受众难驯?——中国数字新闻业的受众建构与算法公众想象

An Untamable Audience?—Audience Construction and the Algorithmic Public Imagination in Chinese Digital Journalism

数字时代的新闻用户以前所未有的强势姿态进入新闻产消流程,挑战着传统的受众观念。新闻人和新闻机构投入种种意在“驯服”受众的话语和社会实践,试图将其纳入新闻业的整体想象和运作。本文聚焦当代中国新闻业的受众建构,勾勒其间浮现的算法公众想象,借此理解数字转型中的新闻业如何通过想象受众来重塑自身。通过对不同主体在机构/行业转型和算法批判等场景下生产的受众话语的分析发现,主流媒体借助算法公众来标举其转型成就和意识形态的主导地位,而资讯门户和聚合平台则通过想象算法公众来把握技术革新和新闻传统之间的平衡。

In the digital age,media users enter news production and consumption processes with unprecedented force,challenging traditional notions of audience.Journalists and news organizations strive to"tame"the audiences to incorporate them into journalism's overall imagination and operation.This article focuses on audience construction to understand how Chinese digital journalism reconfigures itself by imagining the algorithmic public.The textual analysis of the audience discourse reveals that,for mainstream media,algorithmic publics mark their transformation achievements and ideological dominance.At the same time,information portals and aggregation platforms mobilize the imagined audience to maintain a balance between technological innovations and journalism traditions.