SCOOP · Innovation in Investigative Journalism

Innovation in Investigative Journalism

This project has contributed unique insights into various aspects of the practice of investigative journalism, which is presently in flux, and also emphasized the impact of new technology upon cross-institutional collaboration, cross-border collaboration, and the pooling of editorial and journalistic resources. Through its purposeful presence in international newsrooms in both legacy and digital-only news organizations while decision-making was underway, the project has shed light on the ways in which reporters are adapting to new funding models in the field of journalism through pooling resources and cultivating projects across organizations and between both traditional and very non-traditional journalists. Raising the awareness on how watchdog journalism can improve in order to hold all type of power to account, is important in a time with an increase of ´fake news´ on the rise. The focus of this project remains rare within media studies, which continues to highlight news production, the increasing problems with funding journalism, and the declining quality of the media’s product. The main objective has been to study the impact of innovative digital tools and platforms, new funding mechanisms, and new or unfamiliar actors upon the roles and practices that define investigative journalism and, by extension, journalism in general. It has done so in four ways: (1) by looking at both local and national journalistic start-ups in the UK with international resonance for their work; (2) by comparing alternative organizations such as non-profits or citizen-journalist co-ops with legacy and commercially driven media organizations; (3) by analyzing emerging roles in the practice of watchdog journalism, looking at how they are established and how they take their final shape through negotiations in a new media ecology now forced to accommodate both traditional reporters and editors alongside activists, hackers, designers, community coordinators, and so on; and (4) by generating new knowledge that will supply comparative datasets for similar studies of journalistic transformation in other places and times. The project has addressed the following objects: 1. It has mapped and generated knowledge concerning how investigative journalists fulfil their roles as watchdogs in democratic societies. 2. Conducted ethnographic analyses which generate new knowledge about how reporters adapt to changing technologies and organizational structures. 3. The project has mapped, analyzed, and reported on how digital media and new technologies are changing working practices. 4. And it has mapped how investigative journalism has adapted to new business models, particularly via a comparison between entrepreneurial media organizations and legacy media organizations.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз