What Does the Audience Expect When Interacting with Journalists? A Q-sort Study

In a post-digitalization age, journalist-audience interactions are an indispensable part of journalistic routines. By conducting a Q-sort study, we analyze what expectations recipients have regarding digital interactions with journalists and how to typify them. Our study gives insights as to what the audience expects when it comes to their online interactions with journalist in a nuanced way. As we see, interaction expectations differ vastly. We differentiate between two prevailing types of expectations within the audience when it comes to interacting with journalists: the quality-oriented traditionalists and the deliberation-oriented interactionalists. While the traditionalists mainly see interactions as a mean to improve journalistic quality, for example by pointing out errors our missing information, the interactionalists’ expectations are closer to those we know from interpersonal relationships and focus more on the relationship between journalists and audiences. Our results leave us with practical implications for news outlets on how to tackle interacting with their audiences.