Search

The objective of this article is to define more precisely the field of research into the automation of communication, which is currently only vaguely discernible. The central thesis is that, in order to be able to grasp the transformation of the media environment associated with the automation of communication, the view must be broadened from the “direct interaction of humans and machines” to “societal communication”. Broadening our perspective as such allows us to ask how the dynamics of societal communication as a whole change when “communicative AI” becomes part of societal communication. To support this thesis, the article first takes a closer look at the automation of communication as a phenomenon. Against this background, the concept of communicative AI is then developed in more detail as a “sensitizing concept” that sensitizes to both the breadth and depth of the phenomenon. On this basis, the bridging concept of the “hybrid figuration” is developed in order to grasp the agency of communicative AI and to be able to connect to “definitive concepts” of social science and media and communication research. It becomes apparent that with communicative AI as a field of research, the basic concepts of communication and media research—“communication” and “media”—are themselves challenged. The article is concluded by a conclusion that shows the research perspectives resulting from such an approach.

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.

Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, die Diskussion um Forschungssoftware in der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft methodisch zu kontextualisieren. Das Kernargument dabei ist, dass wir uns „jenseits“ des Computational Turns der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft befinden, sowohl im Hinblick auf ihren Gegenstand (die meisten Medien sind zu digitalen Medien geworden) als auch im Hinblick auf Theorien (die zunehmend das Digitale fokussieren) und Methoden (die ebenfalls verstärkt digital und computerbasiert sind). Man kann sich mit den Herausforderungen und Chancen des Einsatzes von Forschungssoftware nur dann angemessen auseinandersetzen, wenn man ihre Etablierung als Teil dieser generellen Veränderung der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft begreift. Um dies zu verdeutlichen, wird ausgehend von der Reflexion des Wandels der Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft zunächst der Stellenwert digital basierter Methoden diskutiert. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Entwicklung von virtuellen Methoden, digitalen Methoden und computerbasierten Methoden hin zu Mehrmethodendesigns digitaler Kommunikationsforschung. Auf dieser Grundlage wird dann die Rolle von eigenentwickelter Forschungssoftware diskutiert und diese in Bezug gesetzt zu Softwareanwendungen für die Forschung, Infrastruktursoftware und -diensten sowie Standardsoftware und -anwendungen, die für Forschungszwecke „umgenutzt“ werden. Hierüber zeigen sich Chancen und Herausforderungen von Forschungssoftware im Hinblick auf Softwarekompetenz, Interdisziplinarität und Nachhaltigkeit. Diese Rahmung dient dazu, die verschiedenen Aufsätze dieses Themenhefts einzuordnen, um damit das neue Thema „Forschungssoftware“ einer möglichst breiten Leserschaft zugänglich zu machen.

This article analyzes how journalists’ role conceptions compare to what the population expects fromthem. We model this interrelation as part of the reflexive relationship between journalism and aud...

In this article we propose the notion of X Journalism as an observational tool and concept. It owes its existence to a simple observation: the evolution of journalism is accompanied by the emergence of ever-new journalism-related terms, i.e. combinations of the word ‘journalism’ with a particular modifying term that represents and signals a certain specificity and novelty. Examples include ‘robot journalism’, ‘foundation-funded journalism’, ‘cross-border journalism’, or ‘solutions journalism’ – just to name a few. To date, we have collected and mapped 166 X journalisms and have ‘crowd-categorized’ them into clusters according to the different aspects they refer to. We explore X Journalism as a concept, present our mapping, and show how it can help to cope with journalism’s increasing complexity, grasp the diversity of the field, trace its constant evolution, as well as identify patterns and interrelations between these different movements and occurrences. Through a test case of audience-related X journalisms we demonstrate an empirical application before illustrating the theoretical compatibility of X Journalism and suggesting a research agenda that highlights potentials for X Journalism-driven studies.

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.

Recent journalism research often argues that it is high time that we moved beyond the newsroom and begin asking who it is that is stimulating transformation and not what it is, as individual journalists, entrepreneurs, technology firms, and startups assume an increasingly critical role in the development of the field. This article introduces the concept of ‘pioneer journalism’ to provide just such an analysis across different organizational contexts. Pioneer journalism is understood as a particular group of journalists that incorporates new organizational forms and experimental practice in pursuit of redefining the field and its structural foundations. To introduce this concept, the article argues along three stages. First, it develops a theoretical basis on which to pin our understanding of pioneering practice by reviewing previous research into journalism’s transformation beyond the newsroom. Second, it extends the theoretical discussion into the empirical realm by looking at five extreme cases of pioneer journalists through an explorative interview analysis. Third, and to conclude, an integrated concept of pioneer journalism is outlined as a point of departure from which to further consider journalism’s re-figuration more generally.

