doxa.comunicación |
nº 35, pp. 19-38
| 19
July-December of 2022
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Castells-Fos, L.; Pont-Sorribes, C. and Codina, L. (2022). Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and relevance: a
scoping review.
Doxa Comunicación
, 35, pp. 19-38.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n35a1627
Llú
cia Castells-Fos.
A researcher from the doctorate programme in Communication at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra
de Barcelona. She has a master’s degree in digital communication from the Barcelona School of Management. She is
a collaborating researcher in the
DigiDo
c Research Group from the Department of Communication at the Universitat
Pompeu Fabra and the
Observatorio de Cibermedios
(OCM). Her PhD centres on the study of innovation and sustainability
of news media companies focused on the digital sphere, which is linked to journalism
’
s role in strengthening democratic
systems and ghting against disinformation. She is part of the working group in a competitive project within the R+D+I
plan in which several universities participate, currently waiting it to be granted. She is currently working in the Training
and Universities division in
Grupo Planeta
.
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID:0000-0003-1124-7941
Carles Pont-Sorribes
. PhD in Social Communication is a lecturer in the Department of Communication at the Universitat
Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona. He is currently Dean of the Faculty of Communication. Director of the
Ideograma
-
UPF
and
Chair in Political Communication and Democracy. He has made scientic contributions to various international journals
and is the author of the books: “
Comunicar las emergencias
”; “
Comunicación y Opinión P
úbica
”; and “
Comunicación
y Crisis
”, among others. He is the principal investigator of the project
“
Crisis and emergency communication in Social
Media”
. A study of its use in Spain and the design of information protocols for institutions and media (
COMCRISIS
) was
granted and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation (Reference PID2019-109064GB-I00). He has participated
in numerous competitive research projects and in projects for the transfer of knowledge.
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0003-1135-4245
Lluís Codina
. PhD in Social Communication is a lecturer at the Faculty of Communication at the Universitat Pompeu
Fabra de Barcelona and coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Social Communication (MUCS) of the Department
of Communication at the same university. He also teaches at the Barcelona School of Management-UPF. He is a co-
founder and member of the editorial team of the academic journal Hipertext.net. He is the coordinator of the Research
Unit in Journalism and Digital Documentation (UPF), as well as director of the
Observatorio de Cibermedios
, dedicated
to monitoring the trends and curating content on digital journalism. He is the principal investigator (coIP) of the project
“
Creation and interactive content in audiovisual information communication: audiences, design, systems and formats
”
(CSO2015-64955-C4-2-R (MINECO/FEDER), Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Spain)).
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID:0000-0001-7020-1631
Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and
relevance: a scoping review
La sostenibilidad de los medios a través de los conceptos de engagement y
relevancia: scoping review
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20
| nº 35, pp. 19-38 |
July-December of 2022
Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and relevance: a scoping review
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
doxa.comunicación
1. Introduction and theoretical framework
is paper focuses on the news media companies’ sustainability in relevance and engagement in academic investigations.
e advent of the internet radically changed how news is consumed, leading to the current crisis of media viability (Meier;
Bracker; Verhovnik, 2017). e profound change in the advertising market and the proliferation of free content and sources of
information has led to the media’s loss of relevance, as they have lost exclusivity not only as a source of information but also
as an advertising media’s (Maestro Espínola; García Santamaría; Pérez Serrano, 2016), as digital platforms have absorbed
advertising. is viability is considered part of this research’s theoretical framework,
e concept of relevance has two connotations. On the one hand, it can be dened as the media’s capacity to be an inuential
actor in society, an opinion shaper (Vázquez-Herrero; Negreira-Rey; López-García, 2019). In this sense, we refer to reputation.
On the other hand, relevance can also be understood as the media’s degree of visibility on the internet, which in turn, is related
to the medium’s reputation (Gundlach; Hofmann, 2020).
is paper is set in the context of the internet, which is constantly changing, making it challenging to identify structures from all
economic and cultural sectors, not only from the media (Nel et al., 2020). e academic sphere has emphasised the evolution
Abstract:
e concepts of relevance and engagement provide an approach to
understanding new media companies’ search for a new sustainability
model. is new model must complement the advertising revenue
with subscriptions. e media need to ensure various sources of
funding. ey must regain relevance and maintain engagement with
their audience; this paper presents the results of a scoping review. e
objective is to identify and synthesise the academy’s vision concerning
the relevance and engagement applied to the sustainability of
journalism. e academy analyses the innovation processes in news
media outlets in-depth and attempts to leverage its business model
through paying users. e results show a growing interest in the
media’s economic feasibility due to the demise of the advertising-
based business model. e in-depth analysis of engagement shows
the academy’s lack of a dened consensus, although new research
has made valuable contributions. Moreover, there are signicant
dierences between professionals’ and academics’ visions. Although
to a lesser extent, Relevance is present in the sustainability debate
through the visibility and trust that media brands bring.
Keywords
:
Digital journalism; engagement; sustainability; media business;
systematic review.
