Effective Policymaking Process of Media Organizations to Attract Audience

Objective
Communication is the most important factor affecting the knowledge and understanding of the members of a society about surrounding events, and the media and social networks are the most important sources of information for the members of a society. The media has various effects and is the most important tool for people to get information and to know about the surrounding conditions. It has a high penetration and impact factor. Media interventions are defined as organized and targeted activities that use different media channels to inform, persuade or motivate the population. Owners of mass media, including visual and digital media as well as any kind of other media are effective in the field of cultural and value advertising with their advertising model. For this reason, attracting audience based on the media is an important issue in the future of every country, nation and organization, and considering that the penetration rate of western social media is increasing day by day, there is a need for effective policy making by organizations. In order to attract the audience, media is a very important and fundamental issue, and in this regard, the present study was aimed to assess the efficient policy making process of media organizations in order to attract the audience.
 
 
Research Methodology
This is a mixed exploratory study. Grounded theory method was used in order to identify the main themes that influence the efficient policy making process of media organizations aiming to attract the audience. In the next part, based on the structural equation model, the effect and relationships were analyzed. For the qualitative section, the study population included the experts in the field of media, university informants, and people working in this field. They were selected according to their expertise, teaching and work experience. We reached the saturation after 12 interviews. In the quantitative section, 385 subjects were selected based on Cochran's formula using available sampling method. The validity of the qualitative section was confirmed with the Kappa coefficient, and for the quantitative section, the psychometric properties were confirmed using a researcher-made instrument.
Findings
The findings showed  that 11 criteria of attractiveness, diversity, goal-setting, multi-dimensionality, interaction with virtual networks, quality improvement, news honesty, criticality, transparency, responsibility and respect for the audience based on 46 indicators were the most important causal factors affecting the media policy making. The issue of diversity and quality improvement is a category that is related to the effective policy of media organizations in attracting the audience, and this issue was chosen as the central category.
Regarding the foundational factors, 5 main criteria of organizational culture, media infrastructure, correct advertising, organizational management and justice were effective in attracting the audience based on 18 indicators of organizational beliefs, organizational discipline, organizational relations, organizational values, equipment, facilities, being up-to-date, being progressive, executive aspects, mouth to mouth, social networks, structural aspect, process, crisis management, job justice, organizational justice, and executive justice. In the field of mediating factors, 3 criteria of macro-executive policies, laws and macro-supports  were important in attracting the audience based on 10 indicators of strategic policy, audience increasing, valuation, executive, structural, organizational,  and budget policies, bureaucracy, coordination, and meeting unpredictable needs.
In the field of strategies, 4 criteria of cost-effectiveness, meeting needs, increasing the audience, and increasing quality were recognized important in attracting the audience based on 13 indicators of the cost of providing the program, the cost of staff, the cost of equipment, the cost of updating, audience-oriented policy, responding to needs, goal-orientation, constancy, flowing, loyalty, executive, content, and structural vision.  In the field of outcomes formed based on the strategies, 5 criteria of competition with other media, importance increase, orientation towards the media, profitability, and attractiveness were effective in attracting the audience based on 15 indicators of attractiveness, diversity, audience, value, reputation, branding, synchronization with the media, compliance with the media, interest in the media, programs, advertisements, sponsors, visual, cognitive, and situational aspects.
In the quantitative part that was designed based on the qualitative section, considering that the significance coefficient was higher than 1.96 in all dimensions, it can be concluded that the components identified in the qualitative section have a significant effect on the efficient policy making of media organizations in order to attract the audience. In addition, causal, mediating and contextual factors had the greatest impact respectively. To sum up, findings indicated that the use of quality improvement and making the field more attractive increases the costs, which is due to the increase in quantitative and qualitative production in this field, but this change meets the needs, increases the audience, and improves the quality resulting in formation of competition with other media, increase in importance, tendency to media, profitability, and attractiveness.
Discussion & Conclusion
Although the qualitative and quantitative improvement is costly and time-consuming and requires more personnel and supplying equipment, correct policy in this field is an important factor contributing to increasing commercial and financial profitability and attracting the audience. From an economic point of view, increasing the value of advertising is a great help for the media.  The power of the audience makes the media brand authentic and clear, and most importantly, it gives the media owners the ability to create culture and beliefs based on their emphasized values, which is the most important issue when it comes to development and long-term perspectives. In the end, it is suggested that the current research should be investigated in two parts of the national visual, audio and social media to determine the importance coefficients of each of the indicators according to the type of media.