Summary of findings on emotional work among Finnish journalism professionals on audience metrics as a disruptive innovation
| Register of emotions | Key relations, dimensions, and objects in the emotional work | The relationship between emotional work and managing disruption and innovation |
|---|---|---|
| Relief, contentment, and confidence | Emotional work in this register deals with differences internal to the news organisations, mainly in the past, when metrics prompted both hype and resistance. Alleviation arises via the routinisation of metrics and agreement within the present work culture on the algorithmic audience as a feasible conception of audiences. | Emotional work as alleviation: The early days of disruption caused by metrics were intense and focused on click-baiting, but this is interpreted as over. Currently, subscription metrics support a sense of control over the audience. However, managing the disruption with the aid of subscription metrics has made business thinking a part of the everyday routines of individual journalists. |
| Excitement, curiosity, and motivation | Emotional work in this register aids in seeing metrics as a technological tool that has a legitimate and beneficial role for the future of journalism. Inspiration here relates to the view that metrics can increase newsrooms’ capabilities, both journalistically and technologically. | Emotional work as stimulation: Managing the fast disruption–innovation cycle requires encouragement for constant learning. The technical competencies needed for surviving future disruption demand scale, speed, and predictive use of data-processing, but these must be relevant also for improving core journalistic capabilities related to newswriting. |
| Stress, worry, and irritation | Emotions are deployed to manage the present contradictions related to internal and external power hierarchies, along with a sense of reduced self-determination. The emotional work focuses on the problem of how to marry autonomy (a fundamental professional value of journalism) with data-driven metrics-based thinking. | Emotional work as balancing: Dealing with disruption and innovation is an ongoing acute issue in newsrooms and requires resources and balancing from the organisations’ leaders. A sense of competition frames how newsrooms are run, and a truly sustainable way of practising data-led management in journalism is yet to be found. |