Exploring the Democratic Role of News Media During Covid-19: Triangulating Digital News Outputs, Journalists’ Professional Reflections, and Audiences’ Experiences in the UK and Germany

Start date: 1 June 2022
End date: 1 June 2025
Funder: BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant
Primary investigator: Dr Imke Henkel

Value

£ 9.457,00

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Description

This project investigates the role digital quality news have in democracy; as a case study it investigates the role these media fulfilled during Covid-19 in two Western democracies, the UK and Germany. Covid-19 has put democracies in general and the news media in particular under considerable strain. Issues such as disinformation and populism, and the fracturing and polarisation of societies and media have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and in turn endangered the fight against Covid-19. In contrast, quality news media are often expected to function as pillars of democracy, providing reliable information and a space for public discourse.

My project investigates to what extent digital quality news media in the UK and Germany fulfilled this ideal democratic function during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project will consider all three dimensions of news: content, production, and reception. In addition, it will serve as a small-scale pilot study for a larger research project involving a wider selection of digital news media in European democracies.

I use a mixed method approach: I analyse a corpus of news stories from quality digital news outlets in the UK and Germany published during a week each in 2020 and 2021 (N=672); conduct focus groups with audience members; and interview journalists. The focus groups and interviews take place after Covid and reference the experience of news during the pandemic only as memory. Thus, the research goes beyond the democratic role of news during the pandemic and explores how news can be reassessed as a social act.

A final report is due by 1 September 2025

Impact

Not foreseeable at this stage; the project is designed as a theoretical study and a pilot. However, findings from this research may be of interest to media regulators and to media practitioners, in particular editors.