Audience commodity in digital media: An evaluation on news websites

The subject of this study is the questioning of the concept of commodification of the audience within the framework of internet journalism. In this study, it is aimed to analyze how the general structure and content of news sites are shaped by the production of audience meta. Accordingly, the contents of news sites selected from Turkey were evaluated within the framework of the commodification of users in connection with advertisements. The study was built with a qualitative research design and document analysis technique was used. In this context, the advertisements and news published on the websites; hurriyet.com.tr, mynet.com, sozcu.com.tr, haberler.com, milliyet.com.tr, sondakika.com were examined. Thus, it has been concluded that news sites commodify users through the content they produce. In this sense, it has been determined that users generate added value for both news sites and companies such as Google. It has been found that clickbait news (77.83%), search engine news (23.30%) and photo gallery news (6.81%) are the leading applications carried out to commodify users. In addition, it was observed that the rate of magazine and sports news (48.11%) and the rate of agenda news (51.87%) were very close to each other. In this context, it has been determined that the commodification of users significantly affects the news writing practices and the distribution of news genres. Keywords: Critical political economy approach, Audience meta, News sites, Advertising, Document analysis method.