Category: Review

by Fritz Hausjell / Wolfgang R. Langenbucher / Maria Beinborn (contributing co-author) / The idea of selecting and presenting the best books written by journalists is a project of the Institute for Journalism and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna, co-founded by Hannes Haas (1957-2014) and compiled by Wolfgang R. Langenbucher and Fritz Hausjell. With Journalism Research, a new medium for publication has been found.

Reviewed by Ralf Spiller

The term »Peace Journalism« first emerged around 1900. Social science has been researching the concept for about 25 years. But what exactly is Peace Journalism? Is it journalism about peace? A normative concept of what constitutes good reporting? Or something else entirely? Kempf’s short book sheds light on the issue.

Reviewed by Beatrice Dernbach

Trust has become a buzzword in public communication in recent years. While people do trust science in times of crisis, as evidenced by the Science Barometer by Wissenschaft im Dialog, politicians and journalists do not enjoy much of it. In empirical research, trust in (!) journalism is often and still equated with media trust, which is not the same thing.

Reviewed by Hans-Dieter Kübler

As many sources cite, in 2014/15, the (first) Ukraine crisis and overwhelming refugee movements gave rise to the term »lying press« to bash liberal mainstream media for their alleged disinformation and manipulation, used especially by right-wing protagonists such as Pegida. Ultimately, mainstream media came under enormous pressure to justify themselves. Trust in quality media and public broadcasting, which had previously been taken almost for granted, began to decline, media criticism often turned into criticism of the system.

Reviewed by Sascha Thürmann In their Handbuch Politischer Journalismus, Marlis Prinzing and Roger Blum planned to take on the brave experiment of representing the totality of political journalism in modern European democracies. There is no doubt that this is a major challenge given the diversity and crucial significance of political journalism.

Reviewed by Fabian Prochazka Journalism is just one of many things on offer in the digital public sphere. User-generated content sticks to news like limpets on a ship’s hull: It is a rare article that finds readers without comments, ›likes,‹ or a friendly recommendation in the family WhatsApp group. But how does this ›metacommunication‹ shape the way recipients assess quality?

Reviewed by Lukas Herzog / In his practitioners’ manual as part of the Gelbe Reihe series, Sven Preger brings together two phenomena that are the subject of intense discussion at the moment: podcasts and storytelling. He thus finds it impossible to omit the trigger for the ongoing boom in podcasting, the American production Serial, addressing it right at the beginning in order to dispel some of what he considers common misconceptions on the success of the series.

Reviewed by Ralf Spiller / The terms storytelling and narrative have become buzzwords, states Michael Müller right on the first page of his book, and would be evaluated very differently, in part also negatively. He contends that as »storytelling animals,« we humans would be thinking in narrative structures in a wide array of areas.