Journalism Studies

ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Comparing Journalistic Cultures Across Nations

Folker Hanusch & Thomas Hanitzsch

To cite this article: Folker Hanusch & Thomas Hanitzsch (2017) Comparing Journalistic Cultures
Across Nations, Journalism Studies, 18:5, 525-535, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2017.1280229

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 INTRODUCTION
COMPARING JOURNALISTIC CULTURES
ACROSS NATIONS
What we can learn from the Worlds of
Journalism Study

Folker Hanusch and Thomas Hanitzsch

Comparative studies of journalism have become immensely popular in recent times, yet a range of
methodological and logistical challenges persist in existing work. This introduction to the special
issue on “Comparing Journalistic Cultures” provides a brief overview of these challenges, before pro-
viding an overview of the genesis of the Worlds of Journalism Study, an unprecedented, global and
collaborative undertaking to examine journalistic culture in 66 countries. In particular, we reflect on
how the study approached and aimed to solve methodological challenges, providing some ideas
that may aid future studies in this field.

KEYWORDS comparative; culture; journalism; role; survey; Worlds of Journalism Study

Introduction
Cross-national research in communication has been experiencing something of a
boom in the past decade or two. There now exist sizeable bodies of works in a whole
range of communication studies sub-disciplines which look beyond national horizons in
order to arrive at more universal understandings of various phenomena (Esser and
Hanitzsch 2012). In journalism studies, this general trend has also been felt acutely.
While historically researchers focused predominantly on single-nation analyses of journal-
istic work, an increasing number of studies have come to recognize the value that compari-
son has for better understanding the various forms of production, content and uses of
journalism across the world (Weaver 1998a; Shoemaker and Cohen 2006; Hanitzsch et al.
2011; Esser et al. 2012; Weaver and Willnat 2012; Wilke, Heimprecht, and Cohen 2012).
Such studies have shown that certain similarities exist between journalism cultures
across the globe, but also that significant differences persist, owing to a variety of political,
economic, cultural, technological and historical factors. The increasing realization that com-
parative research is indispensable for generalizing theories and findings, coupled with pol-
itical (the advent of a globalizing world) as well as technological developments (enabling
the rise of institutionalized global scientific networks), has enabled this growth in compara-
tive journalism studies (Hanitzsch 2009).
When it comes to studying journalistic actors and their professional views, recent lit-
erature provides evidence of numerous comparative studies examining small numbers of
countries (e.g., Donsbach and Patterson 2004; van Dalen, de Vreese, and Albæk 2012;

Journalism Studies, 2017

Vol. 18, No. 5, 525–535, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2017.1280229
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
526 FOLKER HANUSCH AND THOMAS HANITZSCH

Hanusch and Hanitzsch 2013; Pintak 2014), as well as three large-scale projects notable for
their global approach (Weaver 1998a; Hanitzsch et al. 2011; Weaver and Willnat 2012). The
rationale for a strong focus on journalists’ professional views has long been that what jour-
nalists reflect on about their work, is also a reflection of the work they actually do, even
though this notion has been put in doubt in recent years (Tandoc, Hellmueller, and Vos
2013). While most research therefore now acknowledges that what journalists say they
do is not always the same as what they actually do, there is still an understanding in the
literature that through their discourse about professional roles, journalists constitute jour-
nalistic cultures that can be compared cross-nationally (Hanitzsch and Vos 2016).
Studies of journalists’ views have a long tradition going back more than half a
century (Cohen 1963), yet the first large-scale comparison of journalists’ professional
views did not emerge until the end of the twentieth century. Weaver’s (1998a) analysis
of surveys of journalists in 21 countries and regions constitutes an important starting
point for such large-scale analysis. It found that getting information to the public could
be considered a universally primary function of journalism, but beyond this there was
much disagreement over the importance of various other roles. While Weaver’s (1998a)
volume—followed in 2012 by an expanded study of 31 countries and territories
(Weaver and Willnat 2012)—presents a seminal work for the field, it also had limitations.
A key point of critique was the fact there were methodological inconsistencies which
made the interpretation of results more difficult. These related to aspects such as large
disparities between sample sizes, response rates and the timeframe during which
studies were conducted, which ranged from 1986 to 1996, a fact acknowledged by
Weaver (1998b, 455) himself as making any comparisons “a game of guesswork at
best”. Similarly, the follow-up volume, edited by Weaver and Willnat (2012), included
studies conducted separately over an even longer timeframe, between 1996 and 2011.
Still, in their 2012 analysis of journalist surveys from around the world, Weaver and
Willnat noted there was an urgent need for comparative studies to employ standardized
survey questionnaires and representative samples.
In response to these limitations and calls for action, the comparative project, the
Worlds of Journalism Study, was founded. Built on the idea of methodologically and
cross-culturally comparable constructs, the study set out to survey journalists in 21
countries across the globe, using equal sample sizes and identical questionnaires
(Hanitzsch et al. 2011). Despite this unprecedented approach, the study, originally con-
ceived of as a pilot project, suffered from the fact that only 100 journalists could be sur-
veyed in each country, raising questions about the generalizability of the results. At the
same time, the success of the Worlds of Journalism Study quickly led to plans for a
second stage, which would see the original study expanded to more than 60 countries,
with the aim of gathering representative samples from all involved countries. Having
concluded its fieldwork phase at the end of 2015, this second phase of the Worlds of
Journalism Study has now come to the stage where the first results are available, allow-
ing us insights into the range of similarities and differences across journalistic cultures
globally. The unprecedented number of countries included, as well as the overall size
of the data-set, allows for nuanced comparisons even across individual geographic, pol-
itical, linguistic or economic aspects. As an introduction to the articles which follow in
this special issue, and to set the scene more broadly, this article provides a history of
the Worlds of Journalism Study and a reflection on how the study has been able to
 INTRODUCTION 527

