ABSTRACT
Understanding audience behaviour on mobile and social media platforms is central to helping journalists in our responsibility to serve the audience. Traditionally this information was gathered using reader surveys or audience focus groups, but increasingly it is provided in real time through detailed analytics dashboards. Throughout this book we encourage the reader to take a user-centred approach to their journalism that takes into account the highly interactive nature of mobile and social media output. This chapter seeks to understand how modern users view and engage with digital content. We use the term ‘user’ rather than ‘audience’ in this chapter. Many theorists have outlined this changing producer–user relationship including Jay Rosen (2006) who coined the phrase ‘the people formerly known as the audience’. Henry Jenkins (2008) described user participation as being an integral part on what he referred to as ‘the new economy’.
