Reimer, Louise Oberhülsmann and Tim van Olphen have delivered a useful new study in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly: “From cultivating fans to coping with troublemakers: A typology of journalists’ audience relationships.” Over several years, Loosen and her team interviewed 52 journalists in Germany representing a range of characteristics — not just differences in demographics, but also in the relative stability associated with their jobs: some working in traditional reporting roles for established media outlets, others producing content for innovation units within those companies or in startups. All were identifiable journalists working under bylines, as opposed to doing mostly behind-the-scenes tasks.
The researchers found that there isn’t one journalist–audience relationship to speak of, but rather “eleven distinct ideal-typical relationship forms,” each a kind of “sub-relationship” that journalists establish with their audience or different segments within it, depending on the circumstances involved. The authors describe these 11 relationship forms as “building blocks” of the broader approach that journalists develop toward audiences overall. They also make clear that most journalists draw on multiple forms in the way they think about and interact with the audience, depending on the context at a given moment or in a given role.
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