“The role of journalism has significantly changed ”

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Founded in 1924 as the Institute of Newspaper Studies (Institut für Zeitungswissenschaft), the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW) at LMU is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Director Professor Constanze Rossmann and journalism researcher Professor Thomas Hanitzsch discuss the influence of technological change on their discipline, the future of journalism, and the social significance of modern media research.

The opening of the institute was announced in print, while communication of its 100th anniversary is largely an online issue. How has the transformation of the media landscape changed communication processes?

Thomas Hanitzsch: Many of the changes we’re observing occur in tandem with technological change and are one of the core topics of our discipline. Communication processes have changed dramatically with digitalization. Communication today is a multi-channel phenomenon; people who were once merely the addressees of content now have plenty of opportunities to take part in public communication. Moreover, the former separation between interpersonal and public communication – that is to say, relayed via mass media – has dissolved. Interpersonal communication is increasingly entering the public domain through digital media – think of personal contents on social media. As such, they’ve become an important subject of research.

Digitalization and journalism

What do media researchers make of these changes?

Hanitzsch: At the beginning, the new participation opportunities afforded by the internet were viewed with a lot of optimism by researchers. We hoped the internet would democratize the communications landscape and political communication by offering people who had no voice in the media the means to participate. But for the past decade at least, this initial euphoria has given way to sobriety. Increasingly, we’re seeing the “dark side” of digitalization. Social media are increasingly being used as platforms for hate and disinformation. And the rapid development of artificial intelligence is adding new challenges. Instead of democratization, destructive content often predominates. These dynamics are deeply shaping today’s society and are challenging our research discipline.

AI in everyday journalism

What role does the journalist play in this scenario?

Hanitzsch: Their role has changed a great deal. For example, social media make it possible to communicate past journalists, as it were, bypassing journalistic middlemen. Before digitalization, communication science assigned the role of gatekeeper to journalism. It was primarily journalists who decided what information entered the public sphere. In principle, anybody can publish and disseminate content online nowadays.

AI tools have quickly become established in German newsrooms, designed to help journalists investigate and write stories. This can save a tremendous amount of time. It’s problematic, however, that AI often reproduces stereotypes and other known weaknesses of reporting. And so journalists remain indispensable: They set priorities, identify relevant topics, and contextualize information for their audience. AI won’t be able to take over these core tasks, even in the long term.

What challenges arise here for journalists?

Constanze Rossmann: Even more than before, they’re required to check the soundness of information and sources, especially when working with AI-generated content, which sometimes generates false information, reproduces stereotypical distortions, and even invents sources wholesale. There was a case, for instance, where AI referenced a survey on a political topic which didn’t exist. Although this is an extreme example, it illustrates the potential pitfalls. Humans retain responsibility here, as journalists are accountable for the errors in their reporting. Increasingly, it will be their role in future to check for factual accuracy. But they’re also faced with new legal and ethical issues, when it comes to things like copyright. AI often latches on to existing content and generates something new out of it, which leads to legal conflicts.

What are the challenges facing the recipients of news?

Hanitzsch: Research shows that readers of AI-generated texts can scarcely distinguish them from stories written by journalists. Equally, the use of online algorithms changes the way in which people perceive information. Algorithms determine what contents people are shown, creating personalized information bubbles that can foster a distorted worldview.

Communicating the climate crisis

In view of these developments, how has the institute’s mission changed, specifically in relation to the training of future media professionals?

Rossmann: Regarding the fundamental principles, nothing has changed. We train students to understand the existing media system and the basic processes of communication, reception, and impact and to prepare them for jobs in the media and adjacent sectors. But of course we’re also responsive to changes in the media landscape and deliberately make room for current topics in our syllabi. In our research seminars, for instance, students carry out studies on current issues such as social media, artificial intelligence, and fake news. And our “Practical Modules” include digital media options as well as journalism, public relations, and advertising.

Many of the classical models of communication science hail from an era before digitalization. Are they still relevant today?

Hanitzsch: Yes, because many fundamental processes of information processing and media impact have not changed. The gatekeeping theory mentioned earlier has been adapted. Another example from the 1970s is the spiral of silence, which says that people tend to withhold their opinion if they believe their view is a minority one. This theory continues to hold true in the world of online communication and social media.

Rossmann: The cultivation theory is another example of an idea from a very different time which has remained relevant. In its original formulation from the early 1970s, it posits the hypothesis that television plays a key secondary role in the socialization of heavy viewers by influencing their attitudes and perception of reality. This needs to account for other usage habits in today’s world, including the viewing of series and movies on streaming platforms and other socialization agents such as social media, but it continues to hold true in its essence. As such, the theories are flexible enough to adapt to changed media landscapes.

At the Department of Media and Communication today, there are research fields like computational journalism, which combines classical journalistic methods with digital ones, but also, say, health, science, and crisis communication. Has the discipline diversified?

Rossmann: Indeed, the variety of topics has expanded greatly. Health and crisis communication, my principal areas of research, have gained additional traction as a result of the pandemic. Climate and science communication are other important fields. In addition, we’ve got experts at the institute who are doing research into online radicalization, hostility toward science, and digital media skills.

Hanitzsch: Our thematic diversification is also partly attributable to the huge growth in the institute over the past two decades. 20 years ago, we were a team some 30 to 35 people strong, whereas today we’ve got a staff of over 80 researchers looking into a broad range of topics. This variety is highly valuable for research and teaching alike, as it means we can offer students a larger spectrum of topics, which they can delve deeper into according to their interests.

Is media research sometimes outpaced by its rapidly advancing object?

Hanitzsch: This is certainly a concern for many of us today when starting a research project, especially longer undertakings like doctoral theses. The media landscape is changing so fast that a technology that is still highly topical at the start of a project may have been replaced by a new one, or have lost relevance, by the time it’s completed.

But research remains valuable even when media formats change or disappear, because in communication science it’s not so much about the medium itself as the underlying communication processes. The research findings on information processing, media impacts, and production mechanisms are often transferable and can be applied to new technologies. Such studies furnish important insights, as they reveal the dynamics and potential challenges when new technologies and media are introduced.

Rossmann: A current doctoral thesis, for example, is investigating how cancer patients obtain information online about their illness and treatment and introduce it into their discussions with their doctor. An exciting aspect is how the latter respond to this changed information behavior and how this alters doctor-patient communication. The particular online media used by patients might change in the course of the doctorate, but by and large it’s less about the media themselves as about fundamentally understanding the communication behavior and the resulting dynamics between patients and their doctors.

Which topics will become even more important in communication science in the future?

Rossmann: In addition to the changes in the media landscape, broader societal changes are also influencing the discipline. Health and climate topics, for example, are causing us to reflect more on the communication of scientific issues. And the increased prevalence of disinformation and conspiracy theories – for example, in connection with the war in Ukraine – will give us much to ponder over the coming years, as will the influence of algorithms on political communication and opinion-formation.

Hanitzsch: It’s also interesting how communication science as a discipline was once a taker, but is now a giver. By which I mean that, historically, we borrowed a lot from disciplines such as psychology and sociology, whereas now our theories and insights are increasingly feeding into other disciplines. The importance of communication science within the social sciences and humanities is increasing as media and communication processes play an ever more central role in society.

People

Director of the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW),Professor Constanze Rossmann, researches and teaches with a particular interest in health communication, risk and crisis communication, and digital media in healthcare.

In his work at the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW), Professor Thomas Hanitzsch is especially focused on global journalism cultures, developments in German journalism, and methods of comparative communication research.

The Institute of Newspaper Studies

From newspaper studies to media research

In the 1920s, Bavarian publisher associations called for the foundation of an institute for monitoring the press and training journalists. Karl d’Ester became the first Professor of Newspaper Studies and chairman of the eponymous Institute of Newspaper Studies at the University of Munich in 1924. In the 1930s, the institute obtained the right to confer doctorates, and from 1963 it also awarded Magister degrees. Renamed the Institute of Communication Science (Newspaper Studies), it launched a pilot project for journalist training in the 1970s.

From the 1980s onward, it constantly expanded and moved premises several times. It incorporated various opportunities for students such as the internship office and contacts with the Bavarian radio channel for trainees. In 2004, the institute adopted its current name of the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW). Since then, it has continued to evolve and grow – with new professorships, courses, and a focus on political communication and changes in the media landscape.

Website: Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (Institute of Newspaper Studies)