The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice provides a rich and panoramic introduction to data journalism, combining both critical reflection and practical insight. It offers a diverse collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world and the broader consequences of datafication in the news, serving as both a textbook and a sourcebook for this emerging field. With more than 50 chapters from leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, it explores the work needed to render technologies and data productive for journalistic purposes. It also gives a "behind the scenes" look at the social lives of data sets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, start-ups, civil society organizations and beyond. The book includes sections on "doing issues with data," "assembling data," "working with data," "experiencing data," "investigating data, platforms and algorithms," "organizing data journalism," "learning data journalism together" and "situating data journalism."

This chapter explores the relationship between the datafication of society and a datafied journalism and introduces awards as a means to study the evolution of data journalism.

Newsrooms are still searching for ways to manage user comments because of both a desire for professional distance from their audiences and a lack of analytical tools. This paper presents findings from our exploratory, interdisciplinary study in journalism research and computer science that focuses on the algorithmic classification and clustering of user comments. In contrast to endeavours that aim at filtering out hate speech or spam, we take a more constructive approach and focus on detecting particularly useful or high-quality user contributions that can be leveraged for journalistic purposes. On the basis of a literature review and our own preliminary research on audience participation and user review analytics, we developed a mock-up of a software framework to help journalists systematically analyze user comments to this end. We then surveyed its effectiveness through two group discussions - one with comment moderators and another with editors from different editorial departments of a large German online newsroom. Features that journalists and comment moderators considered useful include the categorization of user comments in pro- and contra-arguments towards a certain topic, the automated assessment of comments' quality as well as the identification of surprising or exceptional comments and those that present new questions, arguments or viewpoints.

Data-driven journalism can be considered as journalism’s response to the datafication of society. To better understand the key components and development of this still young and fast evolving genre, we investigate what the field itself defines as its ‘gold-standard’: projects that were nominated for the Data Journalism Awards from 2013 to 2016 (n = 225). Using a content analysis, we examine, among other aspects, the data sources and types, visualisations, interactive features, topics and producers. Our results demonstrate, for instance, only a few consistent developments over the years and a predominance of political pieces, of projects by newspapers and by investigative journalism organisations, of public data from official institutions as well as a glut of simple visualisations, which in sum echoes a range of general tendencies in data journalism. On the basis of our findings, we evaluate data-driven journalism’s potential for improvement with regard to journalism’s societal functions.

Neue technische Möglichkeiten der Informationsgenerierung bringen vielfältige Probleme der Informationsverwaltung und -verarbeitung mit sich, deren Lösung den Zugang zu diesen Informationen überhaupt erst ermöglicht. Zwischen den riesigen Datenmengen des World Wide Web (WWW) und dem freien Informationszugang der Nutzer und Nutze­rinnen (User) stehen dabei in den allermeisten Fällen die Suchmaschinen: Annähernd 85 Prozent der User geben an, Suchmaschinen zur Informationssuche nutzen. (vgl. GVU 1998, Basis: 3.291 Befragte) Eine Orientierung in den online verfügbaren Informations­mengen ist in vielen Fällen ohne Suchmaschinen praktisch nicht möglich. Das macht Suchmaschinen zu den am häufigsten frequentierten Angeboten im WWW überhaupt.

Journalistische Medienangebote werden on- und offline uber verschiedene Kanale und Plattformen verbreitet; insbesondere im Netz ist die Angebotsvielfalt nahezu unuberschaubar gros. Produziert, verbreitet und genutzt werden sie dabei nicht mehr nur unter den Bedingungen der Massenkommunikation, sondern etwa auch uber soziale Netzwerke und Messenger, die eher sozialmedialen und interpersonalen Kommunikationslogiken folgen. Der Beitrag verdeutlicht, warum die traditionelle medienzentrierte Publikums- und Nutzungsforschung den derart gewandelten Kommunikationsbedingungen nicht mehr gerecht werden kann. Hierfur werden zunachst die Entwicklungslinien der Nutzungsforschung von einer medienzentrierten Ausrichtung hin zum nutzerzentrierten Medienrepertoire-Ansatz nachgezeichnet. Anschliesend werden ausgewahlte empirische Befunde zur Nachrichtennutzung als Schnittstellenthema zwischen Nutzungs- und Journalismusforschung vorgestellt. Mit Blick auf die sich gewandelte Medienumgebung stehen dabei nachrichtenorientierte crossmediale Nutzung, Vertrauen in Nachrichten und Erwartungen an journalistische Leistungen sowie Formen der Nutzerbeteiligung und Partizipation im Mittelpunkt.

This chapter draws on three research projects on journalism, audience practices and newsroom cultures and uses them to illustrate the changing nature of the communicative relationship between journalists and audiences operating in a media environment characterized by digital technologies. This development in communicative practices is already yielding changes in traditional newsroom routines and could lead to a shift in the communicative orientation of journalism that puts an emphasis on dialogue, moderation and curation, instead of the unidirectional dissemination of news, a kind of dissemination that might not suffice any longer as a unique characteristic for journalism in the pluralistic information ecosphere of the digital realm. However, this chapter highlights that this transition follows neither a linear nor a simultaneous process for all segments of journalism, for all journalists or all audience members. In sum, this chapter confronts expectations about innovative journalistic practices and highlights how communicative forms and media ensembles, which were not available in the predigital era, establish new modes of dialogue with audiences. The conclusion discusses how this transformation of communicative figurations among journalists and media users affects their self-conception with regards to their roles and core functions in their given community and in society as a whole.

While digital networked media contribute to a substantial shift in the relationship between journalists and their audiences, current research still largely focuses on one side or the other. This paper aims to overcome this conceptual and empirical deficit by presenting findings from two case studies on German news journalism (a daily TV newscast and a weekly political talk show). They operationalize the concept of inclusion distance, which aims at the (in-)congruence of mutual expectations between journalists and audience members, in a series of standardized surveys among newsroom staff as well as their online users. The paper introduces three different comparative dimensions which this study design affords and illustrates them with findings (1) on journalistic role conceptions and (2) the (assumed) motivations for participation. Besides demonstrating the value of such a multi-level comparison, our findings also provide substantial and nuanced evidence concerning the relation between journalists and their...

The notion of the “blurring boundaries” has become a flashy label to characterize the way journalism is manifestly changing in the age of the internet. This article explores this idea of de-boundedness and discusses the question whether there is anything more behind it than a catch-all diagnosis for the processes of change and transformation in the circumstances of communication in society, in general, and for journalism, in particular. To this end, de-boundedness as a proposition initially receives a more concrete definition. Its foundations in theories of differentiation and especially in the theory of social systems by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann will be discussed, where differentiation, that is, drawing lines of demarcation, is the essential factor. It is shown that systems theory provides different possibilities for characterizing forms of de-differentiation or “blurring boundaries”. Within systems theory they can be interpreted in terms of the evolutionary emergence of new forms of journal...

The audience has always been an important reference for journalism although, under mass media conditions, it remained an “operative fiction” for its practitioners, reflecting a clear distinction between sender and recipients. Recent shifts in mediated communication towards networked public spheres and the increasing implementation of participatory features force media organizations, journalists and scholars alike to rethink the journalism–audience relationship. We introduce the concept of audience inclusion in journalism, to provide an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between journalists and (their) audience. The article presents the results of a multi-method case study of the German television newscast “Tagesschau” and its online platform tagesschau.de, and compares the attitudes of journalists and audience members towards the role of journalists, the relevance of participatory functions, the motivations for participation, and their general assessment of audience participation. By and...

This chapter provides an overview on approaches to conceptualize and research the journalism/audience relationship. It addresses theoretical issues in more detail and discusses some ways the journalism/audience relationship has been conceptualized in empirical studies. The chapter focuses on the proximity and distance between journalism and audience and the role of journalism research in this respect. Paradoxically, the relation between journalism and its audience as a topic is both classical and emerging in journalism research. The most common approach to assess the journalism/audience relation in an integrated research design relies, however, on survey data. Online media have introduced new modes of observation to journalists, including monitoring and aggregating digital traces of audience members which reveal information about news preferences, appreciation, engagement, or recall. In particular, the integration of social media into the media repertoires of individuals and media organizations urges us to rethink these categories, which are so fundamental, even constitutive, for journalism and audience research alike.

