The project examines socio-economic inequality in journalism and its role in public discourse by comparing the perspectives of a representative sample of professional journalists with those of the general public.
Socioeconomic inequality is typically understood as the unequal distribution of economic resources, power, and prestige within society. Conditions of high inequality grant privileges, opportunities, and rewards to individuals in certain positions while denying them to others. Forms of socioeconomic inequality lie at the heart of many burning problems of our time, ranging from political polarization over climate change to the societal impact of generative AI. In a deeply mediatized world, public discourses around socioeconomic inequality are pivotal in how these challenges develop and unfold—positioning journalism research at the forefront of their analysis.
Journalism is also said to operate with narratives that systematically support socioeconomic inequality. While there is a growing body of research on reporting, our assumptions about inequality within journalism, though, are still largely based on anecdotal evidence. The present study aims to address this by systematically investigating socioeconomic inequality in German journalism and contrasting it with data from the German population. It operates with three dimensions that have been shown to be relevant for attitudes towards inequality, namely one's own experiences of inequality, factual knowledge about inequality, and inequality-relevant values. Our aim is to provide a comprehensive assessment of socio-economic inequality in German journalism and to illuminate its role in the complex discourses surrounding inequality.
Journalism | Inequality | Democracy
Academic Staff
Inequality and (Gender) Diversity • Journalism and Democracy • Political Journalism
Academic Staff
AI journalism • automated journalism • computational journalism
The project includes several research projects within LMU. That's because it's great and very interdisciplinary.