Data, Institutional Logics and Journalism’s Chase After the Paying Subscriber

Digital data has become pervasive in news organizations’ operating environment, yet the institutional logics literature in journalism studies has not adequately accounted for data’s increased role in the field. Consequently, this study asks what is the role of digital data for the instantiation of institutional logics in the everyday work of journalists, and, more broadly, how journalism as an institution adapts to the prevalence of data. Empirically, we make use of observational material from two Finnish newsrooms, comprising over 110 h of fieldwork. Our findings show that journalists use data to justify their actions and to legitimate their organization’s standing, but that data also induces more work for them. In aggregate, the findings reflect how in an environment saturated by data, journalists in our case studies tended to invoke the market logic over other logics (e.g., professional). Additionally, we draw attention to quantified notions of management in newsrooms and suggest methodological refinements to the study of institutional logics in journalism.