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In politics and academia, but also in the broader public, there has been wide discussion concerning a sense of dwindling social cohesion most markedly in liberal democracies. One of the virulent questions in this context is the role journalism plays and the common notion that journalism can strengthen or weaken cohesion. However, there is no shared understanding of whether and how journalism or journalistic reporting influence cohesion and whether and in what way journalism is at all responsible for strengthening a society’s cohesion. Against this background, we conducted four group discussions with a total of 21 experts from the fields of journalism, academia, and ‘cohesion practice’ in order to understand how different actors inside and outside the field of journalism view the relationship between social cohesion and journalism. The analysis reveals that there are no systematic differences between the views of these three expert groups. Nonetheless, the many facets of and different perspectives on the topic are fundamentally ambivalent. This is because the interrelation between journalism and social cohesion is characterized by tensions and trade-offs in and between three dimensions: society’s reachability, representability, and ability for dialogue. This also means that journalists need to balance these tensions time and again and, generally, a society continuously negotiates the interrelation between journalism and cohesion. In modern societies, journalism itself is a forum in which this negotiation takes place; and the fact that it takes place already contributes to cohesion, but can also compromise it.

In this article we propose the notion of X Journalism as an observational tool and concept. It owes its existence to a simple observation: the evolution of journalism is accompanied by the emergence of ever-new journalism-related terms, i.e. combinations of the word ‘journalism’ with a particular modifying term that represents and signals a certain specificity and novelty. Examples include ‘robot journalism’, ‘foundation-funded journalism’, ‘cross-border journalism’, or ‘solutions journalism’ – just to name a few. To date, we have collected and mapped 166 X journalisms and have ‘crowd-categorized’ them into clusters according to the different aspects they refer to. We explore X Journalism as a concept, present our mapping, and show how it can help to cope with journalism’s increasing complexity, grasp the diversity of the field, trace its constant evolution, as well as identify patterns and interrelations between these different movements and occurrences. Through a test case of audience-related X journalisms we demonstrate an empirical application before illustrating the theoretical compatibility of X Journalism and suggesting a research agenda that highlights potentials for X Journalism-driven studies.

Investigative journalism is about uncovering what shall not be covered, yet, blind spots remain. This paper explores what topics investigative journalists consider to be neglected in different regions of the world, why these topics are not covered, and how journalists strive to report them in spite of difficulties. We theorize the blind spots by drawing on the Hierarchy of Influences Model, meaning that blind spots in investigative reporting are deeply rooted in these influences. We explore these issues in a global comparative approach and conducted qualitative face-to-face interviews at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019 with 90 investigative journalists from 60 countries. Our findings show that many topics can’t be worked on due to repercussions from four levels of the Hierarchy of Influences Model (esp. from the wider social system), leading to self-censorship. The journalists overcome these obstacles with resourceful individual actions (e.g. publishing from abroad) since their media outlets and organizations are often not fit to help them due to resource constraints. Thus, journalists may defy the hierarchy and see it as their mission to persist, also and especially in countries in the Global South. However, obstacles are found globally and directly affect the nuts and bolts of journalism, such as access to information and sources.

Recent journalism research often argues that it is high time that we moved beyond the newsroom and begin asking who it is that is stimulating transformation and not what it is, as individual journalists, entrepreneurs, technology firms, and startups assume an increasingly critical role in the development of the field. This article introduces the concept of ‘pioneer journalism’ to provide just such an analysis across different organizational contexts. Pioneer journalism is understood as a particular group of journalists that incorporates new organizational forms and experimental practice in pursuit of redefining the field and its structural foundations. To introduce this concept, the article argues along three stages. First, it develops a theoretical basis on which to pin our understanding of pioneering practice by reviewing previous research into journalism’s transformation beyond the newsroom. Second, it extends the theoretical discussion into the empirical realm by looking at five extreme cases of pioneer journalists through an explorative interview analysis. Third, and to conclude, an integrated concept of pioneer journalism is outlined as a point of departure from which to further consider journalism’s re-figuration more generally.

Data-driven journalism can be considered as journalism’s response to the datafication of society. To better understand the key components and development of this still young and fast evolving genre, we investigate what the field itself defines as its ‘gold-standard’: projects that were nominated for the Data Journalism Awards from 2013 to 2016 (n = 225). Using a content analysis, we examine, among other aspects, the data sources and types, visualisations, interactive features, topics and producers. Our results demonstrate, for instance, only a few consistent developments over the years and a predominance of political pieces, of projects by newspapers and by investigative journalism organisations, of public data from official institutions as well as a glut of simple visualisations, which in sum echoes a range of general tendencies in data journalism. On the basis of our findings, we evaluate data-driven journalism’s potential for improvement with regard to journalism’s societal functions.