research projects on journalism

Research Topics & Ideas: Journalism

50 Topic Ideas To Kickstart Your Research Project

If you’re just starting out exploring journalism-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research by providing a hearty list of journalism-related research ideas , including examples from recent studies.

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . These topic ideas provided here are intentionally broad and generic , so keep in mind that you will need to develop them further. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

To develop a suitable research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan to fill that gap. If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Journalism-Related Research Topics

• Analyzing the impact of social media on news consumption patterns among millennials.
• Investigating the role of investigative journalism in combating political corruption.
• The impact of digital transformation on traditional print media business models.
• Examining the ethical challenges of undercover reporting in investigative journalism.
• The role of citizen journalism in shaping public opinion during major political events.
• Analyzing the effectiveness of fact-checking platforms in combating fake news.
• The impact of smartphone journalism on the quality of news reporting.
• Investigating the representation of minority groups in mainstream media.
• The role of photojournalism in humanizing the impacts of climate change.
• Analyzing the challenges of maintaining journalistic objectivity in conflict zones.
• The impact of artificial intelligence on newsroom operations and reporting.
• Investigating the influence of media ownership on editorial independence.
• The role of journalism in shaping public policy on environmental issues.
• Analyzing the portrayal of mental health issues in news media.
• The impact of live streaming technology on broadcast journalism.
• Investigating the challenges faced by freelance journalists in the digital era.
• The role of journalism in promoting government accountability in emerging democracies.
• Analyzing the effects of sensationalism in news reporting on public trust.
• The impact of virtual reality technology on immersive journalism.
• Investigating the role of press freedom in protecting human rights.
• The challenges of reporting on science and technology in mainstream media.
• Analyzing gender representation in sports journalism.
• The impact of media consolidation on diversity of perspectives in news.
• Investigating the ethical implications of drone journalism.
• The role of independent media in fostering democratic processes.

Journalism-Related Research Ideas (Continued)

• Analyzing the portrayal of immigration in national news outlets.
• The impact of censorship and media regulation on journalistic practices.
• Investigating the role of podcasts in the future of journalism.
• The challenges and opportunities of bilingual reporting in multicultural societies.
• Analyzing the dynamics of news reporting in authoritarian regimes.
• The impact of audience analytics on news content and presentation.
• Investigating the implications of deepfake technology for journalistic integrity.
• The role of local journalism in community engagement and development.
• Analyzing the effects of journalism on public health awareness campaigns.
• The impact of economic pressures on investigative journalism.
• Investigating the challenges of reporting in a polarized political climate.
• The role of media literacy in fostering critical thinking among audiences.
• Analyzing the influence of celebrity journalism on cultural values.
• The impact of cross-platform journalism on audience reach and engagement.
• Investigating the effects of social media algorithms on news distribution.
• The role of data journalism in enhancing transparency and public understanding.
• Analyzing the impact of crowd-sourced journalism on news authenticity.
• The challenges of balancing speed and accuracy in digital news reporting.
• Investigating the role of international correspondents in the digital age.
• The impact of public relations practices on journalistic independence.
• Analyzing the representation of LGBTQ+ issues in mainstream journalism.
• The role of journalism in addressing societal issues like homelessness and poverty.
• Investigating the effects of editorial bias in shaping public perception.
• The impact of journalism on political activism and social movements.
• Analyzing the challenges of maintaining journalistic standards in entertainment reporting.

Recent Journalism-Related Studies

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual studies in the journalism space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of recent studies to help refine your thinking. These are actual studies,  so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• Imagination, Algorithms and News: Developing AI Literacy for Journalism (Deuze & Beckett, 2022)
• Evaluation of the Effect of a Live Interview in Journalism Students on Salivary Stress Biomarkers and Conventional Stress Scales (Roca et al., 2022)
• Professional and Personal Identity, Precarity and Discrimination in Global Arts Journalism (Sharp & Vodanovic, 2022)
• The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Journalism in the Digital Ara A Descriptive and Critical Approach (Chettah et al., 2022)
• Women in Mass Communication (Creedon & Wackwitz, 2022)
• Newsgames: Experiential Reality, Ludenic News Reading, Conflict of Purposes and Norms (Cengi̇z & Kaya, 2022)
• Deep Journalism and DeepJournal V1.0: A Data-Driven Deep Learning Approach to Discover Parameters for Transportation (Ahmad et al., 2022)
• A View From the Trenches: Interviews With Journalists About Reporting Science News (Anderson & Dudo, 2023)
• Understanding Journalisms: From Information to Entertainment by Persuasion and Promotion (Bernier, 2022)
• Role of educational institutions in promoting medical research and publications in Pakistan (Aslam, 2022)
• Ethics for Journalists (Keeble, 2022)
• “I Felt I Got to Know Everyone”: How News on Stage Combines Theatre and Journalism for a Live Audience (Adams & Cooper, 2022)
• Newsafety: Infrastructures, Practices and Consequences (Westlund et al., 2022)
• The Golden Age of American Journalism (Alent’eva et al., 2022)
• Advancing a Radical Audience Turn in Journalism. Fundamental Dilemmas for Journalism Studies (Swart et al., 2022)
• Mcluhan’s Theories and Convergence of Online and Papers’ Newsrooms (Barceló-Sánchez et al., 2022)
• Scientific communication after the COVID-19 crisis: TikTok publishing strategies on the transmedia board (Neira et al., 2023)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest.  In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

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If you’re still unsure about how to find a quality research topic, check out our Research Topic Kickstarter service, which is the perfect starting point for developing a unique, well-justified research topic.

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Research in Journalism, Media and Culture

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Faculty in Journalism, Culture and Communication analyze emerging and enduring forms of public communication and the institutional and economic conditions that sustain them. They employ a range of research methods, including ethnography, textual and historical analysis, and political economic approaches to media industries. As digital technologies have transformed mediated practices, the faculty has opened a series of new areas of inquiry, including computational journalism, the study of algorithms in institutions, and the cultural history of Silicon Valley.

Angèle Christin  is an associate professor. She is interested in fields and organizations where algorithms and ‘big data’ analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices. In her dissertation, she analyzed the growing importance of audience metrics in web journalism in the United States and France. Drawing on ethnographic methods, she examined how American and French journalists make sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which in turn has distinct effects on the production of news in the two countries. In a new project, she studies the construction, institutionalization, and reception of analytics and predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Ted Glasser  is an emeritus professor.  His teaching and research focus on media practices and performance, with emphasis on questions of press responsibility and accountability. His books include  Normative Theories of the Media: Journalism in Democratic Societies,  written with Clifford Christians, Denis McQuail, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Robert White, which in 2010 won the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for best research-based book on journalism/mass communication and was one of three finalists for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Tankard Book Award;  The Idea of Public Journalism , an edited collection of essays, recently translated into Chinese;  Custodians of Conscience: Investigative Journalism and Public Virtue , written with James S. Ettema, which won the Society of Professional Journalists’ award for best research on journalism, the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, and the Frank Luther Mott-Kappa Tau Alpha award for the best research-based book on journalism/mass communication;  Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent , edited with Charles T. Salmon; and  Media Freedom and Accountability , edited with Everette E. Dennis and Donald M. Gillmor.  His research, commentaries and book reviews have appeared in a variety of publications, including the  Journal of Communication, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, Policy Sciences, Journal of American History, Quill, Nieman Reports  and  The New York Times Book Review .

James T. Hamilton  is a professor and the director of the Journalism Program. His work on the economics of news focuses on the market failures involved in the production of public affairs coverage and the generation of investigative reporting. Through research in the emerging area of computational journalism, he is exploring how to lower the cost of discovering stories about the operation of political institutions.

Xiaochang Li  is an assistant professor. She is broadly interested in the history of informatics, computation, and related data practices. Drawing upon media history, history of science, and STS, her work is concerned with how information technologies shape the production and circulation of knowledge and the relationship between technical practices and social worlds. Her current research examines the history of speech recognition and natural language processing and how the pursuit of language influenced the development of AI, Machine Learning, and contemporary algorithmic culture. Her work also touches on sound studies and the history of acoustics and she has previously worked on topics concerning transnational media audiences and digital content circulation.

Fred Turner  is a professor and cultural historian of media and media technologies. Trained in both Communication and Science and Technology Studies, he has long been interested in how media and American culture have shaped one another over time. His most recent work has focused on the rise of American technocracy since World War II and on the aesthetic and ideological manifestations of that rise in the digital era. Before earning his Ph.D., Turner worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write for newspapers and magazines and strongly supports researchers who seek to have a public impact with their work.

Like all Communication faculty, the members of the Journalism, Communication and Culture group routinely collaborate with colleagues from around the campus. The group enjoys particularly strong collaborations with sociologists, historians, art historians, and computer scientists.

Faculty — Journalism, Media and Culture

Doctoral Students — Journalism, Media and Culture

Selected Graduates

• Sanna Ali, Ph.D. 2023. AI Policy Analyst, Stanford Cyber Policy Center and RegLab
• Jeff Nagy, Ph.D. 2023. Assistant Professor, Communication and Media Studies, York University
• Anna Gibson, Ph.D. 2022. Postdoctoral Fellow, MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
• Jihye Lee , Ph.D. 2022. Assistant Professor, School of Advertising and Public Relations, UT Austin
• Andreas Katsanevas, Ph.D. 2020. Technology Policy Researcher, Meta
• Sheng Zou,  Ph.D. 2020. Assistant Professor, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Christine Larson , Ph.D. 2017. Assistant Professor, Journalism, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Yeon Joo , Ph.D. 2014. Associate Professor, Department of Digital Media, Myongji University, Seoul
• Morgan G. Ames , Ph.D. 2013. Assistant Adjunct Professor, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley
• Seeta Pena Gangdaharan , Ph.D. 2012. Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics
• Mike Ananny , Ph.D. 2011, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California
• Daniel Kreiss , Ph.D. 2010, Associate Professor, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• John Kim , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media and Cultural Studies, Macalaster College
• Erica Robles-Anderson , Ph.D. 2009, Associate Professor, Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
• Isabel Awad , Ph.D. 2007, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University (Netherlands)
• Cherian George , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University
• Francis Lapfung Lee , Ph.D. 2003, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, City University of Hong Kong

Journalism Research Topics: 120+ Ideas to Consider

Journalism is quite a broad industry that entails enumerating helpful information and showing it on different media channels, including television, social media, radio, and beyond.

For framing an outstanding research paper, your topic must enable your audience to focus on the key issues and make them keen to know more about your topic. However, finding the perfect topic isn’t easy.

Students often select their topic in haste and later realize that there needs to be more information or evidence to prove their hypothesis. Others get bored with their research after choosing a tedious journalism topic.

Journalism is an excellent subject that can open up many exciting ideas for students. However, this blog is genuinely written for you if you’re facing difficulty. Here are some unique journalism research topics you can use as inspiration.

Table of Contents

How to Choose Your Journalism Research Topic:

Finding a unique journalism topic is complex and requires extensive research and clever work. Generally, the internet is stuffed with thousands of journalism topics to write about, but the real struggle lies in identifying your “perfect” topic within that.

We have compiled a few suggestions that might help you create brilliant topics:

• Students must refrain from any extravagantly broad topic, as it can be time-consuming and lead to confusion among students.
• Choose a subject or topic that sparks your interest and curiosity level.
• Students need to narrow their research into essential research questions.
• Avoid providing a research paper based on goofy journalism topics to avoid misinterpretation or negative impact on your audience. Instead, ensure that your chosen topic will be informative for your readers.
• Choose a novel topic that emphasizes distinct issues so readers can understand the fundamental research.

Thus, if you are about to research your journalism topic, ensure it stands in line with your university guidelines. Furthermore, ensure that your topic adheres to all the above-mentioned suggestions.

120+ Journalism Research Topics

As intended professional journalists, brilliant journalism ideas will always be welcomed and appreciated by your professors.

As mentioned, journalism is compiling, collecting, and assessing unique data and information on major on-going events. Along with writing on special journalism topics, one should also be open to writing about innovative discoveries about a pre-existing event.

