Author: Hanne Detel

From April to July 2023, the joint universities will host a hybrid lecture series on the mutual expectations of journalists and their audiences. The focus is on interactions between journalists and audience members in digital media environments. PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit (head of the Erfurt sub-project) is mainly responsible for the lecture series. In addition to the project leaders, the lecturers are experts from academia and journalistic practice who report from their perspectives and want to encourage discussion. The focus will be on the interaction between journalists and audience representatives on online channels, community management, user comments and hate speech, but also on media trust.

The aim of the lecture series is to transfer project results to a broader public. Therefore, not only students of media and communication studies are invited, but all students and staff of the joint universities as well as citizens who are interested in questions of the journalism-audience relationship.

The lectures will take place on eight selected Tuesdays from 6.15 to 7.45 p.m. and can be followed either on site or via livestream.

Further information can be found here.

As in the previous year, the project team was again represented with a presentation at the annual conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK). Under the title “Consequences of Disappointed Expectations in Journalism-Audience Interactions”, the project team—together with student assistant Jonas Büttner and the cooperation partner Ass.-Prof. Claudia Wilhelm—presented findings from a literature analysis on the topic. The conference took place in Bremen from 18-20 May 2023.

The project achieved great success with regard to the 73rd Annual International Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA) in 2023 under the title theme “Reclaiming Authenticity in Communication”. A total of four submissions out of the research project were accepted for presentation in Toronto.

Under the presentation title “The Impact of Mutual Interaction Expectations on Journalist-Audience Relations in Digital Media Contexts: An Exploratory Study”, Dr. Hanne Detel will present the results of qualitative guided interviews with journalists and audience members on their mutual expectations in a case study design for the project. Dr. Bernadette Uth, representing the project team, presents a theoretical literature review of existing conceptualisations of the journalism-audience relationship in digital contexts in the lecture “The Journalism-Audience Relationship in Digital Media Environments: A Theoretical Literature Review”. PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit’s presentation “Mutual Interaction Expectations and Consequences of Expectancy Violations in the Journalism-Audience Relationship: A Systematic Literature Review” is dedicated to the results of a systematic literature review on expectancy violations in journalism-audience interactions. Ass.-Prof. Dr. Claudia Wilhelm and Dr. Hanne Detel will present a framework for future research on expectations in journalistic contexts under the title “Towards a Framework for Studying Expectations in Journalistic Contexts: A Taxonomy for Expectancy Research”.

We look forward to an interesting exchange in Toronto!

The project team will give two presentations at a conference on “Political Journalism. Constellations – Patterns – Dynamics” at the University of Trier from September 28 to 30, 2022. While the first paper will present the results of a literature review on the journalism-audience relationship, in the second presentation the team will share the results of a qualitative interview study with journalists and audience members on their expectations of mutual interaction in digital media environments.

With a master’s thesis related to the joint project, our former student assistant Johanna Wolleschensky successfully completed her master’s degree at the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Erfurt. For her thesis on “The Quality of Journalistic Information in Social Media from the Perspective of Adolescents” she received the highest grade (first examiner: PD Dr. Nicole Podschuweit, University of Erfurt; second examiner: Dr. Claudia Lampert, Hans Bredow Institute, Hamburg). Johanna Wolleschensky used stimulus-based guided interviews to investigate what young people understand by “journalism” and what general expectations they have of the quality of journalistic offerings in general and of journalistic information on Instragram in particular. We warmly congratulate Johanna Wolleschensky on her outstanding achievement and wish her all the best in her new position as a research associate at the Department of Journalism at the Bundeswehr University Munich. It was and is a pleasure for us to work with her!

In June, two lectures on the joint project will be held in Münster and Tübingen: On invitation of the Rotary Club, Assistant Professor Dr. Helena Stehle will speak in Münster on June 14, 2022, about “Journalism-Audience Relations Today – Mutual Expectations and Consequences of Their (Non)Fulfillment.” The following week, on June 22, 2022, Dr. Hanne Detel will present the collaborative project at the research colloquium of the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Tübingen. The focus will be on current research results from the exploration phase of the project.

In a talk titled “Investigating the journalist-audience relationship in the digital age. A multi-stage research project”, the project team is going to present its research program at the 72nd Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), the largest international academic association for communication scholars with more than 5000 members from over 80 countries. The hybrid conference will be held in Paris from May 26 to 30, 2022, on the theme “One World, One Network?”.