Chancen und Herausforderungen der redaktionellen Umsetzung von Audience Engagement – eine Fallstudie am Beispiel des Projektes #unserWasser

In the face of an increasingly fragmented audience relationship, news outlets have to find new ways of strengthening the bond with their recipients. One strategy oftentimes discussed in this context is audience engagement. By conducting a case study, we examine the opportunities and challenges of the editorial implementation of audience engagement on the basis of a participatory audience engagement project of a public broadcasting service. In our qualitative analysis, several chances resulting of the use of audience engagement emerge: building legitimacy, gaining relevance, representation, new funding opportunities as well as trust- and relationship-building. However, at the same time, a number of challenges arises that need to be taken into account when planning and implementing such projects: the high organizational and coordination efforts, editorial commitment, selection of topics and formats, expectation management, and ethical and data protection aspects can be described as success factors for the implementation of audience engagement projects. Based on our results, we can derive various implications for the implementation of audience engagement projects: As a main result, we conclude that the institutionalization of audience engagement in the news rooms will be particularly central. The results offer a variety of starting points for both research and journalistic practice.