1.5 years after the launch of the DFG research project “Journalism Innovation in Democratic Societies” (JoIn-DemoS), the international research team drew an interim conclusion in Eichstätt. 

After the last meeting in November 2021 in Elche, Spain, the JoIn-DemoS research team was finally able to meet again in person. A total of 16 scientists met for an exchange at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt on the 19th and 20th of May. 

The German researchers led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Meier received guests from Spain (Universidad Miguel Hernández), Austria (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) and Switzerland (Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften and Università della Svizzera italiana). 

The project “Journalism Innovation in Democratic Societies” has been running since October 2020. After 1.5 years, an interim conclusion was to be drawn in Eichstätt. The researchers spent two days intensively exchanging ideas on the innovations identified in the first “Work Package” and discussing the further procedure for the next research steps. 

In the first of three project phases, the most important innovations in journalism of the past 10 years were identified in the individual countries. Step two, which is currently being carried out, now tries to use 100 best practice examples (20 per country) to prove, for example, factors that promote or inhibit innovations in journalism. For this important step, the two-day workshop was of great importance: “The personal exchange, the joint discussion and the search for solutions in the group is invaluable for every research project. Especially when it spans five countries. We were able to make good progress and are now looking forward to making even better progress in the data collection of sub-study II,” says Klaus Meier.

In addition, possibilities for evaluating the online survey that is currently taking place were discussed. In future work steps, the context of the innovations and their influence on democratic societies will now be researched in more detail. 

The project is to be completed by September 2023. Until then, further face-to-face meetings in Switzerland and Austria are planned. More information about our team and the research results can be found here on our website.