What Journalists Want and What They Ought to Do (In)Congruences Between Journalists’ Role Conceptions and Audiences’ Expectations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes how journalists’ role conceptions compare to what the population expects fromthem. We model this interrelation as part of the reflexive relationship between journalism and audiences which is characterized by mutual (self-)expectations that can be more or less congruent. Through a representative CATI-survey (n = 1,000) we explore the tasks German citizens expect journalists to fulfill and compare them with existing representative data on German journalists’ own role conceptions as collected in the “Worlds of Journalism” study. For that purpose, we adapted the item battery on journalistic role conceptions for the audience's perspective and complemented it with potential new journalistic tasks such as moderating public discourse online. Results show that what journalists want to do most is also what the population thinks they should do: these are primarily the traditional journalistic tasks of objective reporting as well as analysis and explanation, but also the promotion of tolerance and cultural diversity. Looking more closely at the population's opinions reveals that respondents, in general, also want journalists to provide source transparency. However, individual citizens’ preferences are diverse, with age, gender, and news usage practices correlating with different expectations of journalism.