Received: 07/03/2022- Accepted: 23/05/2022- Early access: 14/06/2022 - Published: 01/07/2022
Resumen
:
Los conceptos de relevancia y engagement aportan claves para analizar
la situación actual de las empresas periodísticas, en busca de un nuevo
modelo de sostenibilidad que complemente los ingresos por publicidad,
principalmente, con las suscripciones. Para asegurar sus fuentes de
-
nanciación, los medios necesitan recuperar la relevancia que han ido
perdiendo, y conseguir el engagement con su público. En este trabajo se
presentan los resultados de una scoping review cuyo objetivo es identi
-
car la visión de la academia sobre los conceptos de la relevancia y el
engagement aplicados a la sostenibilidad del periodismo. Los resultados
evidencian una preocupación creciente por la viabilidad económica de
los medios. También reciben una especial atención los procesos de inno
-
vación y los intentos de aanzar el modelo de negocio en los usuarios de
pago. El análisis del engagement muestra que todavía no hay una de
-
nición consensuada por parte de la academia. Además, los resultados
evidencian diferencias importantes con la visión de los profesionales. La
relevancia, aunque en menor medida, está presente en el debate sobre la
sostenibilidad a través de la visibilidad y la conanza que aportan las
marcas de los medios.
Palabras clave:
Periodismo digital; engagement; sostenibilidad; negocio de los medios;
revisión sistemática.
Recibido: 07/03/2022 - Aceptado: 23/05/2022 - En edición: 14/06/2022 - Publicado: 01/07/2022
doxa.comunicación |
nº 35, pp. 19-38
|
July-December of 2022
Llúcia Castells-Fos, Carles Pont-Sorribes and Lluís Codina
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
21
in the industry, and in particular, the concept of journalistic innovation is often understood as a rescue platform for a sector
seeking a new business model (Creech; Nadler, 2018).
Graph 1. e context of the subject of study in digital media transformation
1.
Introduction
and
theoretical
framework
This
paper
focuses
on
the
news
enterprise
’
s
sustainability
in
relevance
and
engagement
in
academic
investigations.
The
advent
of
the
internet
radically
changed
how
news
is
consumed,
leading
to
the
current
crisis
of
media
viability
(Meier;
Bracker;
Verhovnik,
2017).
The
profound
change
in
the
advertising
market
and
the
proliferation
of
free
content
and
sources
of
information
has
led
to
the
media
’
s
loss
of
relevance,
as
they
have
lost
exclusivity
not
only
as
a
source
of
information
but
also
as
an
advertising
medium
(Maestro
Espínola;
García
Santamaría;
Pérez
Serrano,
2016),
as
digital
platforms
have
absorbed
advertising.
This
viability
is
considered
part
of
this
research
’
s
theoretical
framework,
The
concept
of
relevance
has
two
connotations.
On
the
one
hand,
it
can
be
defined
as
the
media
’
s
capacity
to
be
an
influential
actor
in
society,
an
opinion
shaper
(Vázquez-
Herrero;
Negreira-Rey;
López-García,
2019).
In
this
sense,
we
refer
to
reputation.
On
the
other
hand,
relevance
can
also
be
understood
as
the
media
’
s
degree
of
visibility
on
the
internet,
which
in
turn,
is
related
to
the
medium
’
s
reputation
(Gundlach;
Hofmann,
2020).
This
paper
is
set
in
the
context
of
the
internet,
which
is
constantly
changing,
making
it
challenging
to
identify
structures
from
all
economic
and
cultural
sectors,
not
only
from
the
media
(Nel
et
al.,
2020).
The
academic
sphere
has
emphasised
the
evolution
in
the
industry,
and
in
particular,
the
concept
of
journalistic
innovation
is
often
understood
as
a
rescue
platform
for
a
sector
seeking
a
new
business
model
(Creech;
Nadler,
2018).
Graph
1:
The
context
of
the
subject
of
study
in
digital
media
transformation
Source:
created
by
the
authors
The
media
are
forced
to
adapt
to
the
digital
environment
and
decide,
accordingly,
the
modus
operandi
of
the
continuity
and
change
of
the
media
(Zelizer,
2019).
For
this
reason,
digitalisation
is
the
focus
of
this
research,
not
in
a
technological
sense
but
rather
in
a
strategic
sense.
The
work
is
based
on
the
definition
of
Digital
Journalism
Studies,
proposed
by
Eldridge
et
al.
in
2019
(cited
by
Steensen;
Wetslund,
2021):
"Digital
Journalism
Studies
should
strive
to
be
an
academic
field
which
critically
explores,
documents,
and
explains
the
interplay
of
digitisation
and
journalism,
continuity
and
change."
Since
the
emergence
of
social
media,
The
main
consequence
of
digitalisation
is
the
loss
of
the
media’s
monopoly
on
audiences
(Myllylahti,
2020).
Not
only
the
media
communicates
on
the
internet;
governments,
corporations,
and
institutions
of
all
types
share
information
on
websites
and
social
networks.
News
is
separated
from
journalism
(Steensen;
Westlund,
2021),
and
media
outlets
compete
with
each
other
and
any
other
content
for
the
internet
user
’
s
attention
(Krebs
et
al.,
2020).
For
the
media
to
be
a
viable
business
in
this
hypercompetitive
environment,
they
must
understand
how
audiences
access
news
(relevance)
and
their
consumption
and
engagement
patterns.
As
Batsell
Source: created by the authors
e media are forced to adapt to the digital environment and decide, accordingly, the modus operandi of the continuity and
change of the media (Zelizer, 2019). For this reason, digitalisation is the focus of this research, not in a technological sense but
rather in a strategic sense. e work is based on the denition of Digital Journalism Studies, proposed by Eldridge et al. in 2019
(cited by Steensen; Wetslund, 2021): “Digital Journalism Studies should strive to be an academic eld which critically explores,
documents, and explains the interplay of digitisation and journalism, continuity and change.”
