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In this chapter, we investigate the impact of recent audience-monitoring tools on the (online) newspaper sub-editors’ task of crafting headlines. We zoom in on how metrics have become part of the newsmaking process and are now intrinsic to a larger foundation of more collaborative, participatory and engaging practices. Drawing on digital data and fieldwork, we analyse the back and forth between the sub-editors’ journalistic gut feeling, their awareness of ‘selling’ their brand ‘in the right way’, and the need to gain clicks. Relying on a linguistic ethnographic perspective (NT&T 2011), we address how sub-editors reflect on their changing professional routines. By investigating how the sub-editors’ aim to position themselves in tandem with their algorithmic tools is foundational to news media today, we shed new light on how the use of audience engagement metrics intertwines with long-standing journalistic practices and contribute to global debates on the politics of technology and online participation.

This introductory chapter lays the ontological and epistemological groundwork for this book, by providing a review of its key themes and concepts, and outlining the book’s theoretical and methodological position. More specifically, the book’s topic is introduced based on a number of data points from the contributing chapters. These point to the ubiquity of participation, engagement and collaboration, but also to the tension they potentially create, including in the context of newsmaking. To understand the key concepts in this central argument, two bodies of literature are discussed. We first delineate how we understand newsmaking, and focus on a number of recent changes in this domain that are relevant for our central argument, such as that newsmaking is increasingly engaging with a number of communities and professional stakeholders, and that user-generated content and audience feedback have become central. Second, the literature on participation, engagement and collaboration is reviewed, exploring how predominant these concepts have become in many realms of life, and how they are often related to democratic ideals. Subsequently, we argue for the relevance of a postfoundational perspective, and for the value of fieldwork approaches.

In this epilogue, we look back at the contributions to this volume which have shown how some newsmakers embrace the idea of collaborating while others are more cautious in reaching out. There seems to be, however, simply no avoiding participation. We explore whether this means giving up, or at least redistributing, control. In doing so, we also point to a lacuna in this volume, as it is invariably on journalists and other traditional newsmakers whom we focus, rather than those who fall outside traditional professional categories. We examine how stable the relationships in collaborative newsmaking really are and, zooming in on the ambivalent notion of collusion, how the contemporary design of newsmaking both enables positive participation and enforces unwanted forms of engagement. We conclude by reflecting on how participation, engagement and collaboration are impacting other fields of society. The chapter points to the need for critical reflection on the limits of participation and to new routes for further research.

Online Headline Testing at a Belgian Broadsheet: A Postfoundational Perspective on How News Professionals ‘Sell’ Content In this talk, I approach the changing status of journalism from a postfoundational perspective, in order to gain an understanding of how old foundations or journalism become less solid and contested and enter a dialogue with new ones, and to which newly emerging foundations this leads. In journalism as it stands today, a number of previously fixed roles are being contested. I focus on one such professional shift, viz. that in the role of the online sub-editor, and his/her approach to ‘selling’ an article’s content. Following previous research on sub-editing (Vandendaele & Jacobs, 2013; Vandendaele et al, 2015; Vandendaele, 2017a; 2017b; 2017c; 2018), I set out to investigate the impact of recently introduced audience-monitoring tools on one of the sub-editors’ main jobs, i.e. that of crafting headlines. Drawing on digital data, interviews and fieldwork conducted in the newsroom of a Flemish broadsheet, I zoom in on how sub-editors (and other online news workers) systematically use audience-monitoring tools to test various versions. They analyse how many clicks and how much reading time a headline generates, before selecting a ‘winner’ to appear on the broadsheet’s website, social media and newsletter. In particular, I analyse the continuous back and forth between the online news workers’ journalistic gut feeling, their awareness of ‘selling’ their broadsheet’s brand ‘in the right way’, i.e. in line with the media outlet’s identity and values, and the need to gain clicks. The online sub-editors’ process to gather ‘quality clicks’ is characterised as a constant struggle between news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; 2016; Bednarek & Caple, 2017), production values (criteria sub-editors apply in their treatment of a newspaper article; Vandendaele, 2017) and the audience monitoring tools that register which stories are clicked, liked or shared most. Relying on the analytical power of a linguistic ethnographic perspective (NT&T, 2011), I address how the (online) sub-editors critically reflect on how their professional routines, and how the construction of their expertise and the interaction with their target audience are changing. By zooming in on the pivotal and evolving role played by the online sub-editors and their aim to position themselves – and their journalistic expertise – in tandem with their algorithmic tools as foundational to news media today, I aim to shed new light on how metrics in the newsroom are (re)defining journalism and the role of the journalism professional., Chapter in forthcoming (preliminary entitled) volume: "Finding foundations: TOWARDS ENGAGEMENT, COLLABORATION AND PARTICIPATION" (editors: Declercq, Macgilchrist, Jacobs & Vandendaele) Link to online discussion: https://jstudiesseminars.flarum.cloud/d/3-online-headline-testing-dr-astrid-vandendaele-29-april-15-may-2020

‘(De)constructing Health News’ is a transdisciplinary project of the Health, Media & Society research centre (Ghent University), aiming at investigating the processes and stakeholder interaction involved in the (de)construction of elderly-related health news in Belgium. Today, laypeople are overwhelmed with health-related news and information, and they often have difficulties processing it all (Andreassen et al., 2010); meanwhile, the aging of the population drastically changes the demographic landscape and makes health care costs surge. To examine the societal background, processes and impact of these issues, four PhD researchers are working on four work packages, i.e.: (1) Stakeholder analysis; mapping the political-economic and institutional relations between different actors involved, like pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, journalists, researchers, doctors, patients, etcetera. (2) Lifecycle analysis of elderly-related health news stories in press releases, newspapers and online weblogs; by taking a multi-sited, linguistic ethnographic perspective, the complex discursive processes and professional routines at work will be examined. (3) Quantitative analysis of the output of the news production, by scrutinizing news sourcing, and conducting a frame and discourse analysis on elderly-related health news content. (4) Qualitative audience research; to gain understanding of uptake, perception, interpretation of elderly-related health news. As a PhD student focusing on the second work package, my research sets out to answer how and why elderly-related health news stories are selected by journalists, how news stories travel back and forth between stakeholders, and to map the lifecycle of news that is initiated by PR-offices. Are these news stories reproduced more or less verbatim by the news media, or do journalists make critical inquiries into the facts they are provided with and recontextualize these (Catenaccio et al., 2011)? The linguistic ethnographic fieldwork will show which of these two scenarios occur most often in journalistic practice, and which factors influence the processes and decisions involved.