We have thoroughly compiled a list of some contemplated journalism research topics that you can use as inspiration to get started with the writing business right away:

Journalism Research Topics for High School Students

• Celebrities’ rights to privacy: How far should the paparazzi be allowed to infringe?
• Examining the impact of racism in the media, both positive and negative
• How do electronic media outlets influence journalism in the present era?
• The influence of famous personalities on the independence of the media and journalists.
• Challenges and opportunities for journalism in the 21st century
• Impact of the media on diplomacy
• Explain why it is inappropriate for famous people and idols to be subjected to media trials.
• Why is radio still a crucial medium of communication in the twenty-first century?
• Televisions must stop broadcasting sexual content.
• Investigating journalism as a dangerous profession
• Comment on the sexualization of women in media advertisements
• Describe the effects of media misdirection and misinformation.
• Describe ways to regulate mass media to guarantee that students are only minimally exposed to inappropriate content.
• Why is the United States of America considered a global superpower?
• The role of media outlets during the pandemic
• Imperativeness of journalism for disadvantaged social groups
• Is print media no longer necessary in the age of social media?
• How has technology altered media

Brilliant Mass Communication and Journalism Research Topics

Read Also – 400+ Philosophy Research Paper Topics

• The credibility of online journalism
• The role of journalism in war zones
• Current Changes in Journalism in the United States
• Theoretical and methodological trends in journalism
• The history of journalism
• Journalism and the construction of police brutality
• Media’s role in curbing corruption
• Political women in media culture
• A critical review of the methodological trends and controversies surrounding the use of opinion polls
• Media’s role in exposing corrupted politicians
• Government-sanctioned journalism in China
• News workers, technology, and journalism history
• Trends in fake news in the modern media space
• Media censorship in China
• The future of blogging and journalism in the United States
• Critical analysis of how the British journalists try to win over the royals
• Bridging media psychology and cognitive neuroscience

Sports Journalism Research Topics

• Empirical research on racial discrimination in sports
• The journey of a sportsperson: researching the importance of storytelling for sports persons
• A qualitative investigation into the lives of sportswomen
• Impact of sports journalism on the construction of “body image” in the mind of a younger generation
• Homophobia in modern sports and the role of media channels in increasing such negativism
• Ethics in sports journalism
• Protecting brand through media and journalism channels
• Trans journalist association for sports: opportunities and challenges
• TVG Network in sports reporting
• What happened to Adriano: investigating the Dark Story Behind the Retirement of “Next Door” Ronaldo
• Evaluating media’s role in helping GenZ athletes to seek their “authentic voice.”
• The challenges of sports media during Covid19 outbreak
• The part of sports journalism in entertaining the masses
• Richie Benaud, the voice of cricket and an influential broadcaster
• James Hird’s suspected drug overdose: invasive reporting violates the right to privacy
• Sports journalism as strategic sports marketing
• The dangers of sports journalism
• FIFA world cup 2022: restrictions on journalists for covering the event
• The harsh truth of replacing sports journalism with “mindless gossip columnists.”

Investigative Journalism and Media Topics for Research

Read Also – 40 Architecture Thesis Topics

• Examining the impact of television advertising on the moral behaviors of young minds
• Representation of Muslim women and Islam by journalists
• The evolution of the media in the United States
• Sports journalism: Why is it challenging for sports journalists to succeed in sports broadcasting?
• Compare and contrast FOX and BBC news reports.
• Countering the false image of Arab women in the Arab media
• The influence of print media on the advancement of pop culture
• Transculturation in media translation
• Why do celebrity rumors frequently dominate media outlets as opposed to important news?
• The life and works of Eric Eyre
• Justify the lack of explicit depictions of atrocity in the media.
• Describe why the Government primarily uses the media as a propaganda tool.
• Examine whether politicians rely on the media to maintain their power.
• A critical analysis of freedom and the press.
• Money has corrupted the media: an overview.
• The life and works of Dean Banquet
• The correlation of media and Government
• Media bias in investigative journalism

Electronic Media Topics for Research

• Media Education in the Age of Disruptive Media
• Evaluating the future of broadcasting from a global perspective
• The internet explosion
• Is print media dead?
• Broadcasting in the era of electronic media
• Communication through electronic media platforms
• Analyzing the role of electronic media channels in shaping modern-day journalism
• The impact of electronic media on social behavior

Journalism Topics Straight From the Experts

• Describe the effects of biased journalism and why it could harm society.
• An in-depth look at international journalism
• Compare and contrast the Obama and Trump administrations’ treatment of the media.
• Research the “Black Lives Matter” movement and examine how the media contributed to its growth.
• The connection between politics and the media: Are there any media organizations that are politically apolitical?
• Does media coverage of conflict have any beneficial or adverse effects?
• Understanding journalism as a dangerous profession
• The influence of journalism and its impact on army operations
• Mass media censorship in North Korea
• Crisis of Credibility in Journalism and the Media in an Era of Radical Nationalism
• The business of journalism: fake news, but real money!
• How media channels are spreading hatred and violence
• Investigative reporting on the Brazilian drug trade

Literary Journalism Topics to Write About

Read Also – History of Modern Literature

• Literary journalism in the twentieth century
• Employing metaphors in headlines.
• Justify the need for social media platforms to outlaw fake news.
• Are American enemies treated correctly by the media?
• How has journalism been affected by scientific and technological advances?
• American literary journalism
• Literary journalism and the drama of civic life
• Understanding the rise of literary journalism in the eighteenth century
• Researching Tesla’s unique business model
• The evolving ethics of journalism in the 21st century
• Consider the necessity for real-life tales in the media of today.
• A theoretical analysis of the theory of the social responsibility of journalism
• Communication theory in journalism: are journalists the new peacekeeping force?

Political Journalism and Mass Media Topics for Research

Read Also – 200 Political Science Research Topics

• Propaganda in the mass media
• Understanding the psychology of media and politics
• Evaluating the credibility of public media organizations
• New complexities and practices in political journalism
• Popular political media tactics of political parties in the United States
• Can the media influence election outcomes?
• Investigations into the lives of prominent American politicians
• Political scandals cause media introspection.
• Evaluating the impact of politics on mass media
• The politics of public journalism

Unique Journalism Research Topics

• Look into the Government’s media regulation policies.
• Examining the media’s role in eradicating poverty
• Describe how readers may verify the accuracy and reliability of news reports.
• Part of the Media in the Russia-Ukraine Crisis
• How did the Vietnam War’s coverage in the media change over time?
• The authoritarian theory of the press
• Describe the fundamental problems that journalism faces.
• Examines the question of whether media outlets are to blame for the dissemination of dubious news.
• Comprehending the media’s role in eradicating illiteracy rates in developing and under-developed nations
• Contributions and the roles of journalists in COVID-19 pandemic management
• Transculturation’s significance in media translation
• Investigation into famous American politicians

Winding Up!!

Know that each research topic mentioned above has been carefully selected to help you with your research.

We understand coming up with the best topic will be something other than a walk in the park. It would be a challenging journey, mainly because no amount of diligent work can fully guarantee your expected results.

The above topics will allow you to efficiently conduct extensive research, interviews, and other practical methods of collecting relevant data for your research. Last but not least, remember this is your one shot, so give it your best effort. Good luck with your future endeavors!

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I'm an ambitious, seasoned, and versatile author. I am experienced in proposing, outlining, and writing engaging assignments. Developing contagious academic work is always my top priority. I have a keen eye for detail and diligence in producing exceptional academic writing work. I work hard daily to help students with their assignments and projects. Experimenting with creative writing styles while maintaining a solid and informative voice is what I enjoy the most.

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Journalism and the pandemic survey.

The Journalism and the Pandemic Project from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University is mapping the impacts of COVID-19 on journalism worldwide, in order to inform responses to the crisis and help to reimagine journalism’s future. The Project’s first survey was conducted in mid 2020, as the pandemic set in, and drew responses from more than 2,000 journalists in 145 countries across seven languages Findings from 2020 The first 30 findings published from the Journalism and the Pandemic Project at the end of 2020 highlighted COVID-19’s devastating impacts on journalism through an analysis of responses from more than 1,400 English-speaking survey participants in 125 countries. When we analyzed the complete set of 2,000 responses in six languages, we found that the impacts and needs identified were remarkably similar across the cohorts. Our research during COVID’s first wave identified several main areas for concern: the interlinked issues of threats to the safety of journalists (including a significant COVID-era mental health crisis), media freedom erosion, the pernicious role of disinformation in the information ecosystem, and the viability and sustainability challenges confronting the news media. Key findings include:

• Politicians and elected officials were identified by 46% of respondents as a top source of disinformation.
• 81% said they encounter disinformation at least weekly, with more than one-quarter identifying false information many times a day.
• Facebook was identified as the most prolific spreader of disinformation.
• Nearly half said their sources had expressed fear of retaliation for speaking to journalists during the pandemic.
• 30% said that their news organizations had not supplied field reporters with a single piece of protective equipment during the first wave of the pandemic.
• 70% identified the mental health impacts of covering COVID-19 as the most difficult challenge.

The report is also available in Arabic ,  French  and Spanish . Recommendations for action Based on an analysis of data from the first phase of the Project, including insights from roundtable discussions with state and civil society donors conducted in 2021, the Journalism and the Pandemic Project developed the following preliminary recommendations. They are designed to aid governments, donors and civil society organizations seeking to respond effectively to the impacts of COVID-19 on independent journalism globally. 

• Prioritize democracy-reinforcing and counter-disinformation projects and programs (with a focus on critical independent journalism).  
• Make grants conditional on meeting journalism safety requirements.
• Urgently address the mental health crisis affecting journalists and news organizations.
• Address the online violence crisis, which is being exacerbated in the context of COVID-19. 
• Prioritize investment in collaborative/networked journalism initiatives.
• Focus on medium- to long-term investment to address the pandemic’s ongoing effects on journalism.
• Tailor support according to the size of the independent news organization. 
• Invest in programs that support innovation in crisis management within news organizations.
• Bake research into projects/programs to help transfer and embed knowledge globally.
• Explore hybrid journalism-civil society journalism projects which can help effect social change and achieve sustainable development where the need exists.
• Convene funders while ensuring the ‘social distancing’ of the platforms and their corporate objectives.
• Invest in projects that help maximize trust and help defend independent journalism from campaigns designed to discredit and tarnish reliable, factual reporting.
• Invest in projects and outlets which emphasize diversity - in terms of staffing, thematic reporting and audience development. 
• Convene journalists physically as we ‘reopen’ societies, as it is safe to do so.

For more information, or to express interest in collaborating as a research partner, please contact the research project’s lead Dr. Julie Posetti, ICFJ’s Deputy Vice President of Global Research ( [email protected] ), and Nabeelah Shabbir, ICFJ’s Senior Research Associate ( [email protected] ). We are grateful to the global philanthropic organization Luminate for their support with this project. 

More about this program

Contact info.

Dr. Julie Posetti  Global Research Director [email protected]

Nabeelah Shabbir Senior Research Associate [email protected]

News about this program

Global survey on journalism and the pandemic now available in four languages, new global survey raises red flags for journalism in the covid-19 era, beyond fact-checking: fighting the onslaught of covid-19 disinformation.

We exposed corruption and human rights abuses working in a cross-border network supported by ICFJ.

Sign up for ICFJ updates

Media and Journalism Research Center

Media and Journalism Research Center serves as a platform for academic work on a broad range of media and communication issues. It has participated and taken a lead role in collaborative projects with academic institutions and civil society partners across Europe and the US, and is continuously developing new research projects and networks.

Research has been the core activity of our center from its early days and continues to anchor the work of our institution.

• Faculty of Arts
• Centre for Advancing Journalism

Research projects

Media education in cambodia.

The Centre for Advancing Journalism (CAJ) has been selected by UNESCO to research Cambodia’s journalism education sector and provide advice about how international supporters might better support media training.

The 9-month consultancy project is being led by Liam Cochrane, who has been reporting on Cambodia for 20 years. In December 2022, Liam and CAJ director Andrew Dodd conducted field research in Phnom Penh, with the assistance of Cambodian journalist Lon Nara. They met students, teachers, reporters, editors, non-government organisations, donors and diplomats. A qualitative survey will also be conducted by specialist Cambodian researcher Chandore Khuon.

Weeks after the visit, the Cambodian Government forcibly shut down the last remaining independent newsroom, Voice of Democracy. It’s a new low point for the nation’s much beleaguered media and reflects a wider shift to an outright dictatorship.

The project will result in a published report giving an overview of Cambodia’s journalism education sector, as well as targeted advice for universities and UNESCO

Research Group on Journalism Pedagogy

The group has been conducting research since 2019 on journalism pedagogy in an attempt to teach journalism to international students at the University of Melbourne, and especially those from the People’s Republic of China.  We aim to improve our educational outcomes by a deeper understanding of the international students we serve.

New Beats: Mass redundancies, career changes and the future of Australian journalism

This project investigated what happened to around 3,000 journalists who became redundant in Australia during or since 2012.

The project, which commenced in 2014, has been funded by the Australian Research Council through the ARC Linkage and ARC Discovery schemes and was conducted by a  team of researchers from La Trobe University, Deakin University, the University of Melbourne, Swinburne University, the University of Sydney and the University of Amsterdam.

China: The Covid-19 Story: Unmasking China’s Global Strategy

Ancient flora stories: the rich heritage of yea's flora fossil site.

An ordinary roadside cutting on Limestone Road, Yea, Victoria, marks a place that overturned long held scientific understanding of how and when plants evolved. The site is listed in the National Heritage List for its significant contribution to the world’s understanding of our ancient earth’s secrets and for its association with Dr Cookson, one of the most eminent palaeobotanists of the 20th century. This project tells its story.

