Associate Professor Jake Nelson Publishes New Research on How Journalists Imagine Platforms and Audiences
Dr. Jake Nelson
Associate Professor Jake Nelson has published new research examining how journalists understand the evolving role of social media platforms and how they imagine the audiences who use them. His new article, “Aspirational Metajournalism: What Nieman Journalism Lab Predictions Reveal About Platform and Audience Imaginaries,” appears in Digital Journalism and is co-authored with Gregory P. Perreault, Associate Professor at the University of South Florida.
The article is accompanied by a public-facing piece in Nieman Lab, “Journalists are souring on social media platforms, an analysis of 11 years of Nieman Lab predictions suggests.” Drawing on more than a decade of annual prediction essays published by the US journalism trade press Nieman Lab, Nelson and Perreault analyzed how journalists have expressed hopes, concerns, and expectations about social media platforms and the public over time. By drawing on this unique dataset, their study traces how those perceptions have shifted as social media’s risks—including misinformation and hostility toward journalists—have become more acute.
Drawing on more than a decade of Nieman Lab’s annual prediction essays, Nelson and Perreault mapped how journalists’ perceptions of social platforms and audiences have shifted over time. Their analysis shows a clear trend: while confidence in social media has steadily declined, driven by concerns about misinformation, hostility, and unmet expectations, journalists’ belief in the value of their audiences has remained strong.
The authors argue that despite growing ambivalence toward platforms, journalists continue to imagine the public in optimistic terms. Even as faith in major social platforms has eroded, the authors found that journalists’ trust in the public has remained steady. This key conclusion is reflected in the article’s central argument: that despite technological disruption and persistent challenges, journalists continue to hold a fundamentally optimistic view of their audiences.
The companion Nieman Lab piece offers a more accessible walkthrough of the study’s patterns, highlighting how the tone of annual predictions has shifted over 11 years. It emphasizes that while journalists have grown weary of platform dynamics, their hopes for meaningful connection with audiences have not diminished.
Together, these pieces contribute to ongoing conversations about the future of news, digital engagement, and journalist-audience relationships. Nelson’s work continues to illuminate how journalists understand the people they serve and how those understandings shape the profession’s response to a rapidly changing media landscape.
Professor Nelson’s broader research explores the relationship between journalism and the public, with particular attention to trust, audience perceptions, and the evolving dynamics of news production. This latest scholarship adds important context to the changing role of platforms and the ways journalists are reimagining how to reach and maintain audiences.