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To capture audiences’ attention on social media, news outlets may disseminate journalistic content in line with platform instead of mass media logics, indicating a platformization of news. Taking a cross-platform, multi-modal approach, we analyze how German outlets select and adapt existing stories for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. We combine a computational and a manual content analysis of articles and social media posts (N = 4,412), including related images/videos (N = 6,850). Overall, evidence for outlets following platform logics on social media is limited: News outlets select and adapt news on a technical level, for instance by distributing more content on news-centered platforms like Twitter or by fostering on-platform engagement by excluding external links on Instagram. However, they do not systematically select or adapt news on a more communicative level, for instance by preferring specific topics for social media or by using more engaging language on platforms.

Wir stellen in diesem Aufsatz ein Modell interdisziplinarer Zusammenarbeit zwischen Kommunikationswissenschaft und Methodenwissenschaft (hier: Statistik) vor. Dabeisteht die Frage im Mittelpunkt, wie sich die Kollaboration grundverschiedener Disziplinen uber einen langeren Zeitraum verstetigen lasst. Der agilen Entwicklung von Forschungssoftware, die die fachubergreifende Zusammenarbeit strukturiert, kann hierbei eine zentrale Rolle zukommen. Sie ermoglicht zwei Ebenen der Zusammenarbeit mit verschiedenen Zeithorizonten: auf der einen werden zeitlich begrenzte Projekte umgesetzt, auf der anderen die langerfristige Zusammenarbeit organisiert. Wechselnde Team-Konstellationen und Hierarchien ermoglichen kontinuierlichen Wissensaustausch, die verwendete Programmiersprache ist Grundlage fur die Entstehung einer facherubergreifenden Kommunikation und die Orientierung auf ein gemeinsames Produkt schafft eine Kultur der gemeinsamen Verantwortlichkeit. Um die theoretischen Reflexionen an der Forschungspraxis zu spiegeln, greifen die Autor*innen auf ihre Erfahrungen im Kontext des Dortmund Center fur datenbasierte Medien-Analyse (kurz: DoCMA) zuruck. DoCMA ist deswegen als Fallbeispiel relevant, da Struktur und Organisation hier auf die Erfordernisse der agilen Entwicklung offener Forschungssoftware ausgerichtet wurden.

Recent reports show that users increasingly use smartphone messenger applications such as WhatsApp for news. Media outlets have started to provide news via WhatsApp in addition to other platforms. In journalism scholarship, the routines of messenger app journalism are still little understood. Building on the Diffusions of Innovations theory, this paper explores whether newsrooms treat WhatsApp similar to other social media, which they have used for a longer period of time, or whether they have developed new practices that respect WhatsApp’s roots in mobile and interpersonal communication. Focusing on Germany as a case study and drawing on an analysis of 3745 messages sent to WhatsApp channels of news outlets and on an online survey of journalists working with social media (N=111), this study shows that journalists utilize the innovative possibilities of WhatsApp for news to a varying degree. While some characteristics of mobile communication are considered in news outlets’ strategies, engagement with the audience is often neglected. The results highlight the challenges for relational innovations in the editorial process.

Gender-based marginalization and discrimination in sports journalism is an ongoing concern of research addressing gender equality in journalism. The visibility of female reporters as authors in terms of sports coverage has been found to be under 10% in content analysis that spans several countries. Research into audiences’ perceptions of authorship in sports journalism further found female authors to be prone to byline biases—even though findings are mixed. In this article, we set out to examine if the under representation of female sport authors has changed over the time span of 15 years. This is explored by conducting a content analysis of news coverage from 2006 to 2020 (Study 1). Further, we study whether biases against female authors in sports coverage (still) exist among recipients and in how far this is different for male and female sports. To address audience perceptions of gender in sport reporting, we performed an online experiment investigating the effect of female and male authorship as well as men’s and women’s football (soccer) as one of the most popular topic of sport reporting (Study 2). We found that female authorship in sports journalism is still marginalized without any significant improvement observed from 2006 to 2020 (Study 1). This contrasts with our findings on audiences’ perceptions of male and female authors, which did not confirm a gender byline bias (Study 2). Our results therefore suggest that gender discrimination in newsrooms cannot be justified by audience perceptions.

Die Anwendung digitaler Methoden bietet die Chance, Kommunikationswissenschaften und Okonomik enger zu verknupfen. So besteht in der Konjunktur- und der Finanzmarktforschung seit einigen Jahren ein wachsendes Interesse an der Einbeziehung von Medieninhalten, allerdings meist ohne Ruckgriff auf die Kommunikationswissenschaften. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick uber Ansatze zur Einbeziehung von Medieninhalten in der Wirtschaftsforschung und stellt einen neuen, multidimensionalen Indikator vor, der wirtschaftspolitische Unsicherheit auf der Grundlage des Topic-Modelling-Verfahrens Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) misst: den Uncertainty Perception Indicator (UPI). Auf dieser Basis zeigen wir, wie sich der in der Okonomik populare Begriff des „Narrativs“ operationalisieren und mit dem kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Konzept des Frames verknupfen lasst.

Social media today are playing a more important role as a news source than ever before. Yet, there have been no longitudinal studies on journalists’ sourcing practices in recent years that allow us...