Technological innovations in information and communication are causing wide-ranging structural changes of media systems – a development that also influences the functionality of the media: On the one hand, it enhances the possibilities of media production, e.g. by inviting user participation and thereby contributing to a new diversification of media outlets. On the other hand, several factors – e.g. the online commitment of players from outside the industry, the emigration of parts of the advertising market to other platforms, and a radically transforming media usage marked by free publication offers – lead to a crisis of long-established models in media politics and economics.
Against this background, the research group “media accountability and media change” analyses the actions of multiple players that are concerned with the structural preconditions of a transforming global media landscape: How do recent digitization processes impact on journalistic performance in the newsroom? What do these developments mean from an ethical perspective? How can journalists as well as media managers and policy makers contribute to safeguarding a free and pluralistic media landscape? How do instruments of media regulation and accountability vary at the international level?
The research group combines theoretical, historical and empirical analysis to provide answers to these and similar questions. By reflecting them to concerned stakeholders, it intends to make a contribution to securing the media’s functionality in the long run.
Projects
Media Ethics and Media Accountability
- Mapping media accountability: International trends and perspectives
- Fostering capacity building for civic resilience and participation: Dialogic communication ethics and accountability (DIACOMET)
- Telling it right: The ethics of narrative journalism
Completed projects:
- Into the unknown: Understanding digital media ethics
- Triple A: Algorithms, automation, accountability
- Responsibility and resistance: Ethics in mediatized worlds
Media Structures and Media Governance
- Media-related risks and opportunities for deliberative communication: Development scenarios of the European media landscape (MEDIADELCOM)
- Journalism innovation in democratic societies (JoIn-DemoS)
- Re-organization of the regional public sphere and local journalism in the network society
- Governance of public service media: Traditions and transitions
Completed projects:
- Austria: Journalism in transition
- The management and economics of cross-border media communication
- Economic perspectives on ancillary copyright and the regulation of market-dominating search engine operators
Societal Challenges and the Role of the Media
- From transition to transformation: Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Austria's media industry
- Gendered and intersectional perspectives on media change
- Practices of media change: Socio-historical perspectives on new media
Completed projects: