Digitalization has had a profound impact on the technological, economic and social foundations of journalism and changed journalistic skills and work processes in many ways. This transformation coincides – and is partly related to – an intensification of the discourse about journalism’s role in society: On the one hand, journalism comes under pressure from governments and political interest groups and its democratic worth is being questioned by those who see it as little more than the mouthpiece of power elites. On the other hand, however, we can detect a new sensitivity regarding the democratic value of journalism and an interest in strengthening journalistic quality and adapting good journalism practice for the digital age.
Because journalism education makes an important contribution to ensure journalistic quality, programmes and curricula need to keep track of the digital transformation and the debates that surround it. This presentation asks how journalism education institutions draw on discourses about journalism and social responsibility, how they adapt their programs in order to respond to the practical demands of professional journalism in the digital age, and which skills, knowledge and values should ultimately form the core of journalism education.
Empirically, the presentation is based on a) a content analysis of all 67 academic and non-academic journalism education programs in Austria with a total of 1818 individual courses (in 2019), which were compared with regard to structure, content, skills and competencies, and teaching methods; b) guided interviews with 29 programme representatives about e.g. the aims of an adequate journalism education, its role with regard to journalism practice and the industry, the knowledge, skills and tools important for working in the media, and the relevance of contemporary debates and the democratic function of journalism in the classroom.
For a theoretical framework, the presentation draws on the distinction of different types of competencies in journalism practice (Gossel 2015; Nowak 2007) as well as on Foucault’s (1980: 194ff.) concept of dispositive [apparatus] and its subsequent development by the German Critical Discourse Analysis and Sociology of Knowledge Approach (Jäger/Jäger 2007; Bührmann/Schneider 2008; Keller 2011). Thus it proposes as an analytical model a “dispositive of journalism”, which is understood as the relations between the journalism discourse, journalistic practices and the concrete manifestations of discourses and practices – educational institutions and curricula being a part of the latter.
Results show e.g. that while digital competencies are regularly taught in the curricula, the Austrian educational discourse is highly aware of a rising interest in the media’s role in society, and – like others in Europe (cp. Drok 2019; Bettels-Schwabbauer 2018) – emphasizes professional “core values” over technological skills. In an education landscape characterized by transnationalization and standardization (cp. Ibold/Deuze 2012), the results address issues beyond a national case study, namely how journalism education relates to the larger framework of both journalism practices and the discursive definition of “being a journalist”, how it can enable critical reflection on journalism’s role in society, facilitate ethical standards and human understanding, and respond to the fast-changing requirements of a disruptive environment.