Normativity and Journalism: Assessing Journalists’ Aspirations of a Democratic Public Sphere and Role Perceptions Empirically

• In Event: The Role, Content, and Shaping of Political News in a New Media Environment

Abstract

From a theoretical perspective of public sphere this study investigates (a) journalists’ normative perceptions of the public sphere and (b) the connection between these perceptions and journalistic role perceptions through an online survey of German journalists. Four normative models of the public sphere are the points of origin for analyzing journalists’ normative perceptions. Their role perceptions are conceptualized by drawing on the project Worlds of Journalism. The author concludes that German journalists have three different normative perceptions of the public sphere: the citizen-oriented, the discourse-oriented and the elite-oriented perception of the public sphere. These are related to the subdimensions constituting their journalistic role perceptions: interventionism, power distance, and market orientation (Hanitzsch, 2007). The results of this study offer a perspective on a so far neglected matter of empirical research on the public sphere as well as on an interface of perceptions of the public sphere and journalism research.

Author

• Charlotte Loeb, U of Mannheim