An Intersectional Approach to Exploring Audience Expectations of Journalism

Bibliographic Data

ID7496625
AuthorsSandra Banjac (0000-0001-5860-1675, University of Groningen, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume10
Issue1
Pages128-147
Publication date2021-10-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDigital Journalism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2167-0811 • E-ISSN: 2167-082X
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21670811.2021.1973527
OpenAlexW3206210356
LanguageEN
Citations received38
References cited66

Audience expectations of journalism reveal how well journalism is performing its role in society in the minds of its consumers. In an increasingly fragmented media and audience landscape, it has become more important to consider how social identity shapes audience expectations. However, scholarship has tended to examine expectations based on single identity categories (e.g., class or gender), revealing a crucial but disassembled understanding of how audiences perceive the journalism they consume. This study relies on an intersectional framework and eight focus groups to examine how class, race, and gender, as intersecting and mutually constitutive modes of power/oppression, shape audiences’ expectations of journalism in South Africa. It identifies intersectional differences in audiences’ expectations of solutions journalism, perceptions of journalism’s unaffordability and inaccessibility, and normative evaluations of quality and popular journalism that reveal classist and racist discourses of distinction and stereotyping. The study demonstrates the importance of intersectionality as a critical framework for studying audience expectations and the extent to which they are in/excluded and rendered (in)visible to journalism’s dominant ideology

Aesthetics · Identity (music · Ideology · Intersectionality · Journalism · Mainstream · Media studies · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Technical Journalism · Gender Diversity and Inequality · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Media Studies and Communication · Gender Studies · Law