Since the emergence of social media, e main consequence of digitalisation is the loss of the media’s monopoly on audiences
(Myllylahti, 2020). Not only the media communicates on the internet; governments, corporations, and institutions of all types
share information on websites and social networks. News is separated from journalism (Steensen; Westlund, 2021), and media
outlets compete with each other and any other content for the internet user’s attention (Krebs et al., 2020). For the media to
be a viable business in this hypercompetitive environment, they must understand how audiences access news (relevance) and
their consumption and engagement patterns. As Batsell (2015) points out, the more urgent engagement becomes, the more the
digital transformation process progresses.
On the other hand, engagement is generally understood as the media’s ability to evoke a specic reaction from the audience.
e media needs a loyal audience to sell advertising and obtain paying users. Engagement ranges from reaction metrics (views,
visits, clicks, likes) to news co-production (Nelson, 2018; Belair-Gagnon; Nelson; Lewis, 2019). As we will see, the concept of
engagement is not easy to dene. erefore, we have chosen to maintain the term in English, due to the lack of a consensual
translation that can incorporate the dierent aspects that the original term has acquired for researchers and professionals,
although we recommend Ortega-Santos and Rodríguez-Barba’s work (2018) for those who are interested in a documented
discussion about this.
Accordingly, this research is based on the need to analyse two concepts linked to the sustainability of journalism: the idea
of relevance, due to the erce competition on the internet, and engagement, due to the media’s need to ensure the readers’
engagement. Relevance and engagement are keys to monetising the audience through subscriptions and advertising.
On the other hand, they are two closely related concepts in which the latter, as we understand, follows the former. Relevance
centres on the media itself and the key factors that leverage it, such as the quality of the journalistic product and the publisher’s
independence. Engagement, on the other hand, focuses on the audience’s behaviour. Finally, sustainability is a viable and
durable business model (Harlow, 2018). However, like businesses, the media have a particularity, as stated by Natalie Jomini
Digital transformation
Hipercompetition
Change in the audience’s
behaviour
Crisis of relevance
22
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Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and relevance: a scoping review
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doxa.comunicación
Stroud: “e public expects them to function like schools, providing a public service. But newspapers have to function like
businesses because taxpayer dollars do not fund thems” (Jomini Strod, 2017).
Such a distinctive feature forces us to reconcile the business vision with the mission to inform the public and monitor political
and economic power. Nelson and Tandoc’s (2019) concept of the balancing act can explain this tension or search for balance
between fullling their social function and being economically viable, as well as between what the audiences want and what
they need in general (Belair-Gagnon; Nelson; Lewis, 2019).
is research aims to provide state-of-the-art on the concepts of relevance and engagement in the context of the sustainability
of news media companies.
Based on the proposed objective, the following research questions are posed:
–
How does academia analyse the impact of digitalisation on the advertising-based media business model?
–
How does academia analyse changes in traditional media audiences and new audiences?
–
How does academia analyse the impact of the brand’s reputation on media durability?
Relevance, engagement, and innovation in the sector have shaped the conceptual basis for the search for scientic papers on
the topics, problems, and areas of study aimed at the sustainability of news media companies or their business model.
2. Materials and methods
For this review work, various systematic review papers known as scoping reviews (Arksey; 0’Malley, 2005; Munn et al., 2018)
have been carried out, given the research questions and the breadth of the area of knowledge to be covered. Specically, “a
systematic review
poses the eectiveness of an intervention while a scoping review aims to learn about the characteristics of
knowledge” (Codina, 2021).
In all cases, these are systematic reviews that must comply with some methodological validation protocols. In this case, the
present research has applied the phases of the SALSA framework (Search, Appraisal, Synthesis, Analysis) and followed the
checkpoints of the PRISMA Scr framework.
Searches were conducted for the research development in January 2021 to cover six whole years (2015-2020), with the second
update in March 2021. e authors agreed on the key words and the inclusion and exclusion criteria until the evidence base
from the analysed documents banks was shaped. Regarding the data extraction process, the rst author was in charge of
reading the papers and the rst version of the data extraction, generating a structured summary from each reading and
applying the same analysis scheme to each paper. e other authors reviewed and checked the results, and agreements were
reached through consensus.
e following table shows the essential parameters of the revision work carried out.
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Llúcia Castells-Fos, Carles Pont-Sorribes and Lluís Codina
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
23
Table 1. Essential parameters of the review work
Databases usedWeb of Science and Scopus.
Documentary typologyAcademic and review papers.
Date rangeFrom January 2015 until March 2021.
Concepts from which key words are derived
1. Journalism
2. Media Business
3. Subscriptions
4. Engagement
5. Relevance
Main reasons for exclusion
False positives, e.g.) articles that mention the word engagement are unrelated
to the research’s topic.
Academic papers whose subject of study is set in a country without press free
-
dom, as the conditions of economic survival are specic and not comparable.
Source: created by the authors
3. Results
Based on the analyses, the evidence base allows for an initial classication according to the main object of the study analysed.
ey are two closely related topics, but with dierent approaches, which make up more than 50% of the academic papers: the
sector’s impact of digital transformation on the business model and innovation as an agent of digitalisation, i.e., innovation as
a vector of adaptation to the digital context.
