High-quality reporting, particularly in the context of political coverage, has always been one of the key normative requirements of journalism and the media. The aim is to ensure that citizens are adequately informed and that a functioning democracy is safeguarded. Even as digitalisation took hold and led to the increasing emergence of (at least initially) free online journalistic offerings, fears were repeatedly voiced that the resulting lack of financial resources, coupled with a more consistent focus on the interests of the audience, would lower media quality standards.
These concerns apply even more strongly to social media platforms such as Facebook. High visibility of content is key here. However, this content is controlled by algorithms, which are largely dependent on user interaction. It therefore seems necessary to adapt to what is known as ‘media logic’ and, consequently, to the interests of the audience on these platforms. Whether this results in lower quality and leads to an increasing tabloidisation of content – in terms of both topic selection and presentation – has not yet been sufficiently clarified.
Alongside social media, search engines are also increasingly becoming the focus of media quality research. They too act as intermediaries, i.e. they play a central role in filtering and curating media content and thus have a significant influence on the quality of media content users are exposed to. Amid discussions about the lack of transparency in algorithms and concerns regarding discrimination against certain brands, the key question that arises is that of the diversity of the content selected and given particularly prominent placement in search results.
Although there have been a few isolated studies on the issues raised to date, a comprehensive assessment of media quality in the digital context – and, in particular, of content curated by intermediaries – has yet to be carried out. This integrated doctoral project therefore addresses precisely these questions in a series of sub-studies.
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