Volume 34, Issue 2

This contribution raises the question whether journalism at its beginnings was indeed a profession only for men, as much of the research literature suggests. However, the assumption of a “gendered profession” may also be due to gendered research patterns that produce and reproduce a gendered academic discourse on journalism. The study presented here puts these questions to test and investigates the cultural, social and work-related position of female writers in German-speaking countries at the end of the 19 th century. The data is based on a complete census collected between 1896 and 1898. In a second step, the occupation and opus of female writers who worked for periodicals will be analyzed along established concepts of journalism in order to illustrate how women are systematically excluded by dominant concepts of what journalism is and journalists actually do.

Media companies as well as governments launch initiatives to reverse the decline in news consumption by adolescents. Since 2007, the Flemish government has been funding newscasts for adolescents on two commercial channels, Zoom on VTM and Jam on VT4. In 2008, these programs were evaluated using in-depth interviews with producers, content analysis of 30 episodes of each program, an analysis of the ratings for the first season, and an online survey among 663 adolescents aged 10 to 18. Results indicate that there is a lot of variation within this group, making it hard to please them with a single program. Zoom addresses slightly older adolescents (12–18) with a program closely following the “adult” news, while Jam provides younger adolescents (10–16) with more digestible and entertaining news. Most respondents in the survey liked both programs, among other things because of the strong presence of adolescents on screen. Yet adolescent viewing figures are extremely low, mainly due to the inappropriate place in the schedule.

Can an election campaign be considered a normal time period, or is it a very exceptional episode in the way the media look at political actors and issues? This is the central question of this article. We claim that during campaigns (political) journalists work under different (legal) conditions and are confronted with politicians and parties that are more active than ever, and with a public that pays more attention to who and how politics is presented. This general claim is made concrete in several hypotheses that are tested on the basis of a large dataset of Flemish news broadcasts between 2003 and 2006. Our results confirm that campaign periods strongly influence the amount, style and actors of the (political) news in Belgium (Flanders).

Do the mass media deliver what contemporary democracies require? This fundamental research question has been discussed for many decades and the body of literature is firmly rooted in the debate following from the Hutchins Commission 1947. In more recent years, monitoring of the relations between democracy and the mass media has concentrated on new or democracies in transition. Fewer monitoring efforts have been undertaken in mature democracies. The following text develops a social science based monitoring instrument for established democracies, the Media for Democracy Monitor (MDM). It has been developed at the University of Zurich and tested in five European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Portugal, and Switzerland).

Open discourses and the free formation of opinions through unfettered information flows and communicated diversity of opinion are unthinkable without independent media and essential prerequisites for a functioning democracy. Notwithstanding the importance of the linkage between media and democracy, there is no harmonized framework addressing this issue. By adopting a legal perspective, this study shall outline existing and emerging regulations, with a particular focus on broadcast, print, and online media Two regulatory tiers are distinguished: At the international level, the establishment of aWorld Information Order as well as the human rights perspective intrinsic to the subject matter will be addressed. At the national level, legal approaches to particular tensions accompanying state regulation of the media will be examined.