address past shortcomings, as well as where the field of comparative journalism studies
still needs to venture in the future.

Small Beginnings: The Early Days of the Worlds of Journalism Study (2007–
2011)
While the Worlds of Journalism Study officially came to life in early 2011, the seed had
already been sown in 2006, when the German Research Foundation (DFG) provided
funding for a relatively small comparative pilot survey of journalists in Brazil, China,
Germany, Indonesia, Russia and Uganda. A team from the United States participated in
this endeavor, hoping that they would be able to raise some funding on their own. With
this selection of countries, the study deliberately tried to account for the diversity of jour-
nalistic cultures from around the world. The theoretical backbone for the study was a con-
ceptualization of journalism culture that appeared in 2007 in Communication Theory
(Hanitzsch 2007).
As mentioned above, the study was rather small. Funding was available only for 100
interviews in each of the seven countries. As project leaders, we attempted to deal with this
problem by designing a target sample with quotas for different types of media outlets, to
which all collaborators had to tailor their samples. The idea behind this was that the func-
tional equivalence of the samples would allow for some tight cross-national comparison
using “matched samples” despite small sample sizes—an approach recommended by
other cross-cultural researchers (Hofstede 2001, 463).
The conceptual and methodological framework of the study was presented at various
occasions, most notably to the annual conferences of the International Communication
Association and International Association of Media and Communication Research
(IAMCR). As a result, the project became known to the international scientific community
even before we had started with data collection. And then, something unexpected hap-
pened: researchers from other countries, as they became aware of the study, asked to
join the project, mostly at their own expense. The study grew as we welcomed these
new teams; however, the growth produced a sample weighted fairly heavily toward
Western countries.
When the center of the project was moved from Ilmenau University of Technology in
Germany to the University of Zurich, we managed to gain an additional grant from the
Swiss National Science Foundation, allowing us to fund the inclusion of a number of
additional countries from the non-Western world. By 2011, the study had grown to
include 21 countries, covering all inhabited continents and a wide array of political, econ-
omic and socio-cultural contexts. The sample included 2100 journalists from more than 400
news organizations in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Egypt, Germany,
Greece, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland,
Turkey, Uganda and the United States.
We do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the pilot study was incredibly,
and partly unexpectedly, successful. The study’s findings and conceptual background
were published in some of the leading journals in the field, including the Journal of
Communication, Communication Theory, International Communication Gazette, Inter-
national Journal of Press/Politics, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism
Studies and Mass Communication & Society. To a significant degree, however, the success
of the project is intrinsically tied to the time in which it was created. Improved
528 FOLKER HANUSCH AND THOMAS HANITZSCH

circumstances for academic collaboration across borders had set the stage for large
international endeavors of this kind; and indeed, we have seen the birth of a number
of similar projects over the past few years.
This is not the place to reproduce the full panoply of findings that resulted from the
first study. Briefly, however, we found the professional values of detachment and non-invol-
vement reign supreme in most of the countries studied. Interventionism—that is the jour-
nalists’ willingness to actively promote particular values, ideas and social change—turned
out to be a major denominator of cross-national difference (Hanitzsch et al. 2011). Another
substantial finding was that influences on journalists’ work are perceived along six major
dimensions—organizational, professional, procedural, political and economic influences,
as well as reference groups—with the former three seen as the most powerful limits to
news work (Hanitzsch et al. 2010). Finally, we found journalists in all investigated countries
to have alarmingly little trust in political parties and politicians. Journalists in Western
nations tended to be more trusting of social institutions than their colleagues in non-
Western countries (Hanitzsch and Berganza 2012).

