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Journalismusforschung als Integrationsdisziplin zu beschreiben, entbehrt in mancherlei Hinsicht nicht einer gewissen Ironie. Historisch betrachtet bildete die Journalismusforschung die Keimzelle einer Zeitungswissenschaft, aus der sich spater die Publizistik- und eine moderne Kommunikationswissenschaft entwickelt hat. Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Funktionen und Leistungen von Journalismus, den Charakteristika von Journalisten, den durch sie produzierten publizistischen Inhalten und – beginnend in den 1940er Jahren – die Wirkungen journalistischer Inhalte auf das Publikum standen im Kern einer Auseinandersetzung, die ihre Wurzeln in verschiedenen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen hatte: insbesondere in der Soziologie, Psychologie und Politikwissenschaft.

The concluding chapter offers a discussion of major challenges to comparative communication research, as well as their conceptual, epistemological, methodological and practical implications. Among the conceptual challenges is the centrality of theory and danger of Western bias, while epistemological challenges are discussed with reference to the threat of theoretical universalism and transnational diffusion. Methodological challenges include the potential presence of autocorrelation, the multilevel structure of communication phenomena, problems of systematic case selection, functional equivalence, as well as the trade-off between qualitative and quantitative approaches. The chapter concludes with offering directions for future research.

Comparative research requires extensive resources in terms of time, manpower, funding, and infrastructure. While collaboration is certainly a key to solving many problems related to mostly scarce resources in academic research, there are also many substantial reasons why collaboration makes a Iot of sense. One of these is that the collective cultural expertise of a collaborative research network can never be achieved by a single researcher. Hence, the question is not whether or not collaborative research is worthwhile but how to organize and manage it effectively. The chapter discusses various models of collaboration with regard to their advantages and disadvantages.

This introductory chapter takes stock of the differential state of comparative communication research and comes to the conclusion that has it made remarkable progress across the field. The chapter argues that the comparative approach provides a valuable tool for advancing our understanding of communication processes, and that it opens up new avenues of systematic research. It first provides a rationale for why we need comparative work and then moves on to discuss conventional and new definitions of comparative research. After tracing historical developments, the chapter elaborates on common theoretical and methodological approaches, discusses objects of comparative analyses and outlines the structure of the book.

Der international vergleichende Ansatz ist in der Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft lange vernachlassigt worden, wahrend er sich in den Nachbardisziplinen Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie und Psychologie deutlich fruher etablierte. Die Grunde fur dieses Defizit liegen zum einen darin, dass die Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft eine junge Disziplin ist. Zum anderen uberwog bei vielen Forschern lange die Einstellung, dass Journalisten, Medienorganisationen, Nachrichteninhalte und Publikumspraferenzen so eng an nationale, kulturelle und sprachliche Wurzeln geknupft seien, dass man sie am besten historisch oder gegenstandsorientiert erklart. Erst in jungerer Zeit zeichnet sich eine starker international vergleichende Orientierung im Fach ab. Erkenntnisfortschritt und Forscherenthusiasmus nehmen rasch zu; Zweifel uber die Vorteile und das Erkenntnispotential des komparativen Ansatzes sind ausgeraumt. Die Grundervater Michael Gurevitch und Jay Blumler, die die Entwicklung seit den Anfangen mit pragten, sehen Anzeichen fur die Herausbildung eines „eigenstandigen, reifen Forschungsfeldes“ (Gurevitch & Blumler 2003, 371).

This Handbook charts the growing area of journalism studies, exploring the current state of theory and setting an agenda for future research in an international context. The volume is structured around theoretical and empirical approaches, and covers scholarship on news production and organizations; news content; journalism and society; and journalism in a global context.

Most wars were not brought to our attention if there were no journalists to report on them and no news media to send reporters to conflict spots. At the same time, the media often give priority to conflict and war at the expense of playing a positive role in attempts to bring about peace. The concept of peace journalism is, therefore, seen as an alternative model to traditional ways of war reporting. This article argues, however, that the idea of peace journalism comes as old wine in new bottles. Although carrying a noble goal, it ignores the manifold nuances in the media and tends to highlight the exceptional, spectacular and negative of war coverage. The idea of peace journalism tends to overestimate the influence journalists and the media have on political decisions; and it often understands audiences in terms of a passive mass that needs to be enlightened by virtue of peace reporting. In addition to this, peace journalism is, to a considerable extent, based on an overly individualistic perspective and ignores the many structural constraints that shape and limit the work of journalists: few personnel, time and material resources; editorial procedures and hierarchies; textual constraints; availability of sources; access to the scene and information in general - just to name a few. All this suggests that the conduct of peace journalism is not a matter of individual leeway, and media structures and professional routines cannot be modified from the position of the individual journalist. Modern corporate journalism involves processes of organized news production, thus giving priority to organizational and institutional factors as well as processes of professional socialization. To have any impact on the way the news is made, and its critical scrutiny, the advocates of peace journalism must address the structural constraints of news production. The discussion of peace journalism, and particularly of its practical implications, must be tied to the realm of journalism studies where it resonates with ongoing efforts to promote excellence in journalism.