Journalism Education’s Response to the Challenges of Digital Transformation: A Dispositive Analysis of Journalism Training and Education Programs

Abstract

The transformation of both journalism and the European education landscape opened up a debate about the challenges of digitalisation and the aims of adequate journalism education and training programs. The article discusses how education institutions draw on journalism education discourse, how they adapt their programs in order to respond to the practical demands of professional journalism in the digital age, and which skills and knowledge are considered as the core of journalism education. In addition, it contributes to journalism theory with the development of a dispositive of journalism. This theoretical framework is employed to interpret the status quo of curricula and teaching practices in relation to journalism practice. The empirical case study of journalism training and education includes a comprehensive content analysis of sixty-seven programs and 1818 individual courses in Austria, and guided interviews with twenty-nine stakeholders about the status quo and the challenges of an adequate journalism education. Results show that the digitalisation of journalism is fully integrated in the curricula and that educators are aware of trends in both education discourse and journalism. The results also point at gaps regarding innovation and the teaching of certain topics, and show possible reasons why education practice lags behind education discourse.

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