On the other hand, audiences occupy 25% of the selected articles. e remaining references have the following themes as
their subject of study: the media’s brand, their values, and their relationship to the visibility of the media and topics that are
included in this analysis under the heading of “the brand as a generator of relevance”. In any case, it can be seen that the main
themes identied are relatively evenly distributed.
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Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and relevance: a scoping review
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
doxa.comunicación
Table 2. e main themes detected in the article
e main object of the study
Articles
e impact on the business model
1626.2%
Innovation as an agent of digitalisation
1829.5%
Audience behaviour/engagement
1422.9%
e brand as a generator of relevance
1321.3%
Source: created by the authors
3.1. e impact on the business model
With the advent of the internet, audiences have become digitalised by technological platforms and social networks. e main
issue identied in the academic output is the crisis brought about because digital revenues do not compensate for the losses of
print editions (Maestro Espínola; García Santamaría; Pérez Serrano, 2016; Lehtisaari et al., 2018). Print editions still generate
a higher turnover than digital editions in some traditional media (Olsen; Solvoll, 2018).
Some works insist that the crisis in the business model is a crisis of relevance in the digital environment where the media
do not have exclusivity over the news (Zayani, 2021), and this crisis is shared with the advertisers (Maestro Espínola; García
Santamaría; Pérez Serrano, 2016). Both are searching for a new way to reach readers and users in an increasingly erce
competitive environment for the audience’s attention (Lehtisaari; Grönlund, 2015; Lehtisaari et al., 2018). In this sense, some
authors highlight the idea that “the media and advertising must adapt to a model where the reader is the epicentre” (Maestro
Espínola; García Santamaría; Pérez Serrano, 2016).
e recurring idea is that the advertising crisis forces the media to continuously experiment (Nelson, 2019; Márquez;
Peñamarín, 2020). e media aspires to increase revenues from users such is the case with crowdfunding (Antonopoulos et
al., 2020; Márquez; Peñamarín, 2020).
Subscription research is interested in two main topics: rstly, the eectiveness of paywalls (Chyi; Ng, 2020) on subscriptions
and the variant of “data walls (Evens; Van Damme, 2016), which on the one hand, contribute to improving the user’s
experience through personalisation and on the other hand, they are mainly oriented at the sale of qualied advertising spaces.
Consequently, there is still no consensus about the impact of the walls on the decline in trac and, therefore, the advertising
revenues (Kim; Song; Kim, 2020).
e second line of investigation focuses on understanding users’ inclination to pay for a subscription (Chyi; Ng, 2020), the
reasons for subscribing (da Silva; Sanseverino, 2020; Saavedra; González, 2015) and the main reasons for choosing one source
or another (Harlow, 2018). is research highlights the importance of media reputation (Kim; Song; Kim, 2020) in the trust it
generates and, consequently, the intention to pay (Vara-Miguel, 2020).
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25
e audience is also analysed as the basis for the primary sources of revenue: its monetisation through advertising and
subscriptions. On the one hand, this is described as a break strategy or prioritising the readers’ loyalty and their transformation
into subscribers. On the other hand, it is an acceleration strategy
focused on not losing trac and selling qualied audiences
to advertisers (Olsen; Solvoll, 2018).
Concerns about the loss of quality focus the critical discourse on the impact of digitalisation on the business model. Firstly, the
main criticisms focus on the decline in journalistic quality due to the focus on audience metrics (Victoria-Mas; Lacasa-Mas,
2015; Fürst, 2020), which negatively impacts their reputation and can lead to a loss of relevance, jeopardising its long-term
sustainability. Secondly, there is a risk of an echo chamber that results from exposure to fewer sources due to subscriptions
(Arendt; Northup; Camaj, 2019) compared to the free and open exposure to diverse sources oered by the advertising-based
funding model. Similarly, Pope (2017) highlights the quality gap that paywalls can generate between subscribers and free
users.
e notion of hyper-competition is, therefore, at the root of the crisis. e internet lowers the entry barrier to compete for the
audience’s attention (Lehtisaari et al., 2018). Competition comes from within the sector (intra-media competition) and other
sectors (intermedia competition) or non-journalistic content. In this hypercompetitive environment, the media rely on their
brands to win (Krebs et al., 2020). e concept of coopetition arises due to the lack of resources to stand out from competitors.
No one has the resources to produce all types of content (Pope, 2017; Villi et al., 2020) and to have bargaining power over
internet giants (Lehtisaari et al., 2018).
Reducing journalist sta is not the only adjustment measure to declining advertising revenues. News organisations adapt
by focusing on data (Evens; Van Damme, 2016) driven by paywalls and social media consumption (Mañas-Viniegra; Sierra-
Sánchez; López-Cepeda, 2019), promoting understanding and collaboration between newsroom and management, and
orienting the journalistic product as a service to its audience (Lehtisaari; Grönlund, 2015).
