Digital Media and the Diversification of Professionalism: A U.S.-German Comparison of Journalism Cultures

• In Event: 370 - Regular Session. Crossing Borders: New Digital Technology and People

Abstract

Digital media adoption is revelatory not only regarding larger transformations of public communication. Differences, tensions and negotiations about gains and losses in this process also mark cultural points of departure and features deemed most significant about them. A US-German comparative study of digital media adoption in professional journalism reveals two tendencies that occur simultaneously but to different degree: 1) diversification of professionalism, which is accompanied by a media environment that is increasingly hybrid and 2) corroboration of professionalism, connected to tendencies of normalizing new technologies.
Aside from similar experiences of accelerated news cycles, digital- and particularly social media adoption reflects distinct professional cultures and their responses to the crisis of traditional news media. German journalists in this study reproduced more than altered professional norms through social media while their advent shook the entire conception of what US journalists did, led them to adjust their occupational roles and expand their professional boundaries. Especially Twitter featured US reporters as allowing more transparency of practice. Findings are interpreted according to media systemic differences and distinct, culturally shaped positions journalism inhabits in these civil societies.
This paper is based on ethnographic research of two groups of political reporters in the US and Germany. Field research stretched from spring of 2009 to summer of 2012, set at state governments in Albany, New York and Munich, Bavaria, involving participant observation, 72 interviews with journalists (from 31 different news organization) and spokespeople (across all political parties and branches of government).

Author

• Matthias Revers, Goethe University Frankfurt