IFJ Report - The China Story: Reshaping the World's Media

FJ Report - The China Story: Reshaping the World's Media

A global survey of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) measuring China’s global media outreach by surveying journalism unions worldwide, found clear indications of the wide-ranging impact of China’s moves to extend its influence through global journalism unions and individual journalists.

The Civic Impact of Journalism

This multi-faceted, interdisciplinary project is funded by industry and the Ian Potter Foundation. It aims to address one of the key challenges of our times.

Journalism faces an existential threat as a result of the digital revolution. In Australia, nearly 2000 jobs in journalism have been lost from traditional news media organisations as the advertising revenue that supports journalism flows away to online platforms.

At the same time, online news platforms have neither the resources nor expertise to take up the work that the traditional media are relied upon to do. What is at stake for democratic societies in this state of affairs?

An essential step in answering that question is to assess the impact of journalism on civic life. What is it that journalism brings to civic life? What is at risk?

The functions journalism is expected to perform in democratic societies have been established and recognised for at least 70 years:

• to keep the public up to date with what is going on in the world
• to provide the public with reliable information on which they may base choices as participants in political, economic and social life
• to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and opinions, to be a watchdog on those in power
• to help societies understand themselves
• to provide the material upon which members of a society can base a common conversation

These functions all contribute to the working of capitalist democracies.

It is one thing to list them, however, and another to test whether and how journalism discharges them. Only by doing that will it be possible to assess what really is at stake for society if journalism becomes attenuated.

Over the two years 2015-16, a team of researchers assembled under the aegis of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne, designed and carried out the research under a project called the Civic Impact of Journalism.

The multi-disciplinary team was led by Associate Professor Margaret Simons, Director of the Centre and a specialist in journalism and media. The others were Dr Denis Muller (political science, media and journalism), Dr Andrea Carson (political science and media), Emeritus Professor Rod Tiffen (media, government and politics), Professor Brian McNair (journalism, media and communications), Professor Helen Sullivan (political science and government, Ms Jennifer Martin (journalism) and Mr Doug Hendrie (political science).

The research was empirical, designed to find out what the real impact of journalism is. It was based on case studies, some of which were based on the functions of journalism mentioned earlier, and some based on how journalism worked in three diverse community settings.

The functions examined were: investigative, campaigning, and reportage of civic forums such as parliament and the courts:

• The investigative study tells how Joanne McCarthy of The Newcastle Morning Herald – and the newspaper itself – revealed the cover-up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church in the Hunter Valley. It shows the direct connection between that work and the establishment of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
• The campaigning case study tells of the War on 1034 road-safety campaign by the Melbourne Herald, which created the political climate in which the Victorian Government was able to implement a series of crucial law reforms, specifically the compulsory wearing of seat belts and the use of random breath tests to counter drink-driving
• The civic-forum reportage case study examines the decline in reportage of the County and Supreme Courts in Victoria and the effect on the workings of the courts, notably the increased use of suppression orders by judicial officers concerned that inexperienced court reporters will unwittingly publish prejudicial material. It also explores the consequences for the concept of open justice

The three place-based case studies were carried out in Moree, Byron Bay and Broadmeadows, each of which has a civic history or social characteristics that would enable the researchers see with reasonable clarity the role journalism plays in the civic life of those places.

These six case studies lead to some important conclusions about what journalism brings to civic society. They also identify emerging deficits that are likely to weaken Australian democracy if neglected.

Publications

A book resulting from this project is currently in preparation.

Other resulting publications are as follows:

• Latimore , J., Nolan , D. and Simons , M. (2016) “Reassembling the Indigenous Sphere,” in Australasian Journal of Information Systems
• Simons , M., Tiffen , R., Hendrie , D., Carson , A., Sullivan , H., Muller , D. and McNair , B. (2016) “Understanding the civic impact of journalism: A realistic evaluation perspective,” in Journalism Studies , pp. 1-15
• Carson , A., Muller , D., Martin , J., and Simons , M. (2016) “A new symbiosis? Opportunities and challenges to hyperlocal journalism in the digital age,” in Media International Australia
• Simons , M. and Buller , B. (2015) “Dead Trees and Live Links – what good are newspapers?” Australian and New Zealand Communications Association, Refereed Proceedings of 2015 Annual Conference

Violence Against Women: a media intervention

This project investigates how a neglected social issue - namely violence against women - suddenly became news and asks: what are the limitations of this new found visibility? In the process, the project also looks at how gender inequality in the newsroom impacts on news agendas.

Violence against women costs Australia $14.7 USD billion a year in harm and loss of opportunity for women, including the cost of intimate partner violence as the lead cause of preventable disease and premature death among women aged 15-44. Violence against women is a largely hidden problem, yet manifests in and forms part of the backdrop to most other more visible health issues. It is, one would think, the biggest crime story in Australia and one of our biggest social and economic stories. Yet until recently, violence against women was not reported prominently or consistently by mainstream media.

This is of concern, since media plays a key role in forming societal attitudes to gender and gender roles. At the same time, ethnographic accounts of the newsroom and surveys of female journalists have suggested that newsrooms are sexist workplaces. These gender issues appear to be reflected in news values and decisions, and are stubbornly resistant to change.

The rape and murder of 29 year old Jill Meagher on September 22, 2012 signalled a turning point in the media’s coverage of violence against women. Since then, the Herald Sun newspaper – Australia’s largest circulation daily – has taken a conscious leadership role in reporting on violence against women as shown by the successful ‘Take a Stand’ campaign which continues today.

We have interviewed editorial executives, senior and junior journalists from the Herald Sun, The Age, Mamamia, Channel 10s The Project and Channel Nine to find out how these changes in news priorities occurred. Our focus has included cursory reporting of violence against women as well as in-depth, consistent and contextual reporting of the issue. Alongside the interviews we are analysing print, online and broadcast content from the above mentioned outlets, spanning in time from September 2014 to late 2016.

In early 2016 we launched Uncovered, an online social media intervention aimed at journalists to help them source information about violence against women and further improve coverage of the issue. The impact of this intervention will be studied through more interviews and an analysis of media content post-intervention.

Finally, a series of focus groups with people from across Australia will be carried out in 2017. This qualitative component of the project will complement existing data from the National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) and in particular, further explore the impact of the media on community attitudes.

The project is already beginning to shed light on what forces, conversations, considerations and internal politics have been working together to shift newsroom agendas and news judgments. We will examine the limitations of this change in news agenda, reasons and implications.

• Dr Margaret Simons
• Professor Jenny Morgan
• Dr Denis Muller
• Professor Kelsey Hegarty
• Dr Kristin Diemer
• Associate Professor Michael Flood (University of Woolongong)
• Loni Cooper
• Jane Gilmore
• Annie Blatchford

The Citizens’ Agenda

Australian voters directly shape federal election debate.

Voters in 10 key federal electorates had a chance to directly influence debate and media coverage in 2013’s federal election, through a ground-breaking project run by the University of Melbourne and the social media group OurSay .

The Citizens’ Agenda project enabled voters to post questions on the OurSay website, and vote for the questions others contributed. The questions that attracted the most support were then put to the candidates at a series of public meetings in August and September 2013. University of Melbourne researchers used the project to test whether the use of social media to detect a ‘Citizens’ Agenda’ can improve civic engagement, and alter how journalists report politics.

Citizens’ Agenda factsheet

The research team analysed the data from this exercise, including the numerous interviews with political candidates, journalists and citizens. Preliminary conclusions included that:

• The OurSay intervention engaged mainly those citizens already engaged in political activity, both online and offline. There was some evidence of its drawing in citizens for the first time, and of some cross-over between online and offline interactions (web based voting and town hall meetings), but the cross-over was limited
• Younger people were more likely to participate in the online activity than to attend the town hall meetings, though this did happen in some instances, for example, in the context of support for specific political parties (Greens and Sex Party)
• Conversely, older people were less likely to propose or vote for questions or otherwise participate in the online processes, but were more likely than younger people to turn up to the town hall meetings, having heard about them through other than online sources

The Citizens’ Agenda is believed to be the world’s first social media ‘intervention’ of its kind. The participating electorates were chosen because they broadly represent the diversity of Australia, including a mix of marginal seats and safe seats, urban, rural and regional, and a mix of incumbent political parties. They include Melbourne (Vic), Corangamite (Vic), Bradfield (NSW), Fowler (NSW), Longman (Queensland), Oxley (Queensland), Brand (WA), Grey (SA), Denison (Tasmania) and Fraser (ACT).

Major national survey

In May 2013, the research team released the results of a major national survey which gauged the public’s attitudes to political engagement, trust in government and media, and the current state of the political landscape. The independent national poll found Australian politicians have failed to engage or build a sense of trust with voters just months out from the federal election.

“The Survey commissioned by the Citizens’ Agenda project – found a clear majority of voters (58%) thought the quality of political leadership was now ‘noticeably worse’ than usual.”

The Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, Dr Margaret Simons, said the project empowered voters through social media to truly help shape political debate. “Voters in a democracy shouldn’t be passive. On the contrary, with powerful new tools of communication all around, we should be telling politicians what matters to us and forcing them to engage,” she said.

Download the Citizens’ Agenda national survey of voters results

• Simons , M., Sullivan , H., Nolan , D. and Martin , A. (2013) “The Citizens’ Agenda,” in Simons, M. (ed.,). What’s Next in Journalism?: new-media entrepreneurs tell their stories. Melbourne/London: Scribe Publications

More information

• View a poster summary of the project (3.20Mb pdf)

Wakul App - Amplifying Indigenous Media

Indigenous Australians are creating, accessing and distributing news content like never before. Indigenous and mainstream print and broadcast channels are being challenged and held to account by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders producing stories for their own people. Wakul App gathers the stories from traditional and new media Indigenous news sources and centralises them in one place, connecting diverse communities through the new technology they are using.

This innovative project, conducted in partnership with The Guardian in Australia and Indigenous X, arose out of The Civic Impact of Journalism Project and its key insight that new media is resulting in a growth in Indigenous media.

Wakul App is currently in prototype form. Its further development will form the basis of an ARC Linkage Grant application in 2017.

Journalism in China

This ongoing research project involves interviewing journalists in China with a view to understanding how it is changing, and in particular how new and social media is impacting on government censorship and control. Researchers David Nolan, Margaret Simons and Scott Wright are visiting China regularly and interviewing a large number of journalists operating in different platform and geographical settings. This is edgy work, involving careful protection of the confidentiality of sources.

• Simons , M., Nolan , D. and Wright , S. (2016). “‘We are not North Korea’: propaganda and professionalism in the People’s Republic of China,” in Media, Culture & Society

Journalism Entrepreneurship in New Media

For the first time in human history, most people in developed countries are able to publish their news and thoughts to the world within a few minutes of deciding to do so. Meanwhile, the big industrial-scale media organisations are in decline, and at the same time there is a new blog, website, or social-media presence almost every hour.

This Centre takes a continuing interest in this emerging sector of news media, and has hosted a number of seminars and workshops for new media entrepreneurs. This resulted in the 2013 Book What’s Next in Journalism, co-published with Scribe. This is a collection of contributions by new-media entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds – journalism, IT innovation, social activism, and community work. They talk about connecting with their audiences, and what just might be a new kind of news ecosystem in which everyone gets to play.

• Simons , M. (ed) (2013) What’s Next in Journalism? Melbourne / London: Scribe Publications

Public attitudes towards asylum seekers and refugees

In collaboration with the Melbourne Social Equity Institute and the Melbourne Refugee Studies Program, The Centre for Advancing Journalism is researching the drivers of public attitudes towards asylum seekers.

We will conduct a range of focus groups designed to interrogate why people feel the way they do about refugees and asylum seekers. The result will be a research report breaking new ground on this issue, and designed to be useful to NGOs, policy makers and others.

‘Islamisation’ and other anxieties: voter attitudes towards asylum seekers

Legal Constraints on the Reporting of Violence Against Women

Research shows that media reports of intimate partner homicides (IPHs) exclude information about the accused’s prior violence and the broader social context of violence against women (VAW). This is despite the reality that IPHs, more than any other crime, arise out of a history of prior violence and an environment where gender inequality is entrenched in social, cultural and organisational structures and practices (Our Watch, ANROWS, & VicHealth, 2015).

What has not been sufficiently recognised in these critiques however, is the impact of legal restrictions, which prohibit the publication of certain types of information, and the rules of evidence, which govern what raw material is available to a journalist.

The aim of this project is to provide empirical data showing how legal restrictions and the rules of evidence impact the media’s production of stories about IPH trials. This will go towards a better understanding of the processes that influence media coverage of IPHs, facilitating accurate, balanced and ethical journalism practice.

Journalism Ethics in the Digital Age

In Dr Denis Muller, the Centre for Advancing Journalism (CAJ) has one of Australia’s leading thinkers in journalism ethics. His recent book Journalism Ethics for the Digital Age canvasses the many issues in current day journalism practice. Journalism is being transformed by the digital revolution. Journalists working for media organisations are having to file and update stories across multiple platforms under increasing time pressures. Meanwhile, anyone with sufficient literacy skills and access to the internet can aspire to practise journalism, and many are doing so.