Expanding Across the Globe: The Second Phase of the Worlds of

Journalism Study (2012–2015)
In early 2011, when it became clear that the project would carry on with an even
larger number of countries, we established the Worlds of Journalism Study as a semi-insti-
tutional framework with a mission statement, its own statutes and a governing body, the
WJS Executive Committee. The mission of the study, as detailed on the project website,
reads as follows:
The Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) is an academically driven project that was founded to
regularly assess the state of journalism throughout the world. The Study’s primary objec-
tive is to help journalism researchers, practitioners, media managers and policy makers
better understand the worldviews and changes that are taking place in the professional
orientations of journalists, the conditions and limitations under which journalists
operate, and the social functions of journalism in a changing world. (http://www.
worldsofjournalism.org)

We started to actively recruit teams of researchers in a number of additional countries in

order to broaden the geographical scope of the study. The major motivation for scholars
to join the project can be summarized by a principle that Robert L. Stevenson (1996)
famously named “Give a little, get a lot”. In other words, in return for contributing data
for his or her own country, each collaborator was entitled to receive the full comparative
data-set once data collection was complete. The underlying hope was that participants
would find creative ways of analyzing the data and of testing hypotheses in ways that
would not have been possible when limited to single-country data only.
As a result, the project rapidly grew into a large collaborative effort that, by the time
this essay is written, involves 66 countries. In response to some of the shortcomings of
earlier comparative studies, we decided on some key, non-negotiable parameters for the
enlarged study. This included nationally representative samples for all countries. Collabor-
ators were provided with clear guidelines on how to sample across all media types and how
to calculate their required sample sizes to achieve samples that did not exceed a 5 percent
 INTRODUCTION 529

margin of error at 95 percent confidence. To our amazement, this target was achieved in all
but three countries, providing an immensely robust global data-set.
Further, an enormous amount of time and effort went into producing a common
survey instrument which was to be employed in each country. This was a key part of par-
ticipation in the study, as we aimed to avoid previous issues of comparability across nations
due to differences in survey instruments and variations in wording or answer scales. As a
very diverse global group, this process ensured that the survey instrument was applicable
across all cultures as much as possible, and that translations—typically aided by back-trans-
lation or a committee approach drawing on multilingual expertise—ensured maximum
value in each country.
We set the timeframe for data collection for the years 2012–2015 in order to avoid too
much variation in our results that could be attributed to different developments in journal-
ism across our countries. We were rigorous in applying this rule to ensure equivalence and
validity across this timeframe. Further, any external variables related to media systems—
such as measures of press freedom—were added for the relevant year during which
each country’s survey was conducted, thus ensuring consistency for system-level
influences.
An area in which it was difficult to achieve methodological equivalence was in the
way the survey was applied. The first wave of the study had shown us the difficulty of
certain modes in some countries, often for cultural reasons, but even at times for
reasons of journalists’ safety. Hence, collaborators were able to choose between conducting
surveys face-to-face, online, mail or e-mail, as well as over the phone—depending on cul-
tural sensibilities as well as available funding. Importantly, however, modes were documen-
ted and included in the global data-set in order to be able to measure potential mode error
in calculations.
Transparency has always been a key principle for the project. Although we aspire to
the highest levels of methodological rigor, we were not always and not everywhere able to
fully meet those aspirations. We believe that given the complexity of a multinational endea-
vor such as the Worlds of Journalism Study, methodological problems are bound to occur—
in some contexts more than in others. We decided to be open about this imperfection and
documented all potential threats to data integrity internally for our members and externally
on our website. Furthermore, as a service to the academic community, we will make the
multinational data-set publicly available for secondary data analysis in mid-2019.
As the geographical coverage of the study and the number of researchers involved in
it were growing, we finally reached a point where we needed to implement a more soph-
isticated managerial structure that would enable us to coordinate a study of this magni-
tude. And here, we believe, the Worlds of Journalism Study has been extremely
innovative in coping with the managerial and practical complexities arising from geo-
graphical growth and large-scale comparative research.
An important aspect of the way we organized the network is the democratic legiti-
macy of all individuals steering the study in key managerial positions. In a nutshell, every
country is represented by at least one Principal Investigator. Principal Investigators regularly
meet in a General Assembly (physical or online), in which every country has one vote;
decisions are formally made by simple majority, though in practice, the decisions we
made in the past were highly consensual. The WJS Executive Committee consists of
seven members of the network, each person coordinating one of the following seven
regions covered by the study: (Sub-Saharan) Africa, Asia, Oceania, Central and Eastern
530 FOLKER HANUSCH AND THOMAS HANITZSCH

Europe, Latin America/the Caribbean, the Middle East (and North Africa), as well as Western
Europe and North America.
The role of the Executive Committee is to provide leadership and strategic planning
for the project, to recruit new members, organize meetings and workshops, promote pub-
lications and dissemination of results, and to raise central funding and assist members in
their fund-raising efforts. The Executive Committee also appoints the Chair and Vice-
Chair of the study from among its members. The WJS Center is currently based in
Munich, where the project website is maintained and data collection, verification and dis-
semination are centrally managed. The Executive Committee is further supported by a
Scientific Advisory Committee, which consists of leading scholars in the field, as well as a
Statistical Advisory Committee.
What makes the Worlds of Journalism Study particularly unique among the many
similar studies, we believe, is that the members of the WJS Executive Committee are
elected; they are voted into office by the General Assembly. We experimented with demo-
cratic elements in the study for various reasons. Most importantly, we wanted to give all
members of the research network the feeling that they have a say in all decisions we
were making for the project—from the design and planning of research to the publication
of results. We always tried to avoid any undue impression that the study was governed by a
strategy that Halloran (1998, 45) famously identified as “research imperialism”. Conse-
quently, we tried to be inclusive rather than exclusive; we tend to see theoretical, methodo-
logical and cultural diversity as an advantage rather than a threat. We are proud to see the
Worlds of Journalism Study developing as a democratic tribe of scholars rather than as an
academic empire.
This model also attempts to avoid a too heavy Western-centric focus in the study.
Past studies have often been accused of being Western-centric, and while much of the
intellectual development of the Worlds of Journalism Study also took place in Western
countries, we have actively aimed to provide for a more inclusive approach. This includes
the involvement of researchers from all countries during the design phase, such as discus-
sions about the questionnaire to be used, thus arriving at a version that is—as much as is
possible in such endeavors—applicable, useful and understandable for journalists across a
whole range of political, economic, social and cultural contexts.
As positive and enthusiastic as this may sound, the complex collaborative structure
we employed also created problems on many fronts. The scholars collaborating in the
Worlds of Journalism Study come from different theoretical, methodological and cultural
backgrounds, and they have distinctive understandings of team work, division of labor,
work structures, academic hierarchy, information exchange and, perhaps most importantly,
communication habits. This is probably the reason why collaborative research is often
referred to as “exhausting,” “a nightmare”, and as “frustrating” (Livingstone 2003, 481).
A major problem of the cooperation model we employed is that participating
researchers have to come to an agreement on conceptual, methodological and organiz-
ational decisions on a voluntary basis, and this can turn out to be difficult for many
reasons. Inevitably, scholars will find themselves attending seemingly endless meetings
in which they try to settle on a common theoretical and methodological framework. Try
to have even two people in the room agree on the value of a specific theory. In the end,
one may end up with least common denominators on the conceptual level that are so
meaningless theoretically that the project would do much better without theory altogether.
 INTRODUCTION 531

Likewise, the collaborative development of research tools can turn into a traumatic
experience. Scholars tend to have their own agendas for research questions, and they
often have very peculiar preferences for measures. Every time we discussed the question-
naire for the 2012–2015 survey, we could have easily come up with ever more questions to
be added to what already was a long and partly unmanageable list of questions. Ultimately,
we realized that collaborative work relies not only on time, funding and mutual interest, but
also on goodwill and trust (Livingstone 2003). It is fair to say that collaborative research is
essentially a business of making compromises.
This being said, there are certain limits to the collaborative compromise. Once the
network settles on issues, participants need to accept those decisions even when they dis-
agree. In the process of developing the questionnaire for the 2012–2015 wave of the
Worlds of Journalism Study, for example, we decided to generally use five-point Likert
scales for rating questions. After we finalized the questionnaire wording in a long
meeting at an IAMCR conference in Istanbul, one team from a major Western country
decided to continue with four-point scales in their country nevertheless. At this point,
we realized that collaboration becomes simply impossible under these premises.
Furthermore, coordinating the Worlds of Journalism Study sometimes turned into an
exercise in frustration management and academic diplomacy. We have provided clear and
concise instructions to the whole research network, supplemented by numerous expla-
nations and reminders, and yet not everyone appeared to read those guidelines with the
same care. This created some preventable diversity in data quality, and quite a bit of
unnecessary communication between Principal Investigators and the WJS Center. In hind-
sight, we could have anticipated these problems from the start because, in the end, there is
little one can do to fully avoid them. Researchers participating in large networks tend to be
busy people; they are often committed to multiple academic endeavors, and they have
teaching and managerial duties in their home institutions. As project coordinators we
have learned to be more patient than we may have been in the past.
Once the first data-sets reached us, we realized that the review and management of
data would keep us busy for years. Overall, the Worlds of Journalism Study has generated
interview data from more than 27,000 journalists in 66 countries. As a service to the whole
research network, we carefully reviewed these data-sets for problems, clarified potential
issues with the local Principal Investigators, and turned all data-sets into a standardized
format for dissemination to all collaborators. Many data-sets required multiple revisions
until we were able to accept them. Statistical expertise varied greatly among participating
researchers; hence, we also needed to provide methodological advice and expertise to col-
leagues in some countries. Only late in the process did we realize that data management for
a project of this magnitude is actually a full-time job, and this, too, needs to be anticipated.
One of our PhD students, Corinna Lauerer, finally spent about two years of her academic life
working on the data, and the project owes an immense debt of gratitude to her for her dili-
gence in working with data-sets that at times were quite messy to begin with.
After all, we believe that centralizing data checking and handling at LMU Munich was
a wise decision. This is underlined by some examples of what can go wrong in studies such
as ours. We had data-sets from some countries that produced extremely surprising and not
quite plausible results in initial, preliminary analyses. In some of these cases, journalists’
responses revealed a pattern that was exactly the opposite of other countries in the
sample. A careful inspection of the data revealed, after a long experimentation with statisti-
cal tools, that some local teams had actually inverted the scales. When journalists were
532 FOLKER HANUSCH AND THOMAS HANITZSCH

supposed to respond using a five-point scale ranging from 5 = “extremely important” to 1 =

“not important”, in some countries the scale was reversed to 1 = “extremely important” to 5
= “not important”.
To be sure, these things can happen; nobody is perfect. One of the most dishearten-
ing experiences we had, however, was with collaborators who provided us with fake data.
These were clearly the moments of the greatest disappointment while working with the
study. In most of these cases, we found a larger number of duplicate cases, which
means the same interview appeared twice or even more often in the data-set. There
were instances where Principal Investigators seemed to have submitted forged data
without being aware of it; obviously, they had been cheated by the people working for
them. Once the problem was detected, these Principal Investigators agreed to do
additional interviews in order to meet our sampling requirements. In other cases,
however, Principal Investigators had been actively involved in the data fraud, which in all
of these instances led to a termination of the collaboration. The lesson we learned from
this experience was that digital data can be faked easily and that in large multinational
research projects one needs to carefully check for data issues as a measure to safeguard
overall data integrity.
At some point, we also realized that large-scale collaborative projects require oppor-
tunities for physical encounter. Video conferences are great and—thanks to technological
advances—very low cost, but they are much less efficient than physical meetings. We
therefore started organizing regular “family gatherings” for all collaborators involved in
the project. In two Worlds of Journalism Study “Conventions”, one in Thessaloniki (2014)
and another one in Munich (2015), we exchanged our views about central concepts, dis-
cussed methodological issues and presented first findings from preliminary analyses. All
these efforts have helped us cultivate a “sense of belonging” to something that is
greater than the sum of its parts.
Finally, one of the most important lessons we learned through working with the
Worlds of Journalism Study was that scientific collaboration is often more than just
about producing data and academic publications. Through collaborating with researchers
from a great number of countries, we created a sustainable scholarly community that
extends to all inhabited continents. We formed this community around a common
mission and shared interests everyone identifies with. We developed a website and a Face-
book group to foster our own “corporate identity”. We even produced our own ball pens!

