How Journalists Think about Media Effects—And Why We Should Care

Abstract

Research suggests that journalists' beliefs about media effects are influenced by unsystematically gathered knowledge and subjective-intuitive judgments. However, it has also been shown that these presumptions must be considered important factors for the formation of journalistic coverage. Against this background, this article synthesizes existing research on dimensions, determinants, and consequences of journalists' presumptions of media effects. The resulting framework offers researchers in the field of journalistic content production a comprehensive overview of the possible role that presumptions of media effects could play for journalistic content creation. In a second step, we summarize the implications that the current state of research points at. We discuss why journalism scholars should integrate presumed media effects into their research agendas and what communication researchers as well as journalists themselves could do to promote more realistic beliefs about media effects among journalists.

Truly Engaging Audiences

“…These assumptions regarding how journalism serves its audience in a democratic manner has apparently emerged via the long-standing predominance of a professional perspective in journalism studies. In the 20 th century, the limited and almost non-existent information about the readers that newsrooms received at the time (Heise, Loosen, Reimer & Schmidt, 2014;Müller & Hohlfeld, 2017) seemed to encourage scholars to concentrate, alternatively, on the question of how journalists ought to deal with economic and political powers (Christians et al 2010). They carried this out by focusing on the theoretical development of professional roles such as watchdogs and gatekeepers, which highlighted the relevance of their being independent, autonomous, and objective in the face of external powers (Hanitszch & Vos, 2017).…”