And yet journalism in any form still depends for its legitimacy on the observance of ethical principles and practices. For example, it has to maintain a commitment to telling the truth, and to minimise deception and betrayal; deal with conflicts of interest; protect sources and their confidences; know how to report on traumatised and vulnerable people; and know when to respect privacy.

Journalism Ethics for the Digital Age covers all these areas and more. It traces the ethics of journalism from their origins in philosophy to the new challenges brought about by digital technology, with practical examples to show how ethical values and principles can play out in the real world. An invaluable tool for ethical decision-making, this is a book for professional journalists and citizen journalists, for students in the disciplines of journalism, media, communications, and applied ethics, and for the engaged reader everywhere.

• Muller , D. (2014) Journalism Ethics for the Digital Age. Melbourne / London: Scribe Publications

Best Practice in Data Journalism

Good journalism relies on verified facts, and sustainable robust democracies need engaged, informed citizens. In this journalism is vital, yet is also profoundly challenged by the consequences of technological change. The communications technologies of our time, including pervasive information and access to Big Data, bring both opportunities and dilemmas.

As part of its continuing mission to make a positive contribution to journalism at a time of change, the Centre for Advancing Journalism is conducting a number of activities aimed at exploring the best practice in data journalism, and charting ways forward.

In September 2014 and June 2015 the Centre hosted a two day workshop, Best Practice in Data Journalism, bringing together a select group of invited data journalists and specialists in Big Data from a number of different academic disciplines and industries. They were joined by representatives of the federally funded AURIN project, government representatives involved in the Government 2.0 agenda, leading figures from industry involved in Big Data, and experts from a range of relevant University disciplines.

The aims of the best practice workshop were to:

• Bring together Data Journalism practitioners to discuss their practice, challenges and aims
• Promote conversations and connections between the nation’s best Data Journalists and relevant experts from the University and industry
• Promote understanding of the challenges and opportunities of Data Journalism, in the interests of building effective responses, including through collaborations
• Explore new technologies to facilitate the above through big data analysis and visualisation
• A focus of the workshop was to explore the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network ( AURIN ) and the capabilities of data it offers for Data Journalism driven projects

AURIN is a $24 million initiative funded by the Australian Government’s Education Investment Fund and Super Science schemes, and provides access to a wide range of data sets (over 1000) from more than 30 major data providers. It is being established to support research into the built environment and urban domain including designers and planners and academic researchers from a wide range of disciplines. The uniqueness of AURIN to other efforts is that it provides live programmatic access to data from the definitive data providers across Australia including government organisations such as the ABS, Department of Health, and Department of Transport and commercial organisations such as the Fairfax Australian Property Monitors.

The Centre for Advancing Journalism and AURIN are keen to develop data journalism projects and collaborations arising out of this workshop.

More recently, Centre Director Margaret Simons and Research Assistant Elyas Khan presented a keynote address “Journalism at the Crossroads” at the eResearch Australiasia 2016 Conference, in which they outlined the pressing need for collaborations between journalists and computer engineers, or “hacks and hackers”.

Find out more about the conference on the eResearch website .

AuSud media project

The AuSud Media Project was born out of concerns over media representations of Sudanese Australians, and a desire to find practical ways of addressing the issue. An Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report published in 2009 ( African Australians: A report on human rights and social inclusion issues ) noted that,

"Unfortunately, the media usually focuses on crime or on political commentary about African-Australians - and has often been negative or critical, and sometimes misleading. This has contributed to general community confusion or concern about African-Australians, and has caused distress to many."

The research team received an ARC Linkage Grant (LP110100063) to implement a research based journalism training initiative for Sudanese Australians. The training side of the project involved working with our linkage partners, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Australian Multicultural Education Service (AMES) , in the development of a journalism training program taught by highly respected journalists. That training program, conducted over three years, was completed at the end of 2013. Those who undertook the training have established their own online news site The Gazelle (inactive since 2014).

The research side of the project included media content analysis, focus groups with participants and interviews with journalists. This research will inform the provision of future initiatives of its kind, as well as explore the way in which new arrivals to Australia are portrayed in the media, with a view to improving media practice in this area. The Final Report is now available below.

• Report AuSud Media Project 2014 (1.09Mb pdf)

AuSud research team

Dr Denis Muller (Honorary) Email | Profile Centre for Advancing Journalism The University of Melbourne

Dr David Nolan Email | Profile School of Culture and Communication The University of Melbourne

Professor Karen Farquharson Life and Social Sciences Swinburne University of Technology

Professor Timothy Marjoribanks Graduate School of Management La Trobe University

As part of the AuSud project, the research team conducted a preliminary study of 8 months of mainstream news coverage of Sudanese people in Australia. This study was partly supported by a University of Melbourne Social Justice Initiative Grant. This research analysed coverage before and after the 2007 Federal election - a period which also coincided with the tragic bashing death of Liep Gony. The analysis of 203 articles found that while not all coverage was negative, the majority of stories represented Sudanese Australians in relation to violence and issues of integration.

Based on this research, the team has recently published an article in the Journal of Intercultural Studies:

• Nolan , D., Farquharson , K., Politoff , V. and Marjoribanks , T. (2011) "Mediated Multiculturalism: Newspaper Representations of Sudanese Migrants in Australia," in Journal of Intercultural Studies 32 (6), pp. 657-673

Media training

The 2010 ausud pilot training.

With the support of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and the The Myer Foundation , the researchers of the AuSud Media Project were able to offer a pilot training program in 2010.

"I feel the Journalism training has helped me learn the skills needed to express my news stories with confidence. Often media coverage of the Sudanese community is very negative. The journalism training program delivered by the Centre for Advancing Journalism imparted me with the skills to write a news story, be aware of the ethical obligations around writing news, and gain the skills required to be able to handle media interviews. I am glad that I have learnt these skills and am now in a position to respond to the negative media publicity of the Sudanese Community."

Kot Michael Monoah, AuSud Project participant

AuSud celebrates achievements

In May 2012, the Centre for Advancing Journalism celebrated the completion of another 12 week course in journalism for Sudanese Australians. The completion ceremony was the culmination of thirteen students' participation in the AuSud Media Project, with the objective to gain valuable skills in journalism. The students were taught by some of Australia's best journalists, writers and broadcasters, who also provided mentorship to the students.

Michael Gawenda said: "Our students embraced 12 weeks of media training including feature writing, editing, interviewing and ethics. To celebrate completing the course we compiled some of their writing into a small publication. They should be thrilled to see their work in print and be very proud of what they've achieved."

• View AuSud students work 2012 (1.3Mb pdf)
• View AuSud students work 2011 (1.36Mb pdf)

The AuSud blog

The central aim of the AuSud Media Project is to facilitate Sudanese Australians in the development of their own voice. As part of this goal, participants of the AuSud Media Project are working on an AuSud Blog - a space where those who have been through the training can share their insights and perspectives to a wider audience. To read their work please go to THE GAZELLE: Afro-Australian Voices blog (inactive since 2014).

Black Saturday: In the media spotlight

Stage i - how the media covered australia's worst peace-time disaster.

The February 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria was Australia’s worst peace-time disaster that left 173 people dead, more than 414 injured, over 1700 homes destroyed and an estimated 7000 people homeless. Coverage of Black Saturday was extensive and in many ways comprehensive. The journalists, photographers and television crews involved in the coverage faced major challenges in doing their work and were deeply affected by what they witnessed. They were faced with ethical questions, logistical problems and fundamental questions about how to cover a natural disaster so close to home.

The Centre has undertaken a significant research project aimed at exploring the experience of journalists, editors and news directors reporting on the Black Saturday fires. The goal of the research was to allow those involved in covering the fires to reflect on their experiences, the quality of the coverage, the pressures they faced, and any lessons they learned for future coverage of major disasters. The research findings were launched at a conference on November 19, 2010 involving representatives from media organisations and key emergency services involved in the Black Saturday bushfires.

• Read the Stage I, Executive Summary on How the Media Covered Australia’s Worst Peace-time Disaster (365kb pdf)
• Purchase Media Ethics and Disasters: Lessons from the Black Saturday Bushfires , by Dr Denis Muller

Stage II - The Survivor Stories

This report is about the impact of media exposure on survivors. It is based on qualitative research in the form of in-depth personal interviews with 27 survivors from eight bushfire-affected communities. The interviews were carried out shortly after the second anniversary of Black Saturday. The research was discussed at a community forum in Marysville on 21 September, 2011 at which bushfire-affected community members responded to the findings.

• Read Stage II, Executive Summary on The Survivor Stories (340kb pdf)
• Read the Methodology for Parts I and II (530kb pdf)

Journalism, trauma and the treatment of vulnerable people : A case study based on the coverage of Black Saturday

This publication, by Dr Denis Muller will integrate the two major research reports, one about how journalists who covered the Black Saturday bushfires responded to the ethical challenges they faced, and the other about the effects on survivors of their encounters with the media in the immediate aftermath of the fires. It recounts the way the tragedy of Black Saturday unfolded, and how the media coverage developed from the evening of Black Saturday through the weeks that followed. In the course of this narrative, large ethical issues emerge, and they are discussed from the point of view of the media practitioners and the survivors, in which the voices of both groups are heard directly.

One large ethical issue concerned the way media practitioners dealt with traumatised survivors, and how they handled their own emotional responses to these traumatic conditions. A significant part of this new book deals with these two sides of the trauma question, as well as the vexed question of consent. Another big issue concerned the relationship between media and emergency services personnel, which affected access to people, places and information. Other major issues concerned deception and intrusion.

Further reading

Media reports about the conference and our research study include:

• Muller , D. and Gawenda , M. “Ethical Free-for-all Over Media Access to the Firezone” (815kb pdf) published in Media international Australia, November 2010
• Stewart , C. “Untold stories of Victoria’s bushfire disaster,” in The Australian, 23 November 2009 (Online) Not available
• Munro , I. “Study finds media have no rules for disasters,” in The Age, 19 November 2009 (Online) Cited 06/02/2013
• Simons , M. “Journalists Adrift: The Reporting of Black Saturday" and “Humans First, Journalist Second. The Journalism of Black Saturday,” on crikey.com.au, 19 November 2009 (Online) Cited 06/02/2013
• Holmes , J. “Bushfire tragedy inspired the best from Australian journalists,” on The Drum, 23 December, 2009 (Online) Cited 28/04/2016

Press photography in Australia

Press photography has long influenced how Australians have understood themselves and their world. This project, funded by the Australian Research Council (LP 120200458) with the National Library of Australia and the Walkley Foundation, documents the history of Australian press photography, from the first published news photograph (in 1888) to the way press photography is used today. The research focuses upon changes and continuities in how the Australian press has used photographs over time. This includes examining the seismic advances in technology and its impact on news photography and the ethical and editorial issues surrounding news photography. It also looks at the ways that news photography can blur the boundaries between public and private worlds, at the evolution of the profession and the use of amateur and agency photographs in newspapers, and editorial shifts in the placement, captioning and framing of news photos. The research also considers the photographic representation of Australia and the world, including international events, politics and leadership, war, crime, gender, immigration, protest, women, disaster and sport.

The outcomes of the research will be communicated through a book, conference presentations and articles and many public events. One of its most important initiatives is the collection of sixty oral history interviews with Australian newspaper and magazine photographers to be kept at the National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore collection. The NLA’s collection records the voices that describe our cultural, intellectual and social life and the interviews will give illuminating insight into the experiences and lives of our press photographers.

Work on Press Photography in Australia was undertaken as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Projects funding scheme (project number LP120200458).

Lead researcher and prominent journalist Mr Michael Gawenda says he was thrilled to have secured a $200,000 Australian Research Council grant to fund the study Press Photography in Australia. "This project will enable us to look at an area of journalism that is often neglected: the place of photography in Australian journalism and the way photography has recorded major events in Australian history," he says. "It will look at how the photograph – and now video – has been used in journalism to record social and political change."

"This is a wonderful project at a time when journalism is in a great period of change and the use of photography and video is increasingly important in the digital age, "Mr Gawenda says. In a journalism career spanning more than three decades, Mr Gawenda has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent, columnist and was Editor-in-Chief of The Age from 1997 to 2004.

Professor Sally Young from the University’s School of Social and Political Sciences, Professor Kate Darian-Smith (Honorary) , from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and Associate Professor Fay Anderson from the School of Journalism, Australian and Indigenous Studies, Monash University will also work on the research project.