3.2. Innovation as an agent of digitalisation
Innovation is essential for the media’s survival and is a widely shared starting point (García-Avilés; Carvajal Prieto; Arias
Robles, 2018; Heckman; Wihbey, 2019; Karimi; Walter, 2015; Manfredi-Sánchez; Rojas-Torrijos; Herraz De-la-Casa, 2015).
ere is concern about dening and analysing the process (García-Avilés; Carvajal Prieto; Arias Robles, 2018, Vázquez-Herrero;
Negreira-Rey; López-García, 2019; Karimi; Walter, 2015; García-Perdomo; Magaña, 2020 among others), creating taxonomies
(Carvajal et al., 2015) that enable learning from the experience and replicating it with the aim of nding a suitable business
model.
e discourse critical of innovation is either ad hoc (Antonopoulos et al., 2020; Creech and Nadler, 2018, Hess; Waller, 2020)
or secondary (Fürst, 2020). ere is a dominant discourse, partly dominated by US think tanks. ey are based on the market
logic dened by technological internet giants, which according to some authors, sidesteps normative debates surrounding the
media’s role in democratic life (Creech; Nadler, 2018). Some works are limited to innovation and do not question the whole
discussion, which should not go as far as personalising or sacricing news quality (Cestino; Berndt, 2017). Experts believe that
media professionals must decide what benets the business and the profession (Nelson, 2019); it is a historical balancing act.
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Sustainable Journalism through the concepts of engagement and relevance: a scoping review
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Depending on the research, the areas of analysis are product, formats, distribution, organisation and business model (García-
Avilés; Carvajal Prieto; Arias Robles, 2018); content, product, process, and business model (Vázquez-Herrero; Negreira-Rey;
López-García, 2019); technology, organisation, content and audience (Carvajal et al., 2015); or nally, resources, processes
and values (Karimi; Walter, 2015). We propose to articulate the areas of analysis to clarify the following: product (contents and
formats of such content, as well as the audiences that have inspired them), process (considering the organisation), business
model (which includes the distribution of contents) and culture and technology as cross-cutting areas of analysis.
A specic culture imposes innovation processes, the startup culture. Beyond startups, the triad of entrepreneurship, innovation,
and business model (Heckman; Wihbey, 2019) is the formula for nding a way out of the crisis. Startups are generally identied
as leaders in innovation, not only in the media sector. (Carvajal et al., 2015).
e personal leader (Harlow; Chadha, 2019) or group leader shapes the organisation’s personality in digital ventures, which
is the product and its business model; they act as journalists and managers. e barrier between the newsroom and the
company’s managers ceases to exist in these digital ventures (Harlow, 2018).
Both individual and corporate entrepreneurial orientation is linked to an innovative vision, aggressive competition, and the
search for opportunities (Nel et al., 2020). ere is a broad consensus that entrepreneurship, and freedom of the press, are
fundamental to a well-functioning democracy and economy. In their study, Nel et al. (2020) collaborated with Wan-Ifra in 2016
in 69 countries, showing a positive correlation between a country’s press freedom and the revenue generated by the media
from its readership base. However, entrepreneurial orientation is critical in creating a positive revenue impact.
e sense of urgency that sometimes accompanies academia’s view of innovation contrasts with the more leisurely view of
practitioners and managers. In some cases, media outlets still have healthy accounts, allowing them to wait and watch for
innovations from competitors and act accordingly (Lehtisaari; Grönlund, 2015). In other cases, the media should make minor
incremental improvements that allow them to slow the rate at which their revenues are falling (Villi et al., 2020).
Professionals suer from a lack of resources due to a decrease in revenue and a lack of vision (Heckman; Wihbey, 2019).
Journalists accept innovations but are suspicious of them as they may alter the essence of the profession (Meier; Bracker;
Verhovnik, 2017). In this sense, they tend to adapt innovations to traditional work (Nelson; Tandoc, 2019).
Several investigations that highlight the innovations incorporated into writing are reected in greater integration between
departments (Cestino; Berndt, 2017; Nelson; Tandoc, 2019) or multidisciplinary teams and multi-faceted proles (Zayani,
2021, García-Avilés; Carvajal Prieto; Arias Robles, 2018) or hybridisation of roles (Schmitz Weiss et al., 2020).
Academia observes the conditions that favour innovation and the relationship between innovation and higher revenue (Karimi;
Walter, 2016). e size of the environment favours innovation processes due to the possibility of dedicating more resources;
entrepreneurial culture favours innovation processes and is related to higher revenues. More innovation processes lead to
more prots. Although there is evidence to the contrary, there are times when innovation is benecial and could improve
reputation, but not protability (Vázquez-Herrero; Negreira-Rey; López-García, 2019).
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3.3. Audience’s behaviour/engagement
e main idea is that the media needs the audience to survive if they intend to monetise through advertising or subscriptions
(Belair-Gagnon; Nelson; Lewis, 2019; Nelson, 2019). Engagement is the key to transforming visitors into repeat visitors
and subscribers (Nelson; Tandoc, 2019). In any case, engagement existed before the internet and its metrics, such as civic
engagement (Ferrer-Conill; Tandoc, 2018). erefore, it is not a new aspiration for journalism.
Engagement has two interpretations that span the entire media spectrum. On the one hand, it is the salvation from nancial
bankruptcy for for-prot media (Belair-Gagnon; Nelson; Lewis, 2019). Publications can sell as many subscriptions and
advertisements as possible to a loyal audience (Lehtisaari et al., 2018). On the other hand, engagement is expected to save
journalism from losing its ability to set the political-social agenda and, above all, to secure its mission of informing the public
and monitoring power (Nelson, 2019).
Some media have tried to get closer to the audience to increase engagement, only to discover that it is not necessarily their
target audience. erefore the public and the audience’s view of the media’s positioning is decisive for the media’s future and
its business model (Belair-Gagnon; Nelson; Lewis, 2019).
