Audience Views on Professional Norms of Journalism. A Media Repertoire Approach

Abstract

Despite several studies showing discrepancies between audience expectations of journalism and journalists’ professional norms, what remains largely unknown is the audience view on the adherence of journalism to these seemingly essential professional norms. Recent research mainly focused on analysing audience expectations within the context of specific cases. Moreover, these studies rarely take into consideration characteristics that might shape people’s views on journalism such as political ideology. This article seeks to complement these studies by exploring the impact that a user’s news consumption might have on their expectations of journalism. Utilizing data from an online survey among a representative sample of the Flemish audience, we analyse views on adherence to the main professional norms by the Flemish media, and subsequently relate these to news consumption. To grasp the cross- and multi-medial news consumer, we use a news repertoire approach. Flemish news repertoires differ significantly in views on several professional journalistic norms. By linking these distinct news repertoires to their views on professional norms of journalism, we first question how essential these professional norms put forward by journalists really are. Secondly, we discuss if expectations of journalism result in divergent news consumption strategies or vice versa, laying the groundwork for further exploring audience views on professional journalistic norms.