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In politics and academia, but also in the broader public, there has been wide discussion concerning a sense of dwindling social cohesion most markedly in liberal democracies. One of the virulent questions in this context is the role journalism plays and the common notion that journalism can strengthen or weaken cohesion. However, there is no shared understanding of whether and how journalism or journalistic reporting influence cohesion and whether and in what way journalism is at all responsible for strengthening a society's cohesion. Against this background, we conducted four group discussions with a total of 21 experts from the fields of journalism, academia, and 'cohesion practice' in order to understand how different actors inside and outside the field of journalism view the relationship between social cohesion and journalism. The analysis reveals that there are no systematic differences between the views of these three expert groups. Nonetheless, the many facets of and different perspectives on the topic are fundamentally ambivalent. This is because the interrelation between journalism and social cohesion is characterized by tensions and trade-offs in and between three dimensions: society's reachability, representability, and ability for dialogue. This also means that journalists need to balance these tensions time and again and, generally, a society continuously negotiates the interrelation between journalism and cohesion. In modern societies, journalism itself is a forum in which this negotiation takes place; and the fact that it takes place already contributes to cohesion, but can also compromise it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigative journalism is about uncovering what shall not be covered, yet, blind spots remain. This paper explores what topics investigative journalists consider to be neglected in different regions of the world, why these topics are not covered, and how journalists strive to report them in spite of difficulties. We theorize the blind spots by drawing on the Hierarchy of Influences Model, meaning that blind spots in investigative reporting are deeply rooted in these influences. We explore these issues in a global comparative approach and conducted qualitative face-to-face interviews at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019 with 90 investigative journalists from 60 countries. Our findings show that many topics can't be worked on due to repercussions from four levels of the Hierarchy of Influences Model (esp. from the wider social system), leading to self-censorship. The journalists overcome these obstacles with resourceful individual actions (e.g. publishing from abroad) since their media outlets and organizations are often not fit to help them due to resource constraints. Thus, journalists may defy the hierarchy and see it as their mission to persist, also and especially in countries in the Global South. However, obstacles are found globally and directly affect the nuts and bolts of journalism, such as access to information and sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]