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Diversity of Journalisms. Proceedings of ECREA/CICOM Conference, Pamplona, 4-5 July 2011
In order to study journalism on the micro-level, standards for research projects have
evolved over the last decades (Weaver 1998).
This contribution wants to discuss which aspects of change can be measured in the
traditional way, which aspects need other methods, and what kind of other methods
would be suitable to measure change on the micro-level. The contribution is based on
the author’s journalism research projects analyzing change in journalism in
Switzerland. This was mainly done in two projects:
a) A quantitative longitudinal journalism survey
b) A qualitative research project aimed at describing how the internet has
changed journalism
Research has shown that traditional quantitative methods are still suitable to measure
some aspects of journalism and change on a micro-level. These methods have the
advantage of yielding results which are comparable to similar surveys. Aspects that
can be measured this way include socio-demographic data: education, political and
cultural background, career patterns etc.
However, some aspects can hardly be measured using quantitative surveys. This
concerns questions like individual orientation or journalistic identity. Here new
methodological approaches such as standardized journalists’ diaries or combinations
of interviews with content analysis or observation to validate data gathered in
interviews are needed to understand change. However, these approaches often do
not allow comparisons across space and time. Consequently, the resulting studies
often do not get the same attention like the seemingly hard facts from quantitative
research, ignoring the question how valid the data from standardized surveys actually
is, and how suitable it is to describe change.
In the trade-off between comparability of data thanks to standardized quantitative
methods, and more innovative methods, it is desirable that journalism research
focuses more on relevance than scientific tradition in order to stay relevant itself in a
fast changing world of journalism.
The Diversity of Scholarship on Journalism: How journalism journals reflect
theories, methods, and topics of journalism research – a content analysis (2008
– 2009)
Löffelholz, Martin; Rothenberger, Liane
Ilmenau University of Technology, Ilmenau, Germany
Over the course of time various changes in journalism created a diverse media
landscape. Since generally journalism studies are closely linked to its object, this
leads to the question whether the diversity of journalism is reflected by journalism
studies.
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