Audience expectations of journalism: What’s politics got to do with it?

Author(s)
Andreas Riedl, Jakob-Moritz Eberl
Abstract

Audience expectations of journalism are a crucial dimension not only to understand journalism’s public legitimacy and institutional character but also its economic foundations in terms of consumers’ prospects. Although we see a critically growing disconnect between the audience and journalism, we know little about what the audience actually expects from journalism and what explains audience expectations. Using data from an online survey among the audience (n = 2775) as well as professional journalists (n = 818), this study compares audience expectations of journalism with journalists’ role orientations in Austria. Furthermore, multivariate analyses particularly aim to explore the role of political parameters for the understanding of audience expectations of journalism. Results show both congruencies and discrepancies between citizens’ and journalists’ perception of specific functions of journalism and that – besides media use – political attitudes may very well play an important role.

Organisation(s)
Department of Communication
External organisation(s)
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW), Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt
Journal
Journalism
Volume
23
Pages
1682-1699
No. of pages
18
ISSN
1464-8849
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920976422
Publication date
12-2020
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
508007 Communication science, 508014 Journalism
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Communication, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/audience-expectations-of-journalism-whats-politics-got-to-do-with-it(bd1fe2d9-5368-46b9-8c60-c0bc4a4d366a).html