A group of researchers at the University of Oslo have interviewed 37 Norwegian media executives about their motivations for experimenting with different kinds of audience participation (allowing comments on news articles, reader forums, text messages published during TV debates, among others). These are the top 10 reasons, according to forskning.no:

1. Audience loyalty

2. New revenue streams

3. Innovation

4. Building the brand

5. Access to more sources

6. Immediate response

7. Political legitimation

8. Round the clock service

9. Democratization

10. Meeting need to participate

19 out of 37 respondents put “building loyalty” on top of the list. 31 of 37 had this as one of the top three. The researchers are not certain if the strategy of building loyalty through participation will work. But is there an alternative? I think the quality of the participation will be important decisive. Of course, participation can be achieved or channeled in many ways. It doesn’t even have to happen online. At in-depth magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly or Mandag Morgen, an important “interactive” element is talks/conferences/meet-ups. At Mandag Morgen that works exceptionally well.

By the way, the interviews mainly took place in 2005. It would have been nice to link to the original material, but it’s not online on the research project’s website… Just another piece of invisible knowledge?