Christopher Anderson

Bio: Christopher Anderson is an academic researcher from University of Leeds. The author has contributed to research in topics: Journalism & Medicine. The author has an hindex of 21, co-authored 59 publications receiving 2158 citations. Previous affiliations of Christopher Anderson include College of Staten Island & City University of New York.

Between creative and quantified audiences: Web metrics and changing patterns of newswork in local US newsrooms

Abstract: How are transformations in newswork intersecting with changes in the monitoring of reader behavior and new technologies of audience measurement? How, in short, are journalistic ‘visions of the audience’ shifting in the online era, and how are they enabling particular editorial practices? This article explores a provocative tension between the now common rhetorical invocation of the news audience as a ‘productive and generative’ entity, and the simultaneous, increasingly common institutional reduction of the audience to a quantifiable, rationalizable, largely consumptive aggregate. The first half of article reviews the literature on the relationship between audience understanding and newsroom practices. The second half of the article is comprised of an ethnographic analysis of the manner by which increasingly prominent and widespread techniques of audience measurement and quantification interact with the newsroom rhetoric of the active, generative audience. The article concludes with some thoughts regardin...

Towards a sociology of computational and algorithmic journalism

Abstract: This article advances a sociological approach to computational journalism. By “computational journalism” the article refers to the increasingly ubiquitous forms of algorithmic, social scientific, and mathematical forms of newswork adopted by many 21st-century newsrooms and touted by many educational institutions as “the future of news.” By “sociological approach,” the article endorses a research model that brackets, at least temporarily, many of the current industry concerns with the practical usability of newsroom analysis. The bulk of the article outlines a series of six lenses through which such an approach to computational journalism might be carried out. Four of these lenses are drawn from Schudson’s classic typology of the sociology of news—economic, political, cultural, and organizational approaches. In addition, the author adds Bordieuean field approaches and technological lenses to the mix. In each instance, the author discusses how particular approaches might need to be modified in order to stud...

Post-Industrial Journalism: Adapting to the Present

Abstract: Introduction: The Transformation of American Journalism Is UnavoidableThis paper is part survey and part manifesto, one that concerns itself with the practice of journalism and the practices of journalists in the United States. It is not, however, about "the future of the news industry," both because much of that future is already here and because there is no such thing as the news industry anymore.There used to be one, held together by the usual things that hold an industry together: similarity of methods among a relatively small and coherent group of businesses, and an inability for anyone outside that group to produce a competitive product. Those conditions no longer hold true.If you wanted to sum up the past decade of the news ecosystem in a single phrase, it might be this: Everybody suddenly got a lot more freedom. The newsmakers, the advertisers, the startups, and, especially, the people formerly known as the audience have all been given new freedom to communicate, narrowly and broadly, outside the old strictures of the broadcast and publishing models. The past 15 years have seen an explosion of new tools and techniques, and, more importantly, new assumptions and expectations, and these changes have wrecked the old clarity.There's no way to look at organizations as various as the Texas Tribune, SCOTUSblog and Front Porch Forum or such platforms as Facebook, YouTube and Storify and see anything like coherence. There's no way to look at new experiments in nonprofit journalism like Andy Carvin's work at NPR during the Arab Spring and convince yourself that journalism is securely in the hands of for-profit businesses. And there's no way to look at experiments in funding journalism via Kickstarter, or the coverage of protest movements via mobile phone, and convince yourself that making information public can be done only by professionals and institutions.Many of the changes talked about in the last decade as part of the future landscape of journalism have already taken place; much of journalism's imagined future is now its lived-in present. (As William Gibson noted long ago, "The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed.") Our goal is to write about what has already happened and what is happening today, and what we can learn from it, rather than engaging in much speculation.The effect of the current changes in the news ecosystem has already been a reduction in the quality of news in the United States. On present evidence, we are convinced that journalism in this country will get worse before it gets better, and, in some places (principally midsize and small cities with no daily paper) it will get markedly worse. Our hope is to limit the scope, depth and duration of that decay by pointing to ways to create useful journalism using tools, techniques and assumptions that weren't even possible 10 years ago.We also highlight the ways new possibilities for journalism require new forms of organization. Traditional news organizations have tended to conserve both working methods and hierarchy, even as the old business models are collapsing, and even when new opportunities do not fit in those old patterns. In interview after interview with digitally focused members of the traditional press, the theme of being thwarted by process came up. Adapting to a world where the people formerly known as the audience are not readers and viewers but users and publishers will mean changing not just tactics but also self-conception. Merely bolting on a few new techniques will not be enough to adapt to the changing ecosystem; taking advantage of access to individuals, crowds and machines will mean changing organizational structure as well. (We recognize that many existing organizations will regard these recommendations as anathema.)This paper is written for multiple audiences - traditional news organizations interested in adapting as well as new entrants (whether individual journalists, news startups or organizations not previously part of the journalistic ecosystem) - and those organizations and entities that affect the news ecosystem, particularly governments and journalism schools, but also businesses and nonprofits. …

Objectivity, Professionalism, and Truth Seeking in Journalism

Abstract: The fi eld of journalism studies and the subfi eld of sociology that examines professionalization and professional systems-the sociology of the professions-have coexisted in a state of mutual indifference for decades. Few of the classic professional studies in the sociology of professions hazard even a guess as to journalism’s professional status, preferring for the most part to focus on the traditional professions of medicine and law (see, for example, Bledstein, 1976; Dingwall & Lewis, 1983; Freidson, 1970; Haskell, 1984); most studies of journalistic professionalism, on the other hand, forego engagement with the bulk of the sociological literature on professional occupations and systems. (For a rare exception, see Tumber & Prentoulis, 2005.) At a time when many of the most important scholarly questions about journalism revolve around issues of the occupation’s power, authority, and professional status, there is much to be gained, it would seem, from revisiting questions of journalism and professionalization from an explicitly sociological angle-articulating a deeper understanding of journalism’s troubled professional project, the relationship between the objectivity norm and that project, and the manner in which journalists attempt to forge a journalistic jurisdiction out of the link between their everyday work and their heavily qualifi ed claim to possess a form of professionalized knowledge.

Deliberative, Agonistic, and Algorithmic Audiences: Journalism's Vision of its Public in an Age of Audience Transparency

Abstract: Building on earlier empirical work in newsrooms, this paper contends that a fundamental transformation has occurred in journalists’ understanding of their audiences. A new level of responsiveness to the agenda of the audience is becoming built into the DNA of contemporary news work. This article argues, however, that this journalistic responsiveness to the “agenda of the audience” has multiple, often contradictory meanings. It traces these out through a critical-historical sketch of key moments in the journalism-audience relationship, including the public journalism movement, Independent Media Center (Indymedia), and Demand Media. These different visions of the audience are correlated to different images of democracy, and they have different sociological implications. The public journalism movement believed in a form of democracy that was conversational and deliberative; in contrast, traditional journalism embraced an aggregative understanding of democracy, while Indymedia's democratic vision could best be seen as agonistic in nature. Demand Media and similar ventures, this article concludes, may be presaging an image of public that can best be described as algorithmic. Understanding this algorithmic conception of the audience may be the first step into launching a broader inquiry into the sociology and politics of algorithms.

What About Us

Abstract: Established in 2006, TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited operates as the nodal point for Tata businesses in West Africa. TATA Africa Services (Nigeria) Limited has a strong presence in Nigeria with investments exceeding USD 10 million. The company was established in Lagos, Nigeria as a subsidiary of TATA Africa Holdings (SA) (Pty) Limited, South Africa and serves as the hub of Tata’s operations in Nigeria and the rest of West Africa.