• Young , Sally and Anderson , Fay (2016). Shooting the Picture: A History of Australian Press Photography . Melbourne University Press

Journal articles

• Anderson , F. (2014) "Collective Silence: The Australian Press Reporting of Suffering during the World Wars," in Journalism History, 40(3), pp. 148-57
• Anderson , F. (2014) "Chasing the Pictures: Press and Magazine Photography," in Media International Australia , No. 150, pp. 47-55

Conference papers

• Anderson , F. (2015) “‘A Strange Alchemy:’ The State of Australian Press Photography,” History Section –  The Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, Montreal, 12 - 16 July 2015
• Anderson , D., Anderson , F. and Lindgren , M. (2015) “The Unguarded Moment: Telling Stories of Trauma, Resistance and Renewal,” Ethics of Society and Ethics of Communication Section –  The Conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, Montreal, 12 - 16 July 2015
• Young , S. (2015), “Foundational Moments in Australian Press Photography,” Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Sydney, 9 July 2015
• Anderson , F. (2014), “From World War One to Afghanistan, Armenia to Gaza: Showing images of suffering then and Now,” Keynote address for the ‘Media, War and Memory’ Conference, Auckland University of Technology, 18 to 19 September 2014
• Anderson , F. (2014) ““Take the Picture": Australian Press Photographers, Crime and Gender,” International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) annual conference, University of Hyderabad, India, 16-19 July 2014
• Anderson , F. (2012) ““Shooting the Body”: Photographing Our Boys and Violence during World War Two,” presented at the Violence Studies Conference, Humanities Research Institute and the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle, 21-24 August 2012, Crowne Plaza, Newcastle

For more information, please contact:

Professor Sally Young Email: [email protected]

Visit the Press Photography in Australia website

Research and reports about collaborative journalism

U.s. democracy day impact report: what does it mean for newsrooms to defend democracy.

In 2022, a coalition of journalism organizations set out to answer that question. Our curiosity sparked a call to action and became the first U.S. Democracy Day collaboration. On September 15, nearly 200 newsrooms and journalism organizations from across the United States rallied together for Democracy Day 2022. In 2023, 163 newsrooms stepped up to participate. Across these two milestone days, the newsrooms collectively published more than 380 stories, editorials, and posts about the democratic process.

• Click here to read the impact report.

Cross-field collaboration: How and why journalists and civil society organizations around the world are working together

We define cross-field collaboration as  a partnership involving at least one journalism organization and one civil society organization  (usually an advocacy organization but not always) in which they work together to produce content in the service of an explicit ideal or outcome. Civil society organizations include NGOs, universities, civic tech and arts organizations, among others.

• Click here to read the report.

Developing journalism collaborations for local impact: The role of collaborative scaffolding and solutions journalism in changing local media ecosystems

In this report, Caroline Porter and Elizabeth Hanson Shapiro summarize findings from a yearlong Solutions Journalism Network research project in 2020-2021 in which we studied a cohort of six solutions journalism collaboratives based in different parts of the United States. Our research included baseline case studies; interviews with journalists, editors and non-news partners, as well as audience members; meeting observations; and surveys among collaborative members and audience members. Our interest was in understanding what outcomes these collaboratives were generating for themselves, their ecosystems and their communities.

• Click here to read more about this report.
• Click here to download the full report.

Collaborating for change: Approaches to measuring the impact of collaborative journalism

Impact Architects , together with the  Center for Cooperative Media  at Montclair State University, conducted a research project ( which you can read and download in full here ) over the last three years to understand what type of impact collaborative journalism initiatives aimed for, and how they knew if they succeeded. This research was funded in part by  Rita Allen Foundation and published in August 2020.

Adapting to the changing climate: How collaboration addresses unique challenges in climate-change and environmental reporting

Climate-reporting collaborations, in which a news organization or journalist joins forces with other news organizations or affiliated groups to cover climate change and the environment, have rapidly expanded over the past decade. This report provides an overview of this trend; it establishes reasons why collaboration is well-suited to address the unique challenges of reporting on climate change and the environment; and finally, this research outlines potential opportunities and needs within this subfield for journalists and funders to consider.

• Click here to read more about this research.

Seeking a Cure: Accomplishments, impact and areas for improvement

The Seeking a Cure collaboration examined challenges facing community hospitals in rural areas across the Midwest in the face of financial and regulatory pressure and changing patterns of health care delivery. It was also the first editorial collaboration from Amplify, which is focused on improving editorial collaboration and content distribution to advance the nonprofit news field.

From Rust to Resilience: Accomplishments, impact and areas for improvement

Climate change affects every person on this planet. In the Midwest and beyond, our members provide strong environmental coverage. Based on a conversation with the editor of a member newsroom about potential collaborations, we decided to pursue a project about the Great Lakes. As with any collaboration, we wanted to help facilitate reporting that told a broader story than any individual outlet could provide.

Impact Report: N.J. Voting Block

Over the course of 12 months, the Center for Cooperative Media, together with The Center for Investigative Reporting, coordinated what came to be called Voting Block , a collaborative reporting initiative with 30 partners that included text, audio, and video stories, community events, and even a comedy show.

• Click here to read more about Voting Block.

Comparing models of collaborative journalism

In her fall 2017 report “Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism,” Center for Cooperative Media research director Sarah Stonbely, Ph.D., examines dozens of collaborative journalism projects and categorizes them into six models, a matrix based on project duration and level of integration. The report also includes tip sheets for organizations considering a collaborative effort.

• Click here to read more about Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism .
• Click here to download the full report .

Cross-border journalism: an exercise in international team-working

The book, “Cross-Border Collaborative Journalism,” is a detailed guide to transnational reporting, a cutting-edge journalistic strategy. In the twenty-first century, the most pressing political and social issues, such as financial crises, wealth inequality, migration flows and environmental collapse, transcend national borders. In reaction, journalists are increasingly collaborating across the globe to produce impactful and in-depth reporting. Recent agenda-setting cross-border collaborations include LuxLeaks, Panama Papers and Football Leaks.

Brigitte Alfter takes the reader, step-by-step, through the history of cross-border collaborative journalism and the current working practices behind it. The book draws from the author’s own experience, as well as exclusive interviews with other pioneers of cross-border journalism, and notable case studies are integrated throughout.

• Order a copy of the book from Routledge .
• Read a review by Tina Bettels-Schwabbauer .

Case Studies in collaborative local journalism

In this report, Dr. Joy Jenkins and Dr. Lucas Graves analyze the potential for collaborative journalism initiatives to address the challenges facing local news. Although collaboration has been examined in the context of national and international partnerships, often among larger news organizations, few studies investigate these efforts at the local level, particularly in Europe. As local media around the world continue to face declining revenues and shrinking newsroom staffs, collaborative approaches may offer a vehicle for producing high-quality accountability journalism at the local level.

• Read more about the report .

CrossCheck was a collaborative effort among journalists in France working together to debunk misinformation during the country’s 2017 presidential election. A total of 37 newsrooms, universities, nonprofits and tech companies worked cooperatively on CrossCheck.

• Click here to read more about CrossCheck, including what impact the project had on newsrooms, journalists and the audience .

Electionland

Electionland was a collaborative journalism project that covered voting during the 2016 United States presidential election, across the country and in real time. It employed technology and data to track problems at the polls.

• Click here to read more about Electionland .

How news partnerships work between commercial and nonprofit newsrooms

In the last decade, nonprofit news organizations have emerged with a model that depends on creative partnerships. At the same time, most commercial newsrooms have seen deep cuts to staffing and resources, leaving them in search of ways to sustain the quality and depth of their journalism. This report commissioned by the American Press Institute examines how collaborations between commercial and nonprofit news entities work.

Collaboration and the creation of a new journalism commons

This report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School builds on the recent research on collaboration from the Center of Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and the American Press Institute, and the seminal work on the commons developed by Elinor Ostrom, Charlotte Hess, Carol M. Rose, Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, and others.

Beyond Borders: The collaborative newsrooms of the future

This report by University of Canterbury fellow Talia Shadwell examines different collaborations around the world, and puts them in context for fellow New Zealand journalists.

Let us know about other research reports that we should add to this page; email us at [email protected] . 

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Journalism Dissertation Topics – Get a Research Based Topic

Published by Owen Ingram at January 2nd, 2023 , Revised On August 11, 2023

Coming up with original journalism dissertation topics for your undergraduate, Master or PhD degree can be a very frustrating experience . In contrast to other disciplines, journalism dissertations are judged based on the interviewee’s quality of information.

A journalism dissertation must be more than just a statement of theoretical knowledge; it must be genuine and applicable.

Are you trying to find the ideal subjects for journalism research? Improve your grade in the dissertation project by using these journalistic research questions and topics.

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Unique Journalism Topics

• By depicting women as materialistic things, how does the media help perpetuate stereotyped depictions of women?
• Discuss how powerful individuals influence the freedom of media and journalist
• Talk about the main issues that journalists face when performing their jobs
• What impact has advances in science and technology had on journalism?
• How many journalists alter the idea that women are materialistic?
• Can journalism be utilized to advance disadvantaged groups in society?
• What impact do online media outlets have on journalism today?
• Do you think social media is displacing print media?
• How has technology changed the methods through which journalists communicate with their audience?
• How do well-known people affect the freedom of the press and journalists?
• Describe the difficulties faced daily by journalists working in a variety of geographical settings
• How can journalists better inform the public about current events?
• What part does the media play in lowering crime?
• Talk about how the media has a bad impact on violence
• What connection is there between media and the expansion of the fashion sector?
• What is the media’s subsequent effect on the expansion of an economy?
• What do you think about denying political media outlets a license to operate?
• Consider the effects of media on your life during the past 10 years
• Describe how media violence could be advantageous compared to the violence that is affected by society
• Examine how the media sector has changed as a result of technological development

Best Journalism Topics

• Examine the arguments against headlines employing metaphors by media outlets
• How media psychology relates to communication
• Describe how the media has influenced the music industry’s expansion
• Examine how the media has influenced advancements
• Describe the effects of biased media and why it could be harmful to society
• Examine how the media has violated people’s rights and freedoms
• Look at the Black Lives Matter movement and how the media has contributed to its growth
• Consider the impact of media on the dwindling of traditions and culture
• Why does political antagonism between political subjects and classes need to be promoted through the media?
• What part does the media play in encouraging educational activities?
• What part does the media play in raising awareness?
• Describe how readers may check the accuracy and legitimacy of news stories.
• Discuss the role of the media in a nation’s development
• Describe the influence that social media has had on how police brutality instances are reported
• What effect did the media have on the size of the Vietnam War?
• Identify if governments should have the only authority to censor journalists and news reporters
• Describe the key problems that journalism faces
• Examines if media outlets are to blame for the dissemination of unfounded rumours

Investigative Journalism Topics

• How reporters may continue to produce high-quality work without necessarily spending more
• Nigeria is a case study of how the media is assisting in the rebranding of some nations
• How powerful politicians influence some media outlets’ important choices
• An evaluation of the issues limiting information freedom in emerging nations
• How is sexual material used on the front pages of health publications to draw readers?
• How to utilise magazine covers to increase sales
• What moral distinctions exist between the invasion of privacy and investigative journalism?
• An examination of the major players in modern media organisations
• How do politicians in developing nations continue to seduce the populace with nebulous assurances about the quality of the educational system and the development of jobs?
• How call centres are using the media to fill employment and aid the unemployed in society
• Politicians lack the ideological motivation they formerly did. A careful examination of the way political parties promote their views
• Can Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan repair their unfavourable reputations in the world?

Hot Journalism Topics

• Consider some of the most major upcoming shifts in journalism.
• Describe the many advantages that commercials and product promotions have for media sources.
• Why is it inappropriate for superstars and celebrities to go through media trials?
• Define stylised writing and explain if it is appropriate in the internet-dependent world of today.
• Talk about the potentially harmful effects that media may have on pupils.
• Explain why sexual stuff should no longer be broadcasted on television.
• Consider how the media shapes how social issues like racism are expressed.
• Examine the effect of new media on spending for digital learning.
• Ask if it’s possible to pursue the truth in journalism without violating the journalistic code.
• Discuss how the media affects a person’s emotional and psychological health.
• Talk about the primary difficulties that journalists face when carrying out their duties.
• What effect has science and technological progress had on journalism?
• What can reporters do to disprove the notion that women are materialistic?
• Describe how foreign enemies and rivals are presented in American media
• Do people read less about current affairs now that there’s the internet?
• Why has news reporting altered as a result of the internet?
• Examine some of the most important and expected impending advancements in journalism
• Nigeria serves as a case study for how the media helps some countries rebrand.
• A case study on the societal problem of pollution and the role of the media in addressing
• Look into the effects of the fear caused by crime reporting in the media
• Talk about how the media is used to set the agenda
• Describe the issues with how black women are portrayed in the media
• Talk about how women and their sexuality are used in advertising in the media

Journalism & Freedom of Expressions Topics

• Journalists depend on sources for their work. Should these sources be shielded from situations that can lead to a breach of confidence by the laws protecting freedom of expression?
• A principle of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution encourages a highly balanced approach to media and freedom of expression. Should the UK follow their example?
• Exist any reasons for restricting a journalist’s freedom of expression in the name of a democratic society?
• Some contend that a democratic society’s cornerstones are freedom of speech and the press. A comparison of how people in the US and the UK feel about press freedom
• Do tabloids and broadsheets have varying degrees of freedom of speech? The Times against The News of the World
• The common law grants people of the UK a restricted right to free speech. What effect does this have on journalism in the nation?
• How courts trample on journalists’ right to free speech is highlighted by the Sunday Times v. UK case. How can courts protect journalists more fully?
• Article 10 of the Human Rights Convention guarantees the right to freedom of speech. Can journalists use this law to their advantage?

