Challenging the Citizen-Consumer Journalistic Dichotomy: A News Content Analysis of Audience Approaches in Chile

Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer-citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news (N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis that audience approaches in journalism are best represented by a three-factor solution: the infotainment, the service, and the civic models. The data also show that approaching the audience as consumer or as citizen are not two poles of one continuum, and that approaching the audience under a consumer-orientation consists of two approaches: providing service and providing entertainment.