Journalists in Switzerland: Structures and attitudes revisited

Abstract

It is often stated that journalism and the media are going through some fundamental changes. In this article, we present a description of the journalists in Switzerland, based on a nation-wide survey conducted in 2015. This data gives a quantitative description of journalists in Switzerland. Furthermore, this article makes comparison between various groups of journalists, for example between the different language regions in Switzerland, in order to give a differentiated picture of who the journalists are, what their working situation looks like and how they perceive their own professional role in society.

Journalists’ contributions to political life in Switzerland: Professional role conceptions and perceptions of role enactment

“…This study differs in important ways from previous journalism studies in Switzerland (i.e. Bonfadelli et al, 2011;Dingerkus et al, 2016;Keel, 2011): first, we focus solely on journalists working for national newspapers in political and economic beats; second, we concentrate only on roles that are relevant for political life; and third, we take into account the perception of both role conceptions and role enactments.…”

“…The overarching aim of these two roles is thus to empower citizens to act as watchdogs for themselves. However, Dingerkus et al (2016) also considered goals like supporting national development, influencing public opinion, acting as adversary of the government, setting the political agenda, and advocating social change to politically assertive roles. Our results show that these normative goals are only included in the adversarial analyst and the advocating watchdog role.…”

“…For example, in Switzerland, many studies have explored journalistic role conceptions only by asking about ideal roles (e.g. Bonfadelli et al, 2011;Dingerkus et al, 2016;Keel, 2011). However, the relevance of examining professional ideals without practical implication seems to be missing to theorize the link between what journalists think they do and how they think they are able to do in their daily job (Weischenberg et al, 2006).…”

Female journalists under attack? Explaining gender differences in reactions to audiences’ attacks

“…The population of Swiss journalists in 2017 is estimated to be approximately 10,500 (or less). This is based on the most reliable estimation, by Dingerkus et al (2018) for 2015. We used two contact channels to maximize the reach of the survey.…”

“…The journalists participated in an anonymous manner. The final sample can be considered representative for journalists in Switzerland (see Table I in the Supplementary material for a socio-demographic comparison with an extensive study on journalists in Switzerland by Dingerkus et al (2018)). This allows us to draw statistically meaningful conclusion for all journalists in Switzerland.…”