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Top 140+ Research Topics for Journalism Students

Team Desklib

Published: 2022-08-24

An Introduction to Journalism

Journalism is the form of communication in which a journalist communicates with the audience in different modes and makes people aware of what is happening around the world.

There are different modes in which a journalist can establish communication with the audience:

Based on the Medium of Delivery, There are Three Types of Journalism:

• Cyber, Online, and Digital
• Print Journalism
• Broadcast, TV, and Radio Communication

The above listed are a few mediums in which a communicator or a journalist can spread awareness amongst the audience/viewers.  All these mentioned mediums have their own space and significance.

• Cyber/online/digital modes of communication are the newly invented medium of journalism as this medium can connect several audiences of all ages and communities and it covers a larger range than any other medium of journalism. This has become more compliant for a large number of audiences due to the availability of good internet and easy accessibility.
• The second medium is print journalism which is the oldest and the traditional medium of journalism. Newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, etc are gradually losing their value though they are still delivering good and informational content this is because the information available on the internet is more viable than that of print journalism hence this medium is losing its significance gradually.
• The third medium of journalism is television and radio which is the most popular and interesting way of delivering a message to the audience. This is becoming popular as it offers both visual and audio characteristics to the content. 

How to Choose Powerful Research Topics for Journalism to Write?

Before choosing a powerful research topic for journalism to write, one must find out their interest in a particular type of journalism.

As your interest will refine your knowledge in a particular niche of journalism and you will be able to choose and write a good research topic of journalism.

So here in the next step, we are describing all the types of journalism read them thoroughly then understand the task of a journalist related to these different kinds of fields of journalism then find out which type of journalism suits your temperament the most then select the topic accordingly and then you will be able to write a really good and powerful research paper of journalism. 

According to the nature of the content, the news is of two types- Hard news and Soft news , and according to the nature of news, journalism has many categories and sub-categories.

Here are the Top 8 Most Popular Types of Journalisms:

• Political Journalism

This niche provides hard news content. So a journalist having an interest in this niche must have a good knowledge of both international and national politics. And he/she must enhance this knowledge on daily basis by adding on more crucial information.

Along with this, political journalism requires a great amount of awareness about the political events and entities every step taken by the politician should be in count of a political journalist. Political journalism is a good niche to be chosen as one may get subjective but as its content is hard a journalist must be careful while presenting any political as it may hurt someone’s emotions.

• Investigative Journalism

This niche of journalism requires a lot of patience, persistence, and perseverance. The content of this niche is also hard as it is hard to investigate and display what you being a journalist have investigated. Investigative journalism provides journalists with the scope to investigate any case on their behalf and to reveal the truth.

Hence maintaining persistency in this niche is difficult as it is hard to stand by the truth. But one must always remember that revealing the truth is the sole purpose of investigative journalism.

• Crime Journalism

The content of this journalism also falls in the category of hard news. As it is hard to talk with a criminal face to face. In this niche of journalism, the major role of the journalist is to reveal the crime that has been accidentally or deliberately committed by some person or by an organization, the crime could be any like rape, murder, manipulation, etc.

So, in this case, it becomes important for a journalist to be unbiased as the final decision would be that of the court and the court only will declare a suspect if h/she is a criminal or not. And making prejudice by journalists could not work in this field.

• Business Journalism:

The content of business journalism could be both hard and soft. The main purpose of the business journalist is to interlink a country's economy with the business of the particular country and make a concept and then run this content as a piece of news on television or radio or to write as an article in the newspaper. The business news mainly involves updates from the stock market, the central bank of the country, and how they will impact the country’s economy.

• Arts Journalism:

Arts journalism has soft news content as it deals in all forms of art like music, craft, dance, literature, painting, architecture, etc. Art has always been a subject of softness and symbolizes the contemporary feel of a particular era or time.

It promotes peace and happiness so this field of journalism becomes the most important field of journalism to promote peace and integrity there should be an existence of good art and creativity. A journalist working in this niche basically makes the audience aware of new and old forms of art and their significance.

• Celebrity Journalism:

This niche is definitely a good choice for those who have an interest in movies and the lifestyle of actors. The word paparazzi is becoming popular these days as paparazzi are those journalists who cover everything about an actor and trace all his/her movements. In this camera-specific world, everyone has an eye on the latest fashion trend and the outfit worn by his/her favorite actor and actress, and the number of these such kind viewers is increasing day by day. So in this contemporary world, the demand for celebrity journalists is increasing to make people aware of their favorite stars’ activities and the clothing trend they are following.

• Sports Journalism:

Sports journalism is a very enthusiastic niche, it is especially for those who are inclined towards sports and games. The niche perfectly suits the temperament of those people who have an interest in outings and sports and willing to cover all the sports events by watching them. Sports writing is not that difficult it just requires a good amount of knowledge of a particular sport or a game to give his/ her own opinion while discussing it on television or writing an article on that.

• Tour/Travel Journalism:

A soft news niche requires lots of research on travels and tours the journalists connecting with this niche basically suggest to the viewers a good place to visit and the reason why a person should visit a particular place they also suggest some really good food to taste at a particular destination. The main work of the journalist in this field is to make people aware of destinations that are within budget and a way to reach there easily. This kind of journalism requires a good amount of energy as exploring something is not that easy.

Every field of journalism has different characteristics but all these niches stand on the pillars of truth. Whatsoever you choose as a journalist to write about, your sole purpose should be one is to show what is true. 

Here are the Most Popular and Powerful 140+ Research Topics for Journalism:

Now as you are familiar with all the types of journalism, we expect that you have already found your interest in one of these types. As you are ready with your interest you can find some really important research topics for journalism to write. Some topics suggested by us are mentioned below:

Top 40 Research Topics on Journalism

• The Role and Responsibility of a Journalist.
• Journalism and the Contemporary World.
• What Will Be the Future of Journalism?
• Journalism Then Vs Now.
• Role of Media in Shaping the Political Structure of a Country.
• Can Media and Privacy Lie on the Same Plane?
• Politics in Media or Media in Politics.
• Is Media Nowadays Biased or Unbiased?
• The Quality of Media in Developing Countries and in Developed Counties.
• Does Corruption Lie in Media or Not?
• A Friendship Between the Media and the Party in Power.
• Media is a Mirror of the Contemporary World.
• Art and Art of Living.
• Monuments Represent the Ancestral Beauty of the Country.
• Monuments Then Vs Now
• An Eye-opener Architecture of the Country.
• Embellished Dance Forms.
• Musical Instruments That Are Hard to Play.
• Peace in the Different Forms of Art.
• Heart Lost in the Art Made by Nature.
• Crime Comes in the Face of a Friend or a Friend is an Enemy.
• Prima Facie of the Crime.
• Modus Operandi of the Criminal.
• The Psyche of the Criminal While Committing a Crime.
• Envy is the Major Pillar of Crime.
• Ease of Doing Business.
• The Role of the Stock Market in the Economy of a Country.
• Is the Stock Market Affected by Slr and Crr?
• Steps Taken by the Central Bank to Control Inflation.
• The Role of the Imf is Different From the World Bank.
• Business and New Start-ups Are Creating Employment or Finishing the Scope of Employment.
• Business Strategic Management.
• The Impact of a Pandemic on a Business.
• Foreign Direct Investment Vs Foreign Portfolio Investment.
• New Influencers Are the Actors or Actors Are the Influencers.
• Celebrities’ Gym Wear Costs More Than Normal Casual Wear.
• Paparazzi’s Role in the Lives of Celebrities.
• Bollywood/Hollywood is Maintaining Nepotism or Not.
• The Importance of Promotions of the Movie at the Time of Its Release.
• Loss Faced by the Movie Industry at the time of a Pandemic.

Top 40 Great Journalism Research Topics

• Best Hilly Places to Visit and Why.
• Best Beach Places to Visit.
• Places Having Historical Significance.
• Places Where You Can Get Traditional Food.
• Places to Visit With the Family.
• Places to Visit With Friends.
• Buildings Are the Memories.
• Ancient Culture and Habits.
• Cheapest Way to Travel Anywhere in the World.
• How to Write a Travelogue.
• Sports for Health and Sports for Wealth.
• Sports in Which You Can Earn a Handsome Amount of Money.
• Commonwealth Games Versus Olympics.
• Football is a Good Start for Any Sport.
• Strategies of Players While Playing Cricket for the World Cup and Strategies of Players While Playing Nationally.
• Freedom of Journalists is Controlled by Some Influential People in Society.
• The Power of a Local News Channel and Newspaper.
• Women as Journalists.
• Track the Changes Come in Journalism in the Last 5 Decades.
• Is Social Media News Spread Obsoleting the Value of Journalism?
• What is the Role Played by the Media in Reducing Crime?
• The Impact of Media on the Psyche of Laymen.
• How the New Technology Helped Media to Evolve?
• Does the Media Make Political Views of a Person?
• Does Media Provoke Violence?
• Media as a Medium of Communication Between Two Entities.
• What Was the Role Played by Media at the Time of the Independence Struggle?
• Limits and Rights of Media Personnel or a Journalist.
• Media Portrays a Contemporary Culture and Language.
• Media Runs Social Media Marketing Campaigns.
• Entry of Podcasts in the Field of Journalism.
• Broadcasts Are Different From Live News.
• In This Digital World Newspaper Still Has Value.
• In This Digital World Radio Still Holds a Space.
• Media Censorship.
• Media Propaganda.
• Mass and Communication Laws in Major World Economies.
• Does the Media Alter the News?
• How Do Media Houses Get Benefits From Advertisements?
• What is Fan-fiction in Media?

 A List of 40 Excellent Journalism Research Paper Topics

• What is Fandom in Media?
• Does the Media Lit the Fire of Riots?
• Is the Media More Inclined Towards Making Trp?
• The monopoly of Few News Channels.
• Does the Party in Power Regulate the Media?
• The Role of Media in International Politics.
• Media Gives Prejudgment.
• Is Media Still With Truth or With Power?
• How to Make Your Article More Credible?
• Can the Media Make a Police Cop’s Image?
• Media Headlines Ended With an Unquestionable Question Mark. Explain.
• Does Media Violate the Privacy of a Person?
• Media Chooses a Political Topic to Debate.
• The Role of Media at the Time of Elections.
• How Does the Media Promote the New Schemes of Government?
• What is the Status of Media in Different Countries?
• Does Media Help a Person in Taking His/her Rights Back?
• Status of Media in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
• The Role Played by Media in the Ongoing War Between Ukraine and Russia.
• Media Psychology.
• Status of an Investigative Journalist in Today’s World.
• How the Magazines' Covers Are Important for the Media to Get More Sales?
• How Can Journalists Produce High-quality News Without Spending So Much Time on It?
• Is the USA the Only Powerful State in the Whole World? What is the Media’s Opinion?
• Is Media Conservative in a Few Countries?
• Why Should There Be Trust in the Media?
• Is the Media Focused on the Environment?
• Fear Created by Media While Showing a Criminal.
• Does Media Spoil the Image of a Person?
• Media Has Magic of Voice.
• Hidden Messages Media Gets.
• Is Media Also Becoming a Clothing Brand?
• Nowadays Media is More Focused on Style Rather Than Delivering Accurate News.
• Problems Faced by Journalists Working on-field.
• Journalists Sometimes Become the Victim of Mob Lynching.
• Is Journalism a Safe Field to Work in?
• Are People Really Interested in Watching the News on Television Even if They Have Social Media?
• Which is More Authentic Traditional Media or Social Media?
• Is Media Working Like a Court?
• Are the Journalists Nowadays Becoming Judges?

List of 18 Unique Journalism Research Topics

• Is Media a Voice for Underprivileged People Also?
• Is Media Confined Only to the Upper-class People of the Society?
• Does the Class System Sway the Media Also?
• Inappropriate Information Spread by Social Media.
• Investigative Journalism Creates a Hindrance to Privacy.
• How Media Use Images to Make the News More Colorful?
• Using Pictures or Images Good for an Article?
• Who Are the Key Stakeholders of Modern Media?
• Does Media Create an Impact on the Country’s Economy?
• Can the Media Help Police Find a Criminal?
• Why Do People Revert to Newspapers Again and Prevent Watching News Channels on Television?
• Is Society Benefitted From Free Media?
• Media Fights a War Against Crime?
• Influence of Media on Human Life.
• How Dangerous is the Work of a Journalist?
• Journalists Became the Victim of the Corona.
• What Are the Few Characteristics of a Professional Journalist?
• How to Choose the Right Title for an Arti

Conclusion:

Those mentioned above were a few topics that are suggested by us and could be chosen by you to write an effective research paper for journalism. But before writing select a topic and do research on it and then make some bulleted points to highlight and then start writing. Remember, truth should not be missed from your research and your point of view should also be added to your research paper. These two points will make your research paper more interesting for the reader as well as for the checker. So choose the topic, do research, pick the pen and start writing choose the most appropriate shade of word to make your research paper more colorful.

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180 Powerful Journalism Research Topics To Focus On

Table of Contents

Finding a unique journalism research topic is one of the tricky tasks that require a lot of innovation. If you are a student who is pursuing a degree in communication or media studies, then you will often be asked to write essays or research papers on interesting journalism topics. Right now, do you want to write an informative journalism research paper? Are you searching for the best journalism research topics? Go through this blog post and get the top powerful journalism research topics and ideas that will help you boost your grades.

Tips for Selecting a Good Journalism Research Topic

Journalism is a broad field of study that mainly deals with the gathering and distribution of information to various media channels such as radio, TV, newspaper, and social media. In order to complete graduation, mainly, as a part of the final year academic project, the students who are pursuing media studies must submit a research paper or thesis on journalism topics.

When you are assigned a task to prepare a journalism research paper, topic selection is the first step that you can’t skip. Remember, you can impress your professor and score high grades only if you have a unique topic.

In general, there are endless unique journalism research topics and ideas available, but the real challenge lies in identifying one specific journalism topic out of them all. Hence, to help you all, here we have shared a few important tips that you can follow during the topic selection.

• The topic you choose should match your interest.
• The topic should be exciting and informative for the readers.
• Avoid choosing too broad topics because they may require a lot of time to complete.
• If your topic is too broad, narrow it down to a specific research question that is easy to write about before the deadline.
• Instead of picking the frequently discussed research topics, go with the topic that focuses on unique issues that are fresh for the readers to learn and understand.
• The research topic you choose should support extensive research and contain relevant sources for reference.

Additionally, check whether the research topic you have selected stands in line with your professor’s instructions. Also, before finalizing the journalism research topic you have selected, make sure it satisfies all the above-mentioned tips. The journalism research topic is said to be good only if it meets the requirements shared above.

List of Journalism Research Paper Topics and Ideas

When it comes to writing a journalism research paper, you need to invest a lot of effort and time to search and find the best journalism research topic. Hence, to make your topic selection process easier, here, we have composed a list of exclusive journalism research topics and ideas.

Explore the complete list of ideas and pick a powerful journalism research topic of your preference.

Top Research Topics on Journalism

• What are the duties and roles of a professional journalist?
• How have technological and scientific developments affected journalism?
• Discuss how influential people control the freedom of journalists and the media.
• How has social media affected modern journalism?
• Explain the challenges that journalists in varying topographical situations face every day.
• How can journalists change the perception of women as being materialistic?
• A journalist should be well-versed in different topics about local and international news- Explain.
• How do the media facilitate the stereotypical representations of females by portraying them as materialistic objects?
• How has technology affected the mediums that journalists used to reach people?
• Discuss the major problems that are experienced by journalists as they discharge their duties.
• Are social media websites making third-person journalists?
• Is social media making print media obsolete?
• Can journalism be used to help improve marginalized sections in society?
• How has COVID-19 revealed the role of journalists at a global level?
• How are electronic media channels shaping modern-day journalism?
• Discuss the impact of Yellow journalism on the sports and entertainment industry
• How do power-hungry politicians misuse media houses and journalists?
• Discuss the dangers of investigative journalism
• Impact of fake journalism on people and society as a whole
• Political scandals cause media introspection.
• How are women journalists treated in the world?
• What are the challenges faced by women journalists in Middle-East countries?
• Discuss the role of journalism during World War I and World War II
• Impact of journalism on the lifestyle change of Henry Meghan
• Is it good to consider, social media and blogging as the future of journalism? Explain with justifications
• What is communication?
• Media, Censorship, and Propaganda.
• The freedom of speech and its impact on the media.
• The main aspects of communication.
• The triggering topics.
• The phenomenon of hype and its usage of the media.

Best Journalism Research Topics

• How can journalists help the masses understand topical issues better?
• What is the role of the media in reducing crime?
• Discuss the negative implications of media in influencing violence.
• What is the link between media and the growth of the fashion industry?
• What is the subsequent impact of media on the growth of an economy?
• Discuss the likely implications of partisan advertisement outlets.
• What are your thoughts on denying an operational license to partisan media outlets?
• Examine how media has impacted your living over the last ten years.
• Elaborate on the potential beneficiaries of media versus society-influenced violence.
• Investigate how the media industry has evolved because of technological advancement.
• How has journalism contributed to political turmoil in Kenya?

Read more: Excellent Communication Research Topics To Consider

Excellent Journalism Research Paper Topics

• How significant is the media in the war against crimes?
• Use of mainstream media in strategic communication
• How the media influence political patterns
• Media use by kids and adolescents
• How society benefits from a free media
• Scare strategies that the media use to accomplish goals
• How do the media influence immorality?
• Do video games form a part of the media?
• Media censorship and propaganda
• How the media portrays popular culture and identity

Research Paper Topics in Mass Communication and Journalism

• What are the benefits of international journalism ?
• How effective are social media marketing campaigns
• Explain how journalists altered the coverage of news relating to World War II.
• Define media downshifting and discuss why people are reverting to newspapers again.
• Discuss mass communication laws in the U.S.
• Define journalism ethics and highlight its importance in news coverage.
• Investigate why radio still commands a huge following.
• Explain different types of media and differ according to the audience.
• Investigate terrorism in media and highlight examples in the world today.
• Highlight some relevant media disasters and explain how to prevent them.

Journalism Thesis Topics

• How media houses benefit from advertising
• Explain why video blogs are the new diaries.
• How effective are media companies as compared to single bloggers with regard to news coverage?
• Define fan fiction and fandom in the media.
• Explain the critical attributes of communication.
• Discuss the peculiarities of children’s media.
• How do the media affect the political class in a country?
• Key stakeholders of modern media
• How the media influences the articulation of major social matters
• How the media preempt situations

Unique Journalism Research Topics

• Investigate how the government regulates the media.
• What is the role of mass media in spreading awareness?
• Explain how readers can confirm the truth and credibility of news articles.
• Discuss the relevance of media in the growth of a steadfast country.
• Explain how social media has impacted the reporting of police brutality cases.
• What was the impact of mass media on the scope of the Vietnam War
• Determine whether governments should have exclusive power to censor news reporters and journalists.
• Elaborate on the main drawbacks facing journalism.
• Discuss whether media outlets are responsible for the spread of unverified stories.
• Analyze why media agencies should cease using metaphors in headlines.
• Media psychology- How it applies to communication.
• Explain the role of media in the growth of the music industry.
• Analyze the influence of media on innovations.
• Explain the implications of a one-sided media and why it might be dangerous to society.
• Analyze the media violations of a person’s freedom and rights.
• Investigate the Black Lives Matter movement and analyze the role of media in advancing it.
• Examine how media affects the diminishing of traditions and culture.
• Why is the press essential in spreading political rivalry among the political subject and class?
• What role does mass media play in promoting learning activities?
• Examine the role of mass media on the political class of America in the 18th century.

Investigative Journalism Research Topics

• What is the role of transculturation in media translation
• Discuss the objectification of women and its adverse psychological impacts.
• Discuss whether politicians depend on media to retain their power.
• Explain why mass media is more of a propaganda tool for the government.
• Explain why the media should not include graphic images depicting violence or war brutality.
• What are the historical development and cultural impact of media in the U.S.?
• How some governments silence investigative journalists
• An investigation into the key stakeholders of modern media houses.
• How magazine covers are used to get more sales
• How journalists can maintain high-quality reporting without necessarily spending more
• What are the negative impacts of television advertisements on children?
• How the media is helping call centers to create jobs and help the unemployed members of society.
• Examine how the image of the Arab woman appears in Arab media.
• How the media makes the USA look like the ultimate ruler
• Conduct a comparative analysis of news reports between FOX and BBC News.
• How mainstream media is promoting the upsurge of public misinformation and fake news
• How influential politicians make key decisions for some media houses
• What are the moral lines that separate investigative journalism from the violation of people’s privacy?
• How the media is helping rebrand some countries- Case study of Nigeria.

Read more: Best Visual Analysis Essay Topics and Writing Guidelines for Students to Focus On

Interesting Journalism Thesis Topics

• Examine some of the most significant anticipated changes to journalism in days to come
• Is it true that the internet makes people read less about current events?
• Elaborate on different ways by which mass media outlets benefit from advertisements and product promotions.
• Discuss why it is not appropriate for celebrities and superstars to undergo trials by the media.
• Define stylized writing and elaborate on whether it is acceptable in today’s internet-reliant world.
• Discuss the critical negative influence mass media may have on students.
• Elaborate why televisions need to stop showing sexual content.
• Examine media and its influence in the articulation of social matters like racism.
• Investigate the impact of new media on digital learning budgets.
• Examine if journalism can seek the truth without breaking the journalism code.
• What are the causes and impacts of media addiction
• Discuss the effect of mass media on one’s emotional and psychological wellbeing.
• Highlight how disabled people are represented by the media today
• Discuss why we should trust the media to deliver accurate news.

Engaging Journalism Dissertation Topics

• Discuss the representation of women journalists in the media fraternity.
• Describe ways to regulate mass media to guarantee that students are only minimally exposed to inappropriate content
• Discuss the reasons that make the United States of America considered a global superpower from media perspectives
• The imperativeness of journalism for disadvantaged social groups
• A Critical review of the methodological trends and controversies surrounding the Use of opinion poll
• Critically analyze how the British journalists try to win over the royals
• Homophobia in modern sports and the role of media channels in increasing such negativism Homophobia
• Discuss the role of media in promoting same-sex marriage
• Evaluate the role played by media in helping GenZ athletes to seek their ‘authentic voice’
• Describe the impact of replacing sports journalism with mindless gossip columnists
• What were the restrictions on journalists for covering the FIFA World Cup 2022?

Great Journalism Research Paper Topics

• What is the effect of media on diplomacy
• A case study of pollution as a social issue and the media’s role in combating it.
• Investigate the impact of fear created by media reporting crimes.
• Hidden messages are passed through the media.
• Discuss the role of media as an agenda-setting tool.
• Elaborate on the flaws representation of black women in media.
• Discuss the use of women and their sexuality in mass media advertisements.
• How media images represent different entities
• Could virtual reality be the future of modern media?
• Do the media create or react to events?
• What moral distinctions exist between the invasion of privacy and investigative journalism?
• Are journalists nowadays more focused on attractiveness than on delivering more accurate news?
• Discuss the main issues that journalists face when performing their responsibilities.
• What impact have advances in science and technology had on journalism?
• What can journalists do to combat the idea that women are materialistic?

Captivating Journalism Research Ideas

• Is it possible for the media to serve society’s underprivileged groups?
• Describe how the American media presents adversaries and rivals from throughout the world
• Does the internet really cause individuals to read less about current events?
• Why has the internet changed the way news is reported?
• Examine some of the key upcoming developments in journalism that are most anticipated.
•  Can journalists continue to report on high-quality stories without spending more?
•  Nigeria is a case study of how the media is assisting in the rebranding of some nations
•  How powerful politicians affect some media outlets’ ability to make important judgments
•  A description of the difficulties emerging nations face when it comes to information freedom
• How sexual material is used on the front pages of health publications to draw readers
•  Does the media influence events or just report on them?
•  What impact does the internet have on how the media evolves?
•  Why is radio still a vital type of media in the twenty-first century?
•  Describe ways to control the media to limit the exposure of pupils to inappropriate information
•  Do powerful and influential big media firms have too much sway?
• Do they have to be broken up into smaller pieces?

Latest Journalism Research Topics

• Describe the Part of the Media in the Russia-Ukraine Crisis.
• Discuss the popular media tactics of political parties in the United States
• Consider the necessity for real-life tales in the media of today.
• Write about literary journalism in recent times.
• Investigative reporting on the Brazilian drug trade
• Mass media censorship in North Korea
• FIFA world cup 2022: restrictions on journalists for covering the event
• Critical analysis of how the British journalists try to win over the royals
• Describe the effects of media misdirection and misinformation.

From the list of outstanding journalism research topics and ideas suggested above, you can use any idea as an inspiration for writing a research paper. We have a team of professional academic writers who have good knowledge of mass media and communication to craft a research paper on the best journalism topics.

Quickly avail of our writing service and get a top-quality, plagiarism-free research paper as per your requirements on time at an affordable rate.

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• Crowdfunded Journalism: A Small but Growing Addition to Publicly Driven Journalism

Projects funded through Kickstarter cut across more than 60 countries

Table of contents.

• Acknowledgments
• Methodology

Over the past several years, crowdfunding via the internet has become a popular way to engage public support – and financial backing – for all kinds of projects, from the Coolest Cooler to a virtual reality gaming headset to a prototype of a sailing spacecraft and a bailout fund for Greece . The area of journalism is no exception.

