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Journalism Innovation in Democratic Societies: Index, Impact and Prerequisites in International Comparison (JoIn-DemoS)

Subject Area Communication Sciences
Term from 2020 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 438677067
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The three-year research project Journalism Innovation in Democratic Societies (‘JoIn- DemoS’), in which 24 communication scientists from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and the UK were involved, represents basic research with the aim of generating empirical knowledge about innovations in journalism in Western European countries in the period from 2010 to 2020 and thus further developing theories on innovation in journalism. The relevance of the topic stems from the project's underlying normative-democratic theoretical understanding of journalism. Accordingly, journalism is an existential prerequisite for the functioning of democratic societies. Journalists should inform citizens, criticise and control powerful political and economic actors, initiate opinion-forming processes and ultimately enable and ensure people's participation in social, political and cultural life in the long term. However, recent social, political and (media) economic developments are fuelling doubts as to whether journalism can fulfil these tasks. The polarisation and emotionalisation of social debates and the low willingness to pay for journalistic content - partly due to the decadeslong free culture on the internet - are just a few of the key challenges that journalism has faced since the 2010s. The aim of the research project was to find out how journalism reacts to these multiple and interwoven crises and challenges. In a multi-phase empirical research process, the most important innovations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and the UK in the period from 2010 to 2020 were first identified from the perspective of media, journalism and innovation experts. Based on more than 100 guided interviews, the researchers identified over 1,000 mentions of innovations and summarised them in 49 areas of innovation, such as collaborative-investigative journalism, data journalism and constructive journalism. Subsequently, 100 case studies – 20 in each country – were used to analyse how innovations were implemented, which factors helped or hindered them and what added social value the innovations in journalism offered. The innovative potential of these 49 areas of innovation is revealed at different levels: the journalistic offering (product level), the editorial organisation (process level), the distribution channels (distribution) and the marketing and monetisation of journalistic offerings (financing). The researchers also come to the conclusion that innovations such as fact checks, collaborative-investigative research networks and payment models strengthen central journalistic quality criteria such as truth orientation, relevance and independence and thus support journalism in maintaining its tasks relevant to democratic theory.

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