Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Audience research
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Audience research
A shared understanding of our audiences
In October 2016, we began working on a long-term audience research project to better understand the Wikimedia Foundation’s current perception of our audiences, and its current approach to audience development, so that we can then identify gaps in the Wikimedia Foundation’s understanding of audiences that prevent the Foundation from achieving its mission. This page includes information on the process, everything we’ve learned so far, and how to stay up to date.
What we’re doing
We want to develop an integrated, holistic view of our ecosystem of audiences, which include end users, intermediaries, and movement audiences in order to better serve all of these users. We want to organize our understanding based on user experience (rather than based on organizational structure.)
This will help us set foundation-wide strategy that aligns programmatic and product strategy. It will also help us prioritize our activities and allocate limited resources to have the greatest impact.
Objectives
- Provide a common framework and language for thinking about our audiences
- Identify gaps in audience understanding and opportunities for further research
- Conduct generative research on priority audience segments
- Apply audience insights to product strategy and development
In the short-term, our priority is to provide actionable insights to the product organization. Ultimately, we hope this framework will help the entire organization in our audience-facing work.
Findings
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Current understanding of audiences -
Audience stakeholder framework