From April 28, 2009 to September 15, 2015, 658 journalism-related projects proposed on Kickstarter, one of the largest single hubs for crowdfunding journalism, received full – or more than full – funding, to the tune of nearly $6.3 million. 1

These totals – both in terms of number of projects and funds raised – trail nearly all of Kickstarter’s other funding categories, from music, theater and film to technology and games. Nevertheless, the number of funded journalism projects has seen an ongoing increase over time and includes a growing number of proposals from established media organizations.

From Kickstarter’s April 2009 launch through the end of the year, 17 journalism projects received funding. That number more than tripled just a year later, to 64 projects in 2010. Growth continued, reaching 168 funded projects in 2014 and 173 in the first nine months of 2015. 2

The amount of money put into these projects grew as well, from $49,256 in 2009 and $263,352 in 2010 to $1,743,668 in the first nine months of 2015.

Equally striking is the upward trend in the number of people contributing financially to these journalism projects – rising from 792 in 2009 to 25,651 in 2015.

The majority of funded projects over the seven-year time period, 3  71%, were produced by individuals not tied to any journalistic organization – either alone (43%) or as a part of a small group (29%). Established media organizations such as ProPublica and the Boston Review accounted for 22%, while other types of institutions such as public schools and private universities made up the remaining 7%. And while Kickstarter allows project submissions from 18 different countries , fully 84% asked for pledges in U.S. currency. Most (64%) were to be conducted in the U.S., while 36% proposed overseas work which cut across more than 60 countries.

With a median of 54 backers each, the funded projects over these six and a half years varied dramatically in focus, but many were for longer, more comprehensive works in the form of books, magazine articles and documentaries. Together these types of projects accounted for 43% of the funded projects and 36% of the total dollars raised.

Overall, the journalism projects produced and revenue gained from these crowdfunded ventures is still a drop in the bucket compared with the original reporting output that occurs on any given day and the roughly $20 billion in revenue generated by newspaper ads alone . Kickstarter-fueled support for journalism also trails two funding sources that have attracted a fair amount of attention in the journalism world in recent years – philanthropy and venture capital, which Pew Research Center estimated to be in the hundreds of millions in 2013 alone. And the number of journalism-related projects funded over the seven-year period represents a small sliver of total crowdfunding activity on Kickstarter – both in terms of money raised and number of projects . The just over 650 projects funded over the seven-year period trail every other category, sometimes by a great deal. They are, for example, a far cry from the more than 18,000 film and video projects, more than 6,000 gaming projects and nearly 8,000 art projects. Journalism also trails all project categories but one in money raised, again often by wide margins.

Nevertheless, the growing activity here is about more than just dollars and cents or prizewinning reporting. In today’s evolving digital era, it represents a new, niche segment of nontraditional journalism driven in large part by public interest and motivation. It is bringing voice and visibility to efforts that would likely otherwise go unnoticed or unfunded, adding yet another way for the public to engage in creating, funding and disseminating journalism and adding one more option to the arsenal of revenue sources that the industry is desperately seeking to build up.

Kickstarter, recently reincorporated as a public benefit corporation , is one of two larger-scale and broad-based crowdfunding platforms, but it is currently the only major one with a distinct offering for journalism projects. The other, Indiegogo , launched in 2008, offers categories for film, photography, transmedia and video/Web projects – but does not have a specific journalism genre. Another effort, Beacon , was launched in 2013 as a platform dedicated to crowdfunding journalism based on a subscription model but now focuses more on partnerships and matching funds. Several other narrowly targeted crowdfunding platforms dedicated to journalism entered – and left – the space within the past few years, including Spot.us for community-funded journalism, Contributoria and Indie Voices for independent media, Emphas.is for photojournalism and Vourno for video journalism. An analysis of Kickstarter, then, while not completely exhaustive of all possible journalism-related crowdfunding, seemed an appropriate way to gauge the status and dynamics of this emerging arena.

For this project, researchers analyzed publicly available data for the 2,975 proposed projects in Kickstarter’s Journalism category between April 28 2009 and September 15 2015, with an in-depth examination of the 658 journalism projects that received full – or more than full – funding. 4  The 658 funded projects were manually coded for a number of specific elements not in the publicly available data, including who proposed them, what specific types of journalistic endeavors were being presented to potential backers, the geographical orientation and whether a project was a new initiative or an expansion of ongoing work.

It is useful to keep in mind that Kickstarter categories can be somewhat fluid and overlap with other topic areas. For example, there are separate categories for publishing, photography, and film and video that could also include elements of reportage. For the purposes of this analysis, we worked with the publicly available data in the assigned Journalism category, and all coding was based on the descriptions and details of the projects provided in the submission.

Media organizations get crowdfunding, but individuals produce largest share of funded journalism projects

Pew Research Center identified four types of individuals or organizations behind the crowdfunded journalism projects: single individuals, small groups of unaffiliated individuals, media outlets or organizations, and public or private institutions such as universities.

Single individuals accounted for more funded submissions than any other group – 43% over the seven-year time frame. These projects ranged from The Smokey Generation , a digital oral history of wildland firefighters, to a paleontology fieldwork memoir by a freelance science writer, multimedia reporting from Tanzania on the fate of the Kihansi spray toad , and a traveling puppet named Stevie P. offering to write postcards from Europe.

Individuals: Single individuals with no stated formal affiliation and acting on their own behalf

Groups of individuals: Two or more individuals with no formal affiliation and acting on their own behalf

Media organizations: Any outlet or organization whose primary mission is to produce news or information

Institutions : Any kind of public or private institution other than media-focused ones. Includes schools at any level, nonprofits and for-profit businesses

Small groups of individuals accounted for another 29%, including three graduate students of religion who came together to independently produce a podcast, a book by two women about the first western-style theme park in the U.S. , and two documentary filmmakers who traveled to Eastern Europe to tell the stories of refugees at the Serbian-Hungarian border.

The individuals involved varied from students of Thai kickboxing to a team of former NPR reporters , which speaks to the broad appeal and significance of crowdfunding to individuals at all points along the journalistic spectrum.

Media organizations have stepped into the crowdfunding space as well, with a certain measure of success. Roughly a quarter of funded journalism projects during this time (22%) were produced by some type of established media outlet or organization.

As with individuals and small groups, the media organizations producing projects – as well as the types of projects they proposed – ran the gamut. For example, the San Francisco Public Press , in operation since 2009, sought funding to further connect neighborhoods to their local investigative newspaper by delivering print issues via bicycle; the relatively high-profile Texas Tribune generated funding to livestream a year of 2014 election coverage; and Baltimore Brew successfully sought monetary support to expand its city coverage. Civil Eats ’ proposal was to move from an all-volunteer enterprise to one that was able to pay their writers and editors a wage, while NK News looked for backers to fund sending two journalists for an extended time to China -North Korea border region. And the online community ADHDKidsRock.com needed some financial support to keep the website going and add new resources .

Public and private institutions accounted for 7% of all the journalism proposals. Schools (ranging from elementary schools to high schools to universities ) were by far the most common type of institution (31 of 46 of the institutionally based projects) and sought funding for such projects as a summer edition of a student newspaper , a print issue of a campus lifestyle magazine and an online storytelling platform . There were also several projects initiated by 501(c)(3) nonprofits such as Reef Check California , a group that collects data on marine life; the Society for Science and the Public , which sought funding for a Teacher Guide companion to its Science News magazine and a Norwegian think tank which proposed a book focused on an examination of the environment for entrepreneurs in several European countries.

The total number of projects funded grew tenfold over time, from a total of just 17 that received full funding in 2009 to 173 in 2015. With the exception of 2013, single individuals held the greatest share of total projects, ranging from 30% to 59%, while institutions held fairly steady at between 5% and 9% over time. Groups of individuals did not show much fluctuation in their share of total projects, remaining in the 25-35% range in all years. Media organizations ranged between a low of 6% of all projects in 2009 and a high of 36% in 2013.

Sustained and longer-form journalism stand out in funded projects

Another way to think about these funded projects is according to the format or structure of the journalism being produced. Researchers found a total of 14 different media formats represented in the journalism projects. The most common ones tend to be larger and longer enterprises that would not be possible without the support of independent donors. Among this array of formats, magazine-related projects – including the launch of new full-fledged publications, the expansion of issue-based coverage by a news magazine and standalone articles that the producers planned to pitch to existing magazines or journals – topped the list as the single most popular format, making up 20% of all funded projects in the Journalism category.

Website-related endeavors were another popular area, accounting for 16% of all funded proposals. Most of these efforts sought funds to support the online creation of news and information content, such as Media Diversified ’s goal of producing an interactive directory of ethnic minority voices in the UK media landscape. A proposal to establish a multimedia website, Nuba Reports , which would provide firsthand news from Southern Sudan, was also successful, as was one by a group of citizen journalists to expand the reporting reach of Russia Insider. Others, like The Nicaragua Dispatch , turned to crowdfunding as a way of maintaining or overhauling an existing website; it asked for backers to pledge toward the cost of hiring a Web developer. In this instance, The Dispatch specifically sought to remake the site into a crowdsourcing platform.

Books also accounted for 16% and encompassed an array of genres such as history , novels , personal narratives and professional sports , as well as multiple chronicles of hiking the Appalachian Trail . Also funded were several book projects from journalists seeking to synthesize (or further build upon) their experiences from months or years of reporting. For example, freelance journalist Nathan Webster , embedded with U.S. troops during the Iraq War, produced two separate books with Kickstarter support; editorial cartoonist and war correspondent Ted Rall sought funds to return to Afghanistan; and crime reporter Scott Thomas Anderson had two successful pitches based on months of work embedded with law enforcement agencies that focused on methamphetamine-driven crime and the intersection of prison culture, crime and the underfunding of mental health care.

Storytelling through documentaries – primarily though not exclusively video – was the goal of 7% of the funded projects, 46 in all. These, too, often aimed at bringing together extended periods of work to tell a more complete story. A Dutch “Kidscorrespondent” who wanted to report the stories of Syrian children living in Lebanon , a freelancer seeking to expand the reach of his documentary about sex trafficking of minors in the U.S. , and a feature-length project to tell the story of four Afghan photojournalists all found financial backing via Kickstarter. Less weighty topics also garnered support, such as a piece about the 2014 World Laser Tag Championship and films about a group of friends hiking the John Muir Trail and the 60th anniversary of Godzilla.

A total of 56 projects (9% of all proposals) were related to radio and podcasts, though podcasts clearly dominated, with 42 out of the 56 projects. Funded podcast proposals ranged from PRI Soundworks seeking funding to launch the second season of “One With Farai,” to the producers of a podcast about women’s soccer who wanted to improve and expand their content; and from the hosts of “The World’s Only Barbecue Podcast Hosted in a Car” requesting funds for hosting fees as well as gas, to the hosts of a biweekly show telling the stories of parklands and historic sites throughout the U.S. Among the non-podcast radio projects were requests for funds to help keep the nonprofit Alaska Teen Media Institute afloat, to build a new low-power FM radio station in Chicago and to expand an existing smaller-scale project in the UK into a new community radio station.

Forty-one blog projects were proposed, accounting for 6% of all proposals. Most were from individuals, such as a food and travel writer who wanted to expand his blog about working at an orchard or a seasoned, published journalist who sought funds to travel to Cuba and write about the change occurring there for his blog. But media organizations were also present – PolitiFact looked for backers of its idea to provide instant fact-checking of President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address and the Republican response via live blog.

Funded proposals also included 25 photojournalism projects (4% of all examined projects), and here, too, most were put forward by single individuals such as a freelance photojournalist who wanted to travel to Poland and learn about the lives of people who live in the vicinity of Auschwitz ; a photojournalism expedition to follow the proposed route of Nicaragua’s Grand Canal project ; and a freelance writer who proposed traveling across America to interview photographers who focused their work on prisons and the criminal justice system.

Far less common – each representing 2% or less of all funded journalism projects (31 in all) – were newspapers, newsletters, zines, research papers and apps. Among the small handful of funded zines (usually self-published, original works intended for small circulation) was one that looked at worker’s collectives in the Twin Cities . Newspaper projects included one from the nonprofit Knoxville History Project seeking funds for the launch of a for-profit independent weekly newspaper, the Knoxville Mercury , and a relaunch of a community newspaper, The Betsie Current . An iPhone app examined the Armenian Genocide of 1915 .

Not all of the projects examined, however, focused on only one medium. Eighty projects – 12% of the total – were explicitly multimedia in nature. In one such project, a journalist proposed to follow a Libyan-born man back to Libya and chronicle his efforts to help rebuild that war-torn country, producing reports in multiple media formats, including print, online blog, audio slideshow, photos and video. Another multimedia proposal was from a two-person team that intended to travel across America, interview people who had lost their jobs in the economic downturn and produce a book length oral history accompanied by a film.

Finally, about 5% of the projects overall were for something other than a published product of some kind. This group included things as diverse as book tours , internships