Conclusion
Over its now 10-year lifespan, the Worlds of Journalism Study has become a truly col-
laborative endeavor that developed a life of its own. It is no longer simply the “Hanitzsch
project”, as it quickly became known in the academic community; it has long moved
beyond the ambition of a single researcher and has become a shared asset for everyone
involved. Today, the Worlds of Journalism Study is an intellectual community, a platform
for the exchange of data, a tool for the sharing of knowledge and experience, and a
vehicle to drive comparative research in the field. By now, the project has become the
largest collaborative endeavor in the field, and a model for many other, similar studies.
For the future, we hope that the study may become institutionalized even more, to the
extent that it may conduct similar surveys over time for a longitudinal assessment of the
development of journalism cultures.
 INTRODUCTION 533

The 2012–2015 wave of the Worlds of Journalism Study, we believe, has been able to
tackle some of the shortcomings in terms of methodological equivalence that existed in
previous large-scale comparative work on journalism. Key among these are the use of a
standardized survey instrument across all countries, a common timeframe not exceeding
four years, as well as the use of nationally representative samples of journalists. Achieving
these targets was not an easy undertaking, and the success of the project is due only to the
hard work, patience and generosity of everyone involved across all levels of the study. Of
course, as we have outlined here, the project is not perfect and future iterations will con-
tinue to strive to improve methodological aspects. In the large scheme of things, we
hope the project has been able to contribute to the development of comparative work
in journalism studies.
To provide a first glimpse at some of the results of the study, as well as the kinds of
comparisons that are possible with the data that was gathered, this special issue includes
eight articles, with each focusing on different aspects and from different theoretical pre-
mises. We deliberately tried to avoid basic descriptive comparisons of journalists in specific
countries but rather examined a variety of themes or certain political, economic, social, cul-
tural and linguistic contexts. Leading off the issue is a paper by Geneviève Bonin and col-
leagues which argues that French-speaking journalists in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland
have in common more politicized and less audience-oriented role perceptions than their
other-language counterparts in these countries. This difference, however, is relatively
small. In a similar vein, Nurhaya Muchtar and colleagues identify a relationship between
Islamic values and journalists’ role perceptions in 12 Muslim-majority countries, but at
the same time argue that larger political, economic and socio-cultural aspects are more
important determinants for journalistic culture in these countries. Yusuf Kalyango and col-
leagues explore the much-discussed notion of development journalism by studying the
role conceptions of journalists in eight developing countries. They note that journalists
in these countries are significantly more likely than their counterparts in Western countries
to support development journalism ideals than detached, adversarial journalism.
Moving to the Nordic countries, Laura Ahva and colleagues also examine journalists’
professional orientations, and find a shared vision of their professional identity that reflects
central characteristics of these countries’ political culture and media systems. Staying in
Europe, Kenneth Andresen and colleagues shift the focus toward post-conflict societies
in the Balkan countries, where they examine the concept of transitional journalism,
finding that journalistic culture is distinguished by an adherence to traditional Western
journalism values but also an acknowledgment of the media’s role in contributing to
societal transition following longer periods of conflict. Transitions are also of concern in
Alice Tejkalová and colleagues’ contribution, which explores journalists’ trust in institutions
in a range of post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries, finding particularly low
levels of trust in regulative institutions. Sallie Hughes and her colleagues are concerned
with journalists in insecure democracies, finding important new evidence about the
ways in which a range of factors impact journalists’ perceptions of influences on their
work. Finally, Yigal Godler and Zvi Reich explore journalists’ opinions about facts across
the globe, finding a relationship between the level of journalists’ freedom and their con-
ceptions of knowledge and reality.
Enormous gratitude goes to Jay Blumler for agreeing to write a more general critique
of the project and the work presented here, which appears in the form of an Epilogue to
conclude the issue. Further, we would like to thank all the authors involved in this
534 FOLKER HANUSCH AND THOMAS HANITZSCH

special issue for their contributions. Our special thanks also go to Bob Franklin for agreeing
to host the issue, and to Annie Rhys Jones for her invaluable help with the administrative
side of the production process. Finally, we thank all those colleagues who helped to review
the articles in this issue.
Journalism is currently undergoing a particularly tumultuous but also fascinating time
in many countries around the world. As researchers, we hope that the 2012–2015 Worlds of
Journalism Study is able to shed some light on the state of journalism globally. As journal-
ism continues to transform and develop, so will the study need to evolve to keep abreast
with change. It will therefore be important for the project to continue regularly assessing
journalism and journalists to better inform scholarship on journalism. We look forward to
the challenge.

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Folker Hanusch (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Journalism

Studies Center, Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria. E-mail:
folker.hanusch@univie.ac.at. Web: http://journalismstudies.univie.ac.at ORCID
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7344-0483
Thomas Hanitzsch, Institute of Communication Studies and Media Research, LMU Munich,
Germany. E-mail: hanitzsch@ifkw.lmu.de