Engagement case studies and literature reviews establish denitions of engagement in terms of levels, phases, and gradations
around the audience and their behaviour. e user moves between these levels depending on their political and civic
engagement. Nelson’s (2019) systematised review stands out with the two views on engagement: news-production oriented
–in which the audience creates content or proposes newsworthy material– and reception –oriented– which measures the
sharing of news on social networks or the time of consumption.
In this way, the engagement-audience binomial has continuity with the audience-metrics binomial. Audience metrics,
especially audience size metrics, are the metrics that determine the success or failure of a media outlet (Nelson, 2018). However,
no measure of engagement meets journalists’ and editors’ aspirational denition, who complain about not having the time or
the skills to understand audiences’ behaviour beyond the number of page views (Whitelaw, 2018). erefore, audience and
engagement-oriented media make decisions that are not entirely based on quantitative metrics (Ferrer-Conill; Tandoc, 2018).
ere is a consensus that managing solely based on the metrics available to professionals puts the social mission of journalism
at risk.
Measuring engagement is elusive, as Nelson states (2018). e author also states that the loss of engagement is not the
origin of the crisis; perhaps it is not the key to recovering from it. Given the impossibility of communicating engagement, its
measurement, and necessity clearly and quantitatively, the author concludes, “Perhaps in a few years, the term “audience
engagement” will vanish altogether and be replaced by a new journalistic pursuit.” (Nelson, 2018).
e second main objective of engagement research is to understand news consumption as a necessary but inadequate condition
for audience engagement. News is mainly consumed through social networks, where the user is more exposed to unreliable
news sources (Chen; Pain, 2019). e analysis of user behaviour on Facebook is the most frequent in studies. e engagement
capacity of digital native media is also compared with traditional audiovisual media (Dodds, 2017). e latter naturally have
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more suitable formats (video and audio); however, digital natives adapt better than legacy media to broadcasting in the new
media (Mañas-Viniegra; Sierra-Sánchez; López-Cepeda, 2019).
Facebook seems to have reached a certain degree of saturation along with Twitter in favour of Instagram and YouTube, which
are becoming more attractive as platforms for consuming news, and, consequently, have a greater capacity for engagement. is
capacity is analysed on YouTube according to the type of video (informative, home videos, journalistic). Despite not obtaining
as many views, journalistic videos receive a higher percentage of comments with a higher intention of civic engagement (Djerf-
Pierre; Lindgren; Budinski, 2019).
Despite the media’s eorts to be present where the audience is, audiences become loyal to the media’s Facebook page, not
to the media (Chen; Pain, 2019). As a result, media outlets are increasingly aware that online presence is not the solution to
their crisis of relevance. Page abandonment rates are high, and the increased content dissemination does not help generate
more interaction either (Mañas-Viniegra; Sierra-Sánchez; López-Cepeda, 2019). Still, the media can benet from social media
to attract a younger audience through soft news (Chen; Pain, 2019). e public’s participation and the dissemination and
assessment of news is social media’s essential contribution. Men and people with a lower socioeconomic status participate
most on social networks as they see it as a tool for self-empowerment (Ha et al., 2018).
On the other hand, researchers want to understand why news consumption motivates. Riskos et al. (2021) analyse the
motives and their impact on bringing about engagement. e results of the study show the engagement capacity of utility
and hedonism. Zeng, Dennstedt and Koller (2016) analyse the perception of User Generated Content on young people versus
professional journalistic content. Both contents are perceived as similarly necessary, but professional content is preferred if
the source is a media outlet.
Finally, the research addresses the organisational impact of engagement practices. Ferrer-Conill and Tandoc (2018) try to
understand how metrics aect decision-making and new proles. Social media publishers and analysts seem to focus more
on the short term. However, engagement editors take on a more strategic role and act as mediators between the previous
professionals- which emerged in marketing departments- and editors and journalists.
3.4. Brands as a generator of relevance
Some research focuses on a brand’s ability to gain visibility and engagement through its reputation (Victoria-Mas; Lacasa-Mas,
2015). Brand awareness, reputation, and the trust it generates (Evens; Van Damme, 2016) are related to the audience’s time
of exposure to it. Traditional media have privileged visibility, favouring them as an advertising media and allowing them to
attract audiences from print to digital. us, having a solid brand guarantees dierentiating themselves in a hypercompetitive
environment (Krebs et al., 2020) and winning over/retaining audiences and/or advertisers. Media brands are essential to the
decision to pay for content, as content has become a commodity in digital media (Vara-Miguel, 2020).
Visibility occurs in a hypercompetitive context for users’ attention, including journalistic and non-journalistic content (Krebs
et al., 2020). Visibility is measured through page views, the primary media’s main reference; Song; Kim, 2020). If the visits
that increase the page view count are what matters, it is understandable that professional practice maximises the media’s
presence without considering protability a priori (Pope, 2017). e media’s presence is sometimes maximised with low-
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quality content, which aims to win over audiences (Victoria-Mas; Lacasa-Mas, 2015), as they are unconscious of the risk of
losing relevance and discrediting the brand.
Traditional media must leverage their competitive advantage in visibility against the new digital players (Victoria-Mas; Lacasa-
Mas, 2015). Half of the searches are carried out with the brand name (Gundlach; Hofmann, 2020). Media do not have this
privileged position in countries with less democratic traditions and trust in institutions, where digital journalistic ventures are
perceived as independent from political and economic powers that control traditional media (Harlow, 2018).
