Data-driven journalism can be considered as journalism’s response to the datafication of society. To better understand the key components and development of this still young and fast evolving genre, we investigate what the field itself defines as its ‘gold-standard’: projects that were nominated for the Data Journalism Awards from 2013 to 2016 (n = 225). Using a content analysis, we examine, among other aspects, the data sources and types, visualisations, interactive features, topics and producers. Our results demonstrate, for instance, only a few consistent developments over the years and a predominance of political pieces, of projects by newspapers and by investigative journalism organisations, of public data from official institutions as well as a glut of simple visualisations, which in sum echoes a range of general tendencies in data journalism. On the basis of our findings, we evaluate data-driven journalism’s potential for improvement with regard to journalism’s societal functions.

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Zusammenfassung: Die transparenz, die ein Autor und eine Redaktion gegenüber dem Publikum selbst herstellen können, gilt traditionell als ein eher marginales Kriterium journalistischer Qualität. Doch neue transparenz-Modelle haben aufgrund der Interaktivität, der schnelligkeit, der Archivierung und der fehlenden Platzbeschränkung im Internet höhere Potentiale als klassische Instrumente in Print-oder Rundfunkmedien. In Beitragsanmerkungen, Web-Videos, Blogs, twitter-feeds und sozialen Netzwerken diskutieren Journalisten mit Nutzern über redaktionelle Entscheidungen und legen Rechenschaft ab. transparenz liegt im trend der digitalen Öffentlich-keit, ist aber nicht eindeutig, sondern widersprüchlich und komplex zu bewerten. Dieser Beitrag konzeptionalisiert (Selbst-)Transparenz und klassifiziert die zur Verfügung stehenden Instrumente qualitativ in einer dreidimensionalen Matrix. Dies öffnet den Blick auf Problemzonen und Konfliktpotentiale: Redaktionen, die offene Selbstreflexion demonstrieren, verabschieden sich vom Ideal des "objektiven Journalismus". Dennoch ist transparenz nicht nur ethisch erwünscht, sondern soll das Vertrauen des Publikums in journalistische Produkte steigern, weil sie Qualitätsbewertungen durch das Publikum ermöglicht. Ein Experiment belegt erstmals einen Wirkungszusammenhang zwischen selbst-transparenz und Vertrauen in einigen Aspekten, aber nicht grundsätzlich. Die Wirkung muss differenziert nach Prozess- und Produkttransparenz sowie nach Medium analysiert werden.Schlüsselwörter: transparenz im Journalismus · Medienqualität · Glaubwürdigkeit · Vertrauen · Werte · Medienwirkung Transparency in journalism -Instruments, conflicts, effects Abstract: the transparency that journalists and newsrooms can produce for their audience has long been regarded as a rather marginal criterion for journalistic quality. But new transparency models-due to the interactivity, immediacy, archiving capacity and the absent limitation of space in the internet-offer greater potentials than classical instruments in print and broadcasting. In Publizistik (2011) 56:133-155 comments, web videos, blogs, twitter feeds and social networks, journalists discuss with users and publicly account for editorial decisions. transparency is fashionable in the digital public sphere; its evaluation, however, is not clear, but ambiguous and complex. this paper conceptualizes (self-)transparency and qualitatively classifies the available instruments in a three-dimensional matrix model. This is to facilitate the analysis of problematic areas and potential conflicts: Newsrooms demonstrating open self-reflection dismiss the ideal of "objective journalism". Yet, transparency is not only an ethical demand, but is also supposed to strengthen trust in journalistic products because it permits quality evaluations by the audience. An experiment shows, for the first time, that self-transparency has an effect on trust in some aspects but not as a basic principle. Analysing this interdependency, we have to distinguish between transparency of proce...

In this article we propose the notion of X Journalism as an observational tool and concept. It owes its existence to a simple observation: the evolution of journalism is accompanied by the emergence of ever-new journalism-related terms, i.e. combinations of the word ‘journalism’ with a particular modifying term that represents and signals a certain specificity and novelty. Examples include ‘robot journalism’, ‘foundation-funded journalism’, ‘cross-border journalism’, or ‘solutions journalism’ – just to name a few. To date, we have collected and mapped 166 X journalisms and have ‘crowd-categorized’ them into clusters according to the different aspects they refer to. We explore X Journalism as a concept, present our mapping, and show how it can help to cope with journalism’s increasing complexity, grasp the diversity of the field, trace its constant evolution, as well as identify patterns and interrelations between these different movements and occurrences. Through a test case of audience-related X journalisms we demonstrate an empirical application before illustrating the theoretical compatibility of X Journalism and suggesting a research agenda that highlights potentials for X Journalism-driven studies.