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Dieser Artikel erzählt die Entstehungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte des 2000 gegründeten Open Access-Journals aus Sicht von vier Herausgeber:innen, die die Arbeit und den Inhalt der Zeitschrift mitgeprägt haben. Dieser Artikel ist zuerst in dem Sammelband „Widerständigkeiten des Alltags“ (Hamm, Holfelder, Ritter, Schwell & Sutter, 2019) aus Anlass des 60. Geburtstages von Klaus Schönberger erschienen, einem der beiden Gründer und Herausgeber von kommunikation@gesellschaft. Wir danken den Herausgebern für die Erlaubnis des Wiederabdrucks des Textes zum 20-jährigen Jubiläum des Journals und anlässlich des Relaunches auf einer OJS-Plattform.

While digital networked media contribute to a substantial shift in the relationship between journalists and their audiences, current research still largely focuses on one side or the other. This paper aims to overcome this conceptual and empirical deficit by presenting findings from two case studies on German news journalism (a daily TV newscast and a weekly political talk show). They operationalize the concept of inclusion distance, which aims at the (in-)congruence of mutual expectations between journalists and audience members, in a series of standardized surveys among newsroom staff as well as their online users. The paper introduces three different comparative dimensions which this study design affords and illustrates them with findings (1) on journalistic role conceptions and (2) the (assumed) motivations for participation. Besides demonstrating the value of such a multi-level comparison, our findings also provide substantial and nuanced evidence concerning the relation between journalists and their...

The audience has always been an important reference for journalism although, under mass media conditions, it remained an “operative fiction” for its practitioners, reflecting a clear distinction between sender and recipients. Recent shifts in mediated communication towards networked public spheres and the increasing implementation of participatory features force media organizations, journalists and scholars alike to rethink the journalism–audience relationship. We introduce the concept of audience inclusion in journalism, to provide an analytical framework to investigate the relationship between journalists and (their) audience. The article presents the results of a multi-method case study of the German television newscast “Tagesschau” and its online platform tagesschau.de, and compares the attitudes of journalists and audience members towards the role of journalists, the relevance of participatory functions, the motivations for participation, and their general assessment of audience participation. By and...

This chapter provides an overview on approaches to conceptualize and research the journalism/audience relationship. It addresses theoretical issues in more detail and discusses some ways the journalism/audience relationship has been conceptualized in empirical studies. The chapter focuses on the proximity and distance between journalism and audience and the role of journalism research in this respect. Paradoxically, the relation between journalism and its audience as a topic is both classical and emerging in journalism research. The most common approach to assess the journalism/audience relation in an integrated research design relies, however, on survey data. Online media have introduced new modes of observation to journalists, including monitoring and aggregating digital traces of audience members which reveal information about news preferences, appreciation, engagement, or recall. In particular, the integration of social media into the media repertoires of individuals and media organizations urges us to rethink these categories, which are so fundamental, even constitutive, for journalism and audience research alike.

Current technological, organizational and institutional changes fundamentally alter the relationship between journalism and its audience – with consequences not only for journalistic practice, but also for theoretical and methodological issues of media research. After briefly recounting three perspectives on the audience, the paper outlines key aspects of the sociological theory of inclusion and explicates them in a novel and comprehensive heuristic model of audience inclusion in journalism. It introduces two constructs which apply both to journalism and the audience: (1) inclusion performance subsumes inclusion practices and their manifest results, and (2) inclusion expectations subsume attitudes, norms and perceptions with respect to audience inclusion in journalism. The degree of congruence between performances of journalists and audience members is interpreted as inclusion level; the degree of congruence between the expectations is interpreted as inclusion distance. This model can serve as a heuristic...

This article proposes a general model to analyze and compare different uses of the blog format. Based on ideas from sociological structuration theory, as well as on existing blog research, it argues that individual usage episodes are framed by three structural dimensions of rules, relations, and code, which in turn are constantly (re)produced in social action. As a result, “communities of blogging practices” emerge-that is, groups of people who share certain routines and expectations about the use of blogs as a tool for information, identity, and relationship management. This analytical framework can be the basis for systematic comparative and longitudinal studies that will further understanding of similarities and differences in blogging practices.