Some research highlights that the brand is a predictor of the consumer’s behaviour to conceptualise its inuence (Arendt;
Northup; Camaj, 2019). e brand also acts as a predictor of the quality of the media. e perception of the brand’s quality
conditions the perceived quality of its contents (Krebs, 2017). erefore, the brand’s positioning is crucial to determining
the media strategy, for instance, it’s content policies. Dened based on the relative weight of each type of content, political
inclination and originality, Kim; Song; Kim (2020) analyse its impact on paywalls.
e analysis from the user’s point of view focuses on the evaluation of brands in terms of the benets they provide or Consumer
Based Brand Equity (CBBE). Bakshi and Mishra (2016) propose a model to analyse the dimensions that positively impact
CBBE, which can be summarised as credibility, entertainment, political unity, and location. In this list, entertainment and
place are the most important deciding factors for choosing a brand, followed by policy congruence and credibility (Bakshi;
Mishra, 2016).
However, in Victoria-Mas, Lacasa-Mas and Marimon’s (2018) analysis, reliability is the most relevant symbolic benet. In
Victoria-Mas and Lacasa-Mas’ (2015) case study of La Vanguardia, journalistic values are also not perceived as the most
important aspect, although the media base the value of their brands on these values: “In media outlets, the identity, the brand’s
mission and the necessary professional values for implementing this mission are contained in the editorial principles” (Nieto
Tamargo and Iglesias, 2000, cited in Victoria-Mas; Lacasa-Mas, 2015).
4. Discussion
e most signicant aspects of this study are highlighted below. e main themes are reasserted to link them to the discussion
of the results.
Impact on the business model
It is possible that advertisers and the media cannot nd a way to make advertising media relevant and eective; subscriptions
and memberships may be the only solution. e latter is the path indicated by academia and the most researched. However,
could the media replace advertising revenues with subscriptions? What volume of subscribers can the media aspire to? Would
the volume of subscribers as the only funding source allow the media to maintain their current organisation, or would they
have to adapt and/or resize? e impact of the disappearance of advertising as a source of revenue is a signicant research gap.
Innovation as an agent of digitalisation
Despite its holistic vocation, innovation focuses on formats, content and the journalistic product. Moreover, on how news
organisations adapt to these innovations. However, some media outlets seem to accept the digital distribution of that product
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to technological platforms and social networks, as Zayani’s study shows (2021). e distribution of the innovative product
(content and format), which generates its visibility and ndability (content and format), is barely analysed in the body of the
studied scientic production, giving rise to a new research gap.
Some recent studies, which undoubtedly contribute to the interpretation of innovation in journalism, focus mainly on or
exclusively on new formats (Salaverría, 2019); while this paper has focused on the key sustainability aspects, new formats can
contribute little, although there may undoubtedly be a relationship of mutual inuence that could again form part of future
lines of research.
Audience behaviour/engagement
ere is a divergence between academic views and professional practice. Academics tend to favour active participation in news
production, and practitioners tend to defend their role as gatekeepers, which they see as an essential part of the profession. It
is engagement to a certain extent.
Regarding audiences, a salient point in the results is the widespread sentiment that the media are losing some of their mass
audiences on the internet. Digitalisation opens the door to new audiences in countries that share a common language and are
not within reach of legacy logistical distribution. However, the analysed results show that expanding the audience with dierent
proles –young people, for example– is not so obvious, nor is it so obvious to compete with other products competing with
the media for the audience’s attention. In this sense, while there is research on the media’s competition with non-journalistic
content (Krebs et al., 2020), no analysis of competition within the sector itself has been found, despite the need to understand
the decision-making process that leads a user to pay or not –or several– of the media outlets they consult. We highlight the new
gap in research to cover.
e brand is a generator of relevance
e starting point for relevance considers two aspects: the brand’s reputation and visibility in the digital environment. e
articles analysed do not focus on these aspects, but they do show the importance of the brand in accessing the media through
brand searches (Gundlach; Hofmann, 2020), as a predictor of behaviour (Arendt; Northup; Camaj, 2019), in the perception of
quality (Krebs, 2017) or as a critical factor in the WTP (Evens; Van Damme, 2016). e perception of the journalistic product’s
quality connected with editorial independence as guarantors of the media’s reputation and relevance constitutes a research
gap.
Progress in dening relevance and engagement
Despite the problematic need in the case of engagement and the scarce research on relevance, we proposed a denition of
each concept on which the scoping review has been constructed. Since it is an abstract proposal, further research is required
to operationalise these concepts and determine future metrics.
–
Engagement as a multifaceted
phenomenon: engagement is understood as both a process and an outcome. It consists
of the set of actions carried out by the media to generate audience loyalty (process), to convert as many as they can into
members (outcome)
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–
Relevance as a dual concept: Relevance could be understood as the importance of the media outlet based on its reputation,
on the one hand, and its ability to inform consumers and the general public, which can be conceptualised as visibility. is
technical capacity is acquired by having the necessary resources at one’s disposal. Reputation, achieved over time and
perception of “good work”, is also a vital source of visibility for the media.
In addition to the aspects relevant to the signicant themes analysed in this systematic review, one concept cuts across all of
them: size and the constraints of an audience-based model, which we consider below.
Other work
On the other hand, we must refer to previous studies with common interests, as they allow us to collate the interpretation of
the results and corroborate the interest of future research.
