Blackwell Reference Online

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The news audience is the sub-group of the general media →  audience that is exposed to →  Newspapers , news magazines , →  television news , →  radio news , or online news (→  Internet News ). Analyses of news audiences usually deal with their size and their structure. This can be done on the micro-level (audiences of particular newspapers, news broadcasts, etc.) or on the macro-level (audiences of news in general). On the micro-level, looking at the distribution of particular newspapers or the ratings of particular news broadcasts is especially important for commercial reasons. Just as in the case of any other magazine or television program, potential advertisers like to know where to place their ads in order to attract their intended audience (→  Audience Research ). On the macro-level, dealing with news audiences in general is especially important for democratic reasons. Because in democracies citizens are expected to keep informed about political life, it is important to know whether they really do so and which kinds of media they use for that purpose. In this case, for example, the size and structure of news audiences in different parts of the world or trends in news consumption can be analyzed. Although there are several academic studies on news audiences, data on the micro-level typically comes from commercial organizations like Nielsen Media Research (→  Nielsen Ratings ... log in or subscribe to read full text