Open Access

Zukunftstechnologien üben schon seit geraumer Zeit Transformationsdruck auf Medienorganisationen aus (Küng, 2008). Medienorganisationen sind daher gezwungen, gezielt zu reagieren, sich zu verändern und zu lernen. Ein theoretisches Konstrukt, das diesen Prozess erklärt, ist die Theorie des organisationalen Lernens (OL) (Senge, 2006). In der allgemeinen Managementforschung ist OL bereits ein etablierter theoretische Ansatz (Dick, 2005), bei Medienorganisationen wurde OL bislang kaum erforscht (Bernhard & Will, 2021). Die strategische Orientierung der Organisation stellt eine Möglichkeit zur Förderung des OL dar (Seçkin-Halaç, 2019). Insbesondere die strategische Technologieorientierung (TO) könnte in Anbetracht von Zukunftstechnologien hilfreich für OL sein (ebd.). Vor diesem Hintergrund beschäftigt sich dieser Beitrag mit der folgenden Frage: Besteht ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Technologieorientierung (TO) und dem organisationalen Lernen (OL) in Medienorganisationen? Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage wurde eine explorative Onlineumfrage (Zeitraum: Dez. 2020 bis Jan. 2021) unter deutschen Medienmanager*innen (N=46) durchgeführt. Für die Untersuchung wurden die Instrumente von Hakala & Kohtamäki (2011) für die TO und von Marsick & Watkins (2003) für das OL übernommen. Die Umfragedaten wurden mithilfe der Rangkorrelation nach Spearman analysiert. Kernergebnis der Untersuchung ist, dass ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen TO und OL besteht.

There is a strong demand in media management to strengthen the bridge between theory and practice. Following the debate on rigor and relevance, the approach of engaged scholarship and arguments from our community, we see the need to develop a research agenda in dialogue with practice. Therefore, we explore the following questions: Which topics do media managers consider relevant to research? How can these issues be contrasted with the research agendas proclaimed by media management research? To answer these questions, we first summarize current issues in media management research through a literature review. Second, current issues in media management practice are captured based on an online survey with German media managers (N=46). Finally, the two perspectives are contrasted to develop relevant questions for media management research and practice.

Abstract In view of the dynamic developments in digital and fragmented media societies, journalism research is faced with the challenge of capturing the forms of current and future journalism, both theoretically and empirically. While some progress has been made in empirical research, there is still a lack of holistic perspectives on transformation processes in (digital) journalism. To better understand the complex relationship between actors, content, and structures, we argue that it is necessary to explore the analytical potential of interdisciplinary concepts from outside the field of journalism studies. In this sense, based on a sociologically inspired concept of interventions, this article argues for communicative interventions as a powerful heuristic for examining the causes, forms, and consequences of journalism-related transformation processes. We propose a concept of communicative interventions that sharpens the analytical focus of empirical journalism research on the complexities of transformation and change. We conceptualise communicative interventions as communication-based, performatively visible actions that are intentionally used by actors within specific intervention contexts and with anticipated intervention relations. With regard to journalism, three directions of intervention (in, within, and through) can be distinguished. Widespread assumptions about the social relevance of journalism make it both an addressee and a sender of intentional, interest-driven action, which in turn—as we argue in this article—is a key driver of its transformation. Our aim is to contribute to the theoretical foundation for understanding journalism in transition. The starting point of our considerations is that there is currently a lack of explanation for why journalism, including its role, practices, and structures in society, is constantly changing. In order to explain the long-term causes of change, we argue that a logic of consequences is needed: one that is argumentative and offers as much predictive power as possible to anticipate future developments. We explore journalism-related actions as a driver of both journalistic and broader social change. With communicative interventions, we propose a concept that allows empirical journalism researchers to sharpen their analytical focus on the complexity of change. As a theoretical concept, communicative interventions serve as a heuristic for a theory-based empirical analysis of intentional transformation processes in journalism. We are aware that various facets of journalism-related change processes have already been labelled as intervention. Therefore, we are not entering a completely new territory. However, a glance at the use of the term also shows that it has not been sufficiently and theoretically explored. In this article, we aim to exploit this yet untouched theoretical potential and make it fruitful for journalism analysis. To this end, we have systematised various facets of the term and developed them further for journalism research. We understand interventions as communication-based, performatively visible actions that are applied by actors within specific intervention contexts guided by anticipated intervention contexts. These actors associate their interventions with concrete assumptions about their effects and apply certain measures to a situation they themselves define. Three perspectives of intervention can be found in journalism: intervention in, within, and through journalism. Even though these different directions of intervention are closely related—hinder, condition, and/or reinforce each other—it is both legitimate and analytically necessary to treat them separately for a detailed analysis. We do so by using three exemplary contexts of interventions (AI, diversity, interpretive climate journalism) to demonstrate how the concept sharpens our analytical view of transformations in journalism. In general, the notion of communicative interventions is open to different methodological approaches. However, survey-based studies, especially qualitative interviews or ethnographic newsroom observations, seem particularly appropriate, as they allow to explore the complex covert of motives, measures, anticipated situations, and intended effects. We introduce communicative interventions as a purely analytical concept. We are aware that this is not without difficulty, as the term certainly has normative connotations in everyday understanding. Interventions are based on a hierarchical relationship in which the more powerful—legitimately or illegitimately, beneficially or detrimentally, depending on the context—intervene in the sphere of their inferiors in order to change it. However, an analytical concept of intervention in our sense has neither positive nor negative connotations. Communicative interventions happen. They are not per se good or bad for journalism, nor are they per se functional or dysfunctional in terms of its social services. Overall, we see our concept as a template with the potential to make certain causes and consequences of journalistic change visible. However, it only makes these things visible by concealing other aspects. A limitation of the concept is the identification of the initiating actors and the starting points of interventions. This is by no means trivial. To solve this problem, we suggest that observers must first decide which action or measure they understand as an intervention. Only then it is possible to identify the participants and the beginning of the process. Future empirical studies will prove whether the concept is more powerful than previous ones in recognising, explaining, and predicting changes in journalism’s practices, structures, and roles in modern societies.