Myllylahti (2020) proposes a conceptual framework of attention as the backbone of a media outlet’s business model in the
digital platform environment. is approach to engagement is similar to the concept of visibility that this article proposes as
a critical element.
García-Avilés ‘(2021) recent literature review depicts a pandemic context where they predict the end of the advertising-based
model and demonstrates the need to apply a holistic and longitudinal perspective to journalistic innovation research. It also
points to the importance of comparative studies for accessing learning from other contexts. Such analysis could be extended
to other comparable industries, such as content, without ruling out research on innovation in advertising formats that could
extend the life of such an essential source of revenue.
Finally, the study on visibility from Lopezosa et al. (2020) is a starting point for the search for methods to analyse media
visibility as a key to media sustainability.
Among the limitations, we have limited the analysis to scientic papers. It is a highly accredited procedure, but possibly a
study focusing on reports or the so-called grey literature could extend the results, which could be a subject of future research.
5. Conclusions
e conclusions of the study, which aim to answer the research questions proposed at the beginning of the scoping review,
are set out below:
–
How does academia analyse the impact of digitalisation on the advertising-based media business model?
–
How does academia analyse media’s experience with implementing innovation processes?
–
How does academia analyse changes in traditional media audiences and new audiences?
–
How does academia analyse the impact of brand reputation on media durability?
Regarding the rst research question, the researcher’s position is based on the need to nd an alternative to the business
model based solely on advertising. e new model must be digital and focused on an active and/or participative audience like
social networks. e media is forced to do everything possible to engage its audience.
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e main conclusion is that there is still no business model. e revenues from the digital version –advertising and digital
subscriptions– do not compensate for the losses from the print version, to the extent that closing the print edition would
be catastrophic for the traditional media. e sector is constantly experimenting with cost control, the organisation of
professionals, and the sources of revenue.
e search for digital audiences and the ability to immediately measure the impact of a news story has aected the quality
of the journalistic product. ere is a risk in editorial decisions driven by click-and-share metrics. Publishers try to balance
publications in the public interest and what works in terms of audience metrics.
Regarding the research question on journalistic innovation, researchers agree on a holistic perspective that, beyond technology,
considers the product, production process, formats and business models. Scholarly attention has mainly focused on analysing
innovative formats and content, unsuccessful in nding a winning formula.
e cultural factor is signicant when dealing with innovation. In this sense, innovation processes must impact the
organisational culture to achieve the progress they are looking for. It is also clear that traditional media are reluctant to
innovate. ere are diverse causes for this: some do not present results that force them to innovate urgently, and others do not
know how and/or do not have the means to do so. Academia equates this pro-innovation culture with the dominant startup
culture in the business world. It uses it as a reference to analyse innovation processes in journalistic ventures and traditional
media through corporate entrepreneurship.
Regarding the research question about audience changes, academia analyses their behaviour to understand and measure
their engagement. e scoping review concludes that there is a broad consensus on the diculty of dening engagement
unequivocally and measuring it.
In short, engagement is a
multifaceted
concept that applies from engagement as a click to civic participation or subscription.
Conceptually, academics and professionals agree on their aspirational view of engagement, which diers from a simple click
or like on social networks; however, academic research does not yet provide a metric that can replace the one that is currently
used by the sector, which revolves around the size of the audience and the media’s ability to attract trac from social media
or technological platforms. is metric is at the opposite end of the spectrum, from the aspirational future of the profession to
the engagement click-end.
Academia’s analysis of the brand impact on media durability is less concrete and more dispersed than in the three previous
research questions. e importance of loyalty above and trust concentrates the research around brand reputation. e
academy analyses the components of brand reputation and, on the other hand, their impact on the audience’s behaviour
.
In
this sense, they conclude that the media’s self-image does not coincide with the audience’s.
Moreover, the audience’s behaviour has utilitarian motivations that do not form part of the image that the media would like
to project. Users have tended to replicate their media consumption patterns in the digital environment, which has given a
notable advantage to traditional media due to their higher level of brand recognition than digital native media. e few studies
that focus strictly on the impact of brand reputation on media longevity indicate that traditional media are failing to capitalise
on the recognition advantage and, in some cases, may be damaging their reputation due to their digital strategy.
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Regarding the initial hypothesis that relevance and engagement are critical elements for media sustainability, relevance is
considered to be validated. However, it is (relatively) little analysed, even though the Internet environment is so dening of the
sustainability crisis (digital transformation) that it is essential, especially in its facet of visibility or ndability.
On the other hand, although it maintains its quality as a key element, engagement can be understood as a dependent variable,
as it is more of a consequence of relevance rather than a causal element. More engagement means more subscriptions/
memberships and higher advertising investment, but it is relevance- understood as reputation and ndability or visibility,
which brings about audience awareness and engagement.
6. Acknowledgements
is article has been translated into English by Sophie Phillips.
7. Specic contributions from each author
Name and Surname
Conception and design of the work Llúcia Castells-Fos, Carles Pont-Sorribes and Lluís Codina
Methodology
Llúcia Castells-Fos and Lluís Codina
Data collection and analysisLlúcia Castells-Fos
Discussion and ConclusionsLlúcia Castells-Fos and Lluís Codina
Drafting, formatting, version review and approvalLlúcia Castells-Fos, Carles Pont-Sorribes and Lluís Codina
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