par Malcorps, Sylvain
Référence European Media Management Conference 2018 – Media management in the age of big data and high-tech (Juin 2018)
Publication Non publié, 2018-06-14
Communication à un colloque
Résumé : this paper investigates how the marketers and the online journalists of the Belgian publishing company Mediafin anticipate the implementation of a news personalisation technology on the website. In the context of an action-research project lead in this company from november 2015 about the use of audience related data between the online newsroom and the marketing department, recent discussions on the future of the company’s websites have addressed the question of personalisation. Ethnographic material (observation sessions, focus groups and interviews with marketers and online journalists) gathered in the company show that both the professional groups perceive this potentiality as a positive evolution. Online journalists see it as a way to offer a better service to their readers and the marketers as a new tool in their subscribers retention strategies. But at the same time, this perspective rises debates about the tasks, the missions, the autonomy of each of them: while journalists plan to keep a certain control on the degree of personalisation, marketers want to limit the journalists’ access to informations about the audience. These results will be further investigated during other observation sessions and interviews with members of both of the professional groups. The paper will put these elements in perspective with the “organizational culture” (Bantz, 1985) of the company, the editorial policy focusing on economic and financial news reports and the online business model increasingly based on paying subscribers (Malcorps, 2017).

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