Effects of journalism awards as quality signals on demand

Abstract

This article examines the question whether journalism awards can serve as quality signals and increase the demand for quality journalism. Information asymmetries between suppliers (journalists) and consumers (reader, viewers, users) can lead to inefficiently low demand for high-quality journalistic products, since consumers are unable to verify the product’s quality before consumption (ex ante). This problem can be addressed by providing customers with quality signals. We test the hypothesis that journalism awards can serve as quality signals by analyzing the signaling power of the German Grimme Prize in the category ‘Information and Culture’. A quantitative difference-in-differences approach is used to discover differences in the audience development of 109 nominees and winners. Results show that winning the Grimme Prize has a small positive effect on audience reach with respect to the total audience. Nevertheless, no effect on broadcasts’ market shares is discernable. Considering different audience groups, winning the award particularly seems to attract those consumers who are expected to have lesser experience with journalistic broadcasts.

Metajournalistic Discourse on Participatory Journalism: Examining a Decade of Coverage in Trade Magazines

“…Turning to RQ2, the themes uncovered here mirror and corroborate the reasons for and against participatory journalism presented above in the literature review: Facilitating journalistic research, community connection and high-quality discussions reflect functional and civic-oriented reasons, while brand loyalty and economic advantages reflect economic and strategic reasons for participation. New forms of narration and depiction emerged as a somewhat new theme, although it can also be connected to economic and strategic reasons, since awards may positively impact audience reach (Wellbrock and Wolfram 2021). In turn, low-quality discussions, questionable motives for participation, uncertainty regarding new sources, detrimentally catering to the audience and harassment of journalists reflect functional and civic-oriented reasons, while work overload for journalists, audience's lack of interest in participation and professionals being replaced by amateurs reflect economic and strategic reasons against participation.…”

Examining the digital renewal of news communication: A categorization of presentation modes in digital journalism

“…While the quality of journalism has been a subject of much debate (e.g. Wellbrock and Klein, 2014), in media practice the award explicitly aims at “journalistic excellence” (GOA, n.d) and is well accepted in German-speaking countries (Wellbrock and Wolfram, 2019). Therefore, it is assumed that the offerings discussed can be used as a state-of-the-art-portrayal of digital journalism, so that the data obtained can be considered representative.…”