Current technological, organizational and institutional changes fundamentally alter the relationship between journalism and its audience – with consequences not only for journalistic practice, but also for theoretical and methodological issues of media research. After briefly recounting three perspectives on the audience, the paper outlines key aspects of the sociological theory of inclusion and explicates them in a novel and comprehensive heuristic model of audience inclusion in journalism. It introduces two constructs which apply both to journalism and the audience: (1) inclusion performance subsumes inclusion practices and their manifest results, and (2) inclusion expectations subsume attitudes, norms and perceptions with respect to audience inclusion in journalism. The degree of congruence between performances of journalists and audience members is interpreted as inclusion level; the degree of congruence between the expectations is interpreted as inclusion distance. This model can serve as a heuristic...

Discussions about what journalism provides and the audience selects have a long tradition in journalism studies as well as in audience studies and are routinely part of public debates on journalism...

»Entgrenzung« ist in der Journalismusforschung so etwas wie eine Pauschaldiagnose fur den Zustand der aktuellen Medienkommunikation geworden. Vor allem fur die systemtheoretische Journalismusforschung, die sich anfanglich vor allem um Grenzen und Differenzierung gekummert hat, besteht das Arbeitsprogramm zunehmend in der Auseinandersetzung mit so genannten Entgrenzungsphanomenen. Dahinter steht zumeist die Befurchtung eines durch funktionale Entdifferenzierung »schleichenden« Funktionsverlustes des Journalismus. Dabei ist der Ruckbezug empirisch beobachteter Indikatoren fur Entdifferenzierungsprozesse auf die (System-) Theorie bzw. die Frage nach ihrer grundsatzlichen Kompatibilitat noch weitgehend ungeklart. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird im Rahmen des Beitrags das Verhaltnis von Differenzierung und Entdifferenzierung diskutiert sowie eine definitorische Spurensuche zur Klarung des Begriffs der Entdifferenzierung unternommen, der offensichtlich auf ganz unterschiedliche Phanomene und Ebenen bezogen wird. Insgesamt wird dabei deutlich, dass Entdifferenzierung und Systemtheorie durchaus zueinander passen konnen, aber auch, dass die Diskussion um die strikte Konzentration auf binare Leitdifferenzen in der fruhen Phase der systemtheoretischen Journalismusforschung durch die Auseinandersetzung mit Entgrenzungen und Entdifferenzierungen wieder eingeholt wird.

Die Rede von der Entgrenzung des Journalismus bringt seine insbesondere durch Internet und soziale Medien ausgeloste Transformation auf eine griffige Formel. Eine differenzierte Betrachtung zeigt, dass Entgrenzungen sich auf verschiedene Ebenen und Kontexte des Journalismus sowie auf seine Unterscheidbarkeit von anderen Kommunikationsformen beziehen konnen. Die systemtheoretische Journalismusforschung ist in besonderer Weise durch die Beobachtung von Entgrenzungsprozessen herausgefordert, denn fur diese ist die Differenz, also das Ziehen von Grenzen konstitutiv. Der Beitrag diskutiert die systemtheoretische Fundierung von Entgrenzung bzw. Entdifferenzierung und verdeutlicht so, dass die Veranderungen des Journalismus zwischen Differenzierung und Entdifferenzierung oszillieren, er also als (ent-)differenziertes Phanomen beschrieben werden kann.

Der vorliegende Beitrag beschaftigt sich mit den durch Crossmedia-Strategien be- und geforderten Formen medialer Entgrenzungen zwischen Print-, TV- und Online-Medien. Die empirische Analyse basiert auf einem inter- und intramediaren Vergleich von Medienangeboten, fur den die Druckausgabe, das TV-Magazin und das Online-Produkt von 〉Spiegel〈, 〉Stern〈 und 〉Focus〈 ausgewahlt wurden. Die journalistischen Produkte wurden mit Hilfe von Inhaltsanalysen, der Kontext der Aussagenentstehung mit Leitfadeninterviews analysiert. Im Zentrum steht die Frage, wie sich die (auf okonomischem Kalkul basierenden) Formen medialer Entgrenzungen auf die Beschaffenheit und die Kontextbedingungen journalistischer Aussagenentstehung auswirken. Insgesamt geben die Ergebnisse verschiedene Hinweise auf eine komplementare Struktur unterschiedlicher medialer Erscheinungsweisen, die mehr oder weniger eigenstandige Leistungen erfullen. Auch wenn mediale Entgrenzungen zwischen den Medientypen Print, TV und Online technisch mehr denn je moglich und okonomisch auch gewollt sind, zeigen sich nur verhaltnismasig wenige, wenngleich deutliche Indikatoren fur Anpassungsprozesse auf der Ebene der Akteure. Auf der Ebene der redaktionellen Inhalte fallt die Anpassung noch schwacher aus.