Audience Research Methods: A Resource Pack

"Actionable research findings are essential in realising strategic aims. Research in isolation may be interesting, but audience research that is aligned with organisational aims has utility and the potential for real-world impact."

This resource pack offers guidance on audience research methods that can help media outlets better understand their audience's needs and preferences when consuming media. It is designed to help publishers and editorial teams, especially those of small media outlets, make informed decisions about which approaches can provide the most relevant information to their research questions. The guide forms part of the International Media Support (IMS)'s capacity-building efforts for the Local Media for Democracy project, which supported 42 small media outlets and groups of journalists in 17 European Union (EU) countries. It focuses, in particular, on more qualitative research methods (as opposed to digital methods) that provide in-depth and nuanced knowledge about an audience but often require specialised skills and significant resources.

As IMS explains, "Knowing and understanding audiences are the bedrock of success and sustainability of any media outlet; these processes inform and determine both editorial policies and business models. Today's publishers have a wide range of technologies and research methods at their disposal, but choosing the right approach that fits time, resources and the marketplace can be a challenge. No matter how fundamental the need, local languages and fragile political environments can majorly impact the way audience research is conducted in the environments where IMS works. Moreover, markets, audience preferences, needs and opinions, operating conditions and demographics, as well as organisational capacity and strategies, shift and evolve over time."
  
The resource pack introduces the essential components of seven methods, with each accompanied by a short introduction, a description of how it operates, and its advantages and limitations. The guide also includes working examples and case studies that demonstrate how these approaches are used in practice, as well as links to further resources. The methods are as follows:
 

• Online surveys - These reader surveys can collect data on broad content preferences and audience demographic data, create insights into new product development, and help media outlets better understand what value existing users take from an editorial product.
• A/B testing - This process allows publishers to test variations of content and how they perform with their audiences. It focuses, for example, on understanding how layout and design, language choice, tone, style, length, and calls to action appeal (or not) to users.
• 1-2-1 interviews - This long-held approach within product design and marketing, sometimes called user or empathy interviews, gauges an individual's thoughts and feelings on a product.
• Focus groups - These groups allow for a collective discussion of key themes and areas, involving audiences and potential audiences and other key stakeholders.
• Personas - Although not a research tool in their own right, personas are used in multiple sectors by product teams to better understand their priority audience. Using research data - generated through methods mentioned elsewhere within the guide - personas are developed that can assist with both "imagining" user needs and generating editorial or commercial responses to them.
• Observations - Simply watching people interact with digital products in person or via analytic/eye tracking software can offer a range of data on usability and content effectiveness.
• Design sprints - This quick method is designed to bring people together around a central problem or challenge, integrate research data and expert testimony, and generate a range of ideas, develop them, create low-fidelity prototypes of them, and test them. 
• Co-creation and participatory design - This method places individuals and communities at the heart of innovation to help create new products, services, editorial content, and revenue capture. It invites audiences, users, clients, or stakeholders to become part of the ideas process, feeding their knowledge, experience, insights, skills, and perceptions of a media organisation and/or brand into the innovation process.
• Triangulation - This approach brings together a range of methods that allow outlets to transform audience research into a regular and integral part of operations rather than an ad hoc activity.