From Passive to Active: The Role of Social Media Metrics in Transforming Audience Engagement Vis-à-vis Newsrooms

Abstract

The paper is aimed at understanding the changing dynamics of the newsrooms with the availability of  the real-time data of the audiences’ choices and preferences. It also explores how audiences are  increasingly becoming an important stakeholder in the process of news selection. It also analyses the  transformation of the ‘passive’ audience of the news media to the ‘active’ audiences who actively   engage with the news content through the options provided by social networking sites such as share,  comment, like, retweet or post. This new intervention and active engagement by the audience has an  impact on the editorial autonomy in the newsroom. These changes will also impact the gatekeeping  idea of journalism with the editor and senior editors had full autonomy of choosing the content and  may also affect the social responsibility of the media in a democracy. The paper tries to analyse the  changing structure of the Indian newsrooms and how it impacts the media at a macro level.