Archiv für Juni 2011

Media Accountability Practices on the Internet

tse
am 15. Juni 2011
in der Kategorie MediaAcT und Netzlese
0 Kommentare

internet.jpg

Only a few days after the presentation of the anthology “Mapping Media Accountability — in Europe and Beyond“, a second set of country reports from the comparative research project “Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe” (MediaAcT) is available online. The working paper series “Media Accountability Practices on the Internet“, coordinated by David Domingo and Heikki Heikkilä, explores the opportunities and challenges of web-based instruments of media observation all around the globe. The working papers are the product of over 80 in-depth interviews with experts, media professionals and activists, and will form the empirical basis of an international comparison of the role of digital technologies in media accountability. The series includes reports from European countries (Bulgaria, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, the United Kingdom), Arab countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia) and the USA. All papers are available for download on the MediaAcT website.

My own contribution, originating from a collaboration with Huub Evers, focuses on web-based accountability processes in German journalism. Our summary:

While trust in German journalism is being challenged by recurrent journalistic misbehavior, the necessity of a functioning media accountability landscape is more pressing than ever. In fact, the German media system offers a notable variety of self-regulatory instruments that aim at safeguarding the quality of journalistic reporting. Their effects, however, seem to be limited: The German Press Council is taunted as a “toothless tiger” because of its lack of sanctioning power; media journalism has to cope with its inevitable problems of self-referentiality; and accountability mechanisms on the level of the newsroom are only slowly gaining ground.

This report discusses the potentials and pitfalls of web-based accountability processes in German journalism. Can they complement traditional instruments of journalistic self-regulation and compensate their deficiencies? Can they accomplish a better involvement of civil society actors in the debate about journalistic quality? As an analysis of the current data on Internet usage in Germany shows, the conditions are quite favorable: The Internet has a rising significance in people’s everyday life; however, the disposition to actively participate in the production of online contents is still low in most parts of the society – just as the willingness of many newsrooms to support user integration.

Qualitative expert interviews, which were conducted for this report, demonstrate that a considerable diversity of online practices fostering media accountability in Germany has been developing in recent years. Different case studies substantiate the assumption that the multitude of new voices, which is characteristic for the novel kind of media criticism in the Social Web, may well have a positive impact on practical journalism. At the same time, it becomes clear that recent innovations in media accountability are far from being a panacea for the deficits of traditional journalistic self-regulation. Particularly, the editorial handling of journalistic mistakes still leaves much room for improvements. The case of user comments on online news stories shows that web-based accountability processes may even lead to new ethical problems which have not been tackled systematically so far.

More details can be found in the PDF version of the report. The complete bibliographical data:

Huub Evers/Tobias Eberwein (2011): Can a million toothless tigers make a difference? Potentials and pitfalls of web-based accountability processes in German journalism. MediaAcT working paper 4/2011. Journalism Research and Development Centre, University of Tampere. URL: http://www.mediaact.eu/online.html

Photo: Vortexx/photocase.com

Mapping Media Accountability — in Europe and Beyond

tse
am 10. Juni 2011
in der Kategorie Bücherlese und MediaAcT
1 Kommentar

Herbert von Halem16 months after the official start of the international research project “Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe” (MediaAcT), the project’s state-of-the-art reports on media accountability research are now available in book form. The volume carries the title “Mapping Media Accountability - in Europe and Beyond”. Besides separate country reports on the status quo of media accountability research in the journalism cultures that are covered by the MediaAcT consortium, the book offers an introduction into the project’s theoretical foundations and a first cross-cultural assessment of current trends in media self-regulation and accountability. “Mapping Media Accountability” was presented to a wider public at the annual conference of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) last week. The following blurb gives a clearer idea about the book’s contents:

While press councils face tough challenges across Europe, and media reporting has almost vanished from the mass media in many countries in a time of media crisis, new forms of media accountability have emerged in the Internet: readers and viewers twitter about the media’s mistakes, online ombudsmen follow up on e-mail complaints, and journalists blog about their profession. Can such innovative instruments of media criticism effectively supplement conventional institutions of media self-regulation like press councils and media journalism?

This volume provides pioneer work in analyzing the development of established and emerging media accountability instruments in 14 countries in Eastern and Western Europe as well as the Arab world. Media scholars and students, professionals and policy-makers alike will be introduced to the specific problems and perspectives of media accountability in different media systems and journalistic cultures. Looked at from a comparative point of view, the reports hint at the formation of different cultures of media accountability within Europe and its adjacent countries. These cultures partly overlap with the journalism cultures identified in the well-known model by Hallin & Mancini. At the same time, the development of media accountability and transparency shows distinctive features incongruent with established models of journalism cultures. Consequently, the book also offers new stimuli for innovations in journalism theory.

A collection of abstracts from the book is now available on the MediaAcT website. More materials can be found on the homepage of the Cologne-based publisher Herbert von Halem.

The complete bibliographical reference:

Tobias Eberwein/Susanne Fengler/Epp Lauk/Tanja Leppik-Bork (eds.) (2011): Mapping Media Accountability - in Europe and Beyond. Cologne: Herbert von Halem Verlag, 267 pages.

Photo: Caroline Lindekamp