“The right time for media innovation is always right now”
Traditional media companies engaging in quality journalism are under pressure worldwide: in Europe, as everywhere else, social media platforms and search engines are pulling off more and more advertising money and attention whilst difficult economic conditions and trust issues between media and audiences are exacerbating the problem. A team of media researchers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland (D-A-CH region) has conducted a detailed investigation of the German-speaking media market and compared it with those of the UK and Spain. They analyzed how innovative media formats can support democratic structures. After three years of research, the team described 100 tangible ways to achieve this goal and presented it in the form of case studies in all five countries. The results have just been published in the volume Innovations in Journalism by Routledge.
When the project started in 2020, the changed economic conditions and the pent-up demand for digitalization also had an impact on media in the D-A-CH region. “Having been confronted with these developments much earlier, the UK and Southern Europe developed responses,” explains Andy Kaltenbrunner, Managing Director of the Medienhaus Wien research company. The project was managed by Kaltenbrunner and Matthias Karmasin, Institute Director at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Dean at the University of Klagenfurt. The strong point of their study “Journalism Innovation in Democratic Societies (JoIn-DemoS)”, which was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), lies in the comparisons it offers – and thus the opportunity to learn from one other.
Book recommendation
In the open access volume "Innovations in Journalism", an international project team presents the most relevant media innovations from five European countries. 100 case studies describe tangible ways how innovative media formats can support democratic structures.
The “Standard Forum” – a European benchmark
In Austria, waning media diversity, the pressure on editors to save money, political attempts to discredit serious journalism, coupled with insufficient freedom of information and conservative funding policies are putting pressure on quality journalism. The Austrian daily newspaper Der Standard nevertheless manages to nurture wide-ranging public engagement with its online reporting through its user forums. Every day, tens of thousands of posts reach the editorial servers in the shape of comments on articles and in special forums. A specialized audience team uses specifically developed technical tools to monitor the forums and moderate the discussions.
“In both quantitative and qualitative terms, the Standard's audience engagement is considered a European benchmark for new social discourse in traditional media,” explains Andy Kaltenbrunner. Another example that withstood the researchers’ critical scrutiny in several innovative categories is the investigative platform Dossier. The diminutive team of Dossier was the first in the small Austrian market to rely purely on community funding without advertising. So far the platform has been denied state funding. Their model enables sensitive investigations, for example into media ownership, political advertising corruption or dubious state contracts and money flows. These reports are published online as well as in thematic issues.
Making innovation describable
The first challenge in the project was to develop theoretical and empirical descriptions for terms that are central but fuzzy, such as innovation and journalism. Something that may be considered revolutionary in one country is old hat in another, podcasts being a case in point. What, therefore, is innovative for journalists and their audience? What do innovations contribute to the development of our democratic societies? And how can this contribution be evaluated in a scientifically structured way? The research team developed answers to these three questions step by step and with many pauses for reflection. They started off with an extensive literature review followed by several rounds of interviews, some of them cross-sectoral, with innovation and media experts.
Twenty “levers” for media innovation were identified, including collaboration and cooperation, funding by members or live elements. Based on the most important innovations in each country under review, a total of 100 case studies were then vetted to examine their influence on the quality of journalism and its role in democratic societies. The case studies covered a wide range from start-ups to the development team in a traditional media house. One such example is the successful Spanish platform Maldita, which started in 2014 as a project by two experienced TV journalists and has continuously grown to become a European benchmark for fact-checking. Today, it employs more than 50 journalists who not only work for roughly 10,000 subscribers, but also collaborate with media companies that pay for their expertise in data research and the curbing of disinformation. Maldita also runs analog and digital workshops on media literacy for various target groups.
Not trivial, but an important cultural issue
“It is not a trivial issue whether the fourth estate works, i.e. whether journalism in a democracy provides enlightened and diverse information about the actions of the state and checks it through reporting,” emphasizes principal investigator Andy Kaltenbrunner. “Usually, this discussion focuses on the technology side. For us, the focus was on cultural issues.” The project was about getting a holistic picture of how professional journalism and high-quality mass media can react to social, financial and technological developments. To this end, Medienhaus Wien cooperated with the Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the University of Klagenfurt (Matthias Karmasin), the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Klaus Meier), the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Vinzenz Wyss), the Universidad Miguel Herández in Valencia (José A. García Avilés), the Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano and City University London (Colin Porlezza). More than a dozen young researchers were also involved in the project.
The most relevant innovations from the five countries under review are presented in the current open access anthology Innovations in Journalism. The database with the 100 media case studies is also available online. These case studies also show which conditions support or inhibit innovative developments in news organizations. “We are not presenting snapshots, but comparative evidence from five countries – full-blown empiricism, if you like. The transfer into practice is underway and the right time for media innovation is always right now,” concludes project manager Kaltenbrunner. Everyone still needs to deliver: journalists in terms of ideas, legislators in terms of structural measures, innovation policy and funding, and the EU in terms of appropriate regulations for access to a huge internal market.
Personal details
In 2005, political and media scientist Andy Kaltenbrunner founded the Medienhaus Wien research company and initiated basic-research projects with international partners on the transformation of media, journalism and the public sphere. Together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he publishes the “Journalism Reports”, a key publication with national data surveys for academic and industry discussions. Kaltenbrunner has developed study programs on journalism and media innovation in several European countries. Before 2000, he was a political journalist, winner of the Austrian State Prize for Journalism and developer of the first online media in Austria.
Project website: https://innovations-in-journalism.com/
Publication
Meier K., García-Avilés J.A., Kaltenbrunner A., Porlezza C., Wyss V., Lugschitz R., Klinghardt K. (Eds): Innovations in Journalism: Comparative Research in Five European Countries, Routledge 2024
