Journalismus im Wandel: Wie Journalisten in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz die Transformation ihres Berufs wahrnehmen
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The research project has focused on the assessment of journalism in comparative perspective among Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Based on the assumption that journalism is currently under transformation, we were seeking to trace changes and detect the pressures and influences that shape the news production process from a journalistic point of view. Thus, we were able to gain insights into the state of journalism and the current conditions under which journalists have to perform their profession. Our findings provide evidence that transformations such as the Internet caused changes in journalistic work e.g., through the growing importance of technical skills and the increased importance of the use of the Internet. Furthermore, since comparative studies involving Austria, Germany and Switzerland are rare, the study contributes to the state of journalism research through comparative research based on a common framework. Since the three German-speaking countries share a similar background in regard to their political and media system, our findings show that there are some similarities as well as differences among Austrian, German and Swiss journalists. Field work took place between November 2014 and August 2015. The time schedule proposed has been expanded since representative journalism research is often concerned with various issues: the willingness of the media companies to provide information as well as the journalists’ willingness to participate in the study. Both forced us to undertake an investigation process with unscheduled telephone calls to gather information on newsroom structure and journalists, which also displays the partly non-transparency of the media market. Of interest, some newsrooms provided us with the information needed, others did not mainly because they wanted to protect the privacy of their employees or because they have a strict non-participation policy regarding research requests. Besides that, also the willingness of the journalists to participate in the survey was relatively low for reasons under investigation: the high work load and the transformation of the newsroom environment were often named as reasons for non-participation. Interestingly, some of the interviewed journalists were quite skeptical, so that it was often needed to send additional information and an evidence of the institutional affiliation. At the same time, the majority of those journalists that participated in the survey, indicated to be interested in learning about the findings of the project for which we will provide them with a short overview of the outcome.
