The Social Life of Metrics: The Production, Interpretation, and Use of Data Analytics in Online Journalism

This dissertation explores the social dimensions and implications of new forms of quantification in creative work by examining the production, interpretation, and use of analytics in news. Networked tracking technologies have facilitated the collection of extensive quantitative data about readers' behavior on online news sites. How do these analytics interact with journalists' established ways of knowing, judging, evaluating, and predicting? How do they affect distributions of power, autonomy and authority in workplaces? How might they shape -- and be shaped by -- existing journalistic norms and values? The dissertation analyzes the production of metrics at Chartbeat, a leading web analytics company, and the consumption of metrics at The New York Times and at Gawker Media, a network of popular blogs. While it is often assumed that quantitative analytics will have a rationalizing effect on organizations by facilitating systematic and standardized means-end decision-making, I argue that the role of metrics in creative work settings is actually more complex. News analytics tools are designed to have powerful experiential dimensions, some of which deliberately foster a sense of irrational enchantment in order to elicit particular emotions in users. Within media organizations, metrics were accepted or rejected not primarily according to their utility for making editorial decisions, but rather to their degree of usefulness as management tools. The dissertation articulates and analyzes four thematic threads -- the experiential dimensions of analytics; the interpretation of metrics and how a form of commensuration comes to be perceived as legitimate or illegitimate; the ways metrics are mobilized to serve managerial aims in organizations; and the interactions between metrics and professional expertise and judgment -- that can provide a road map to guide future inquiries into the social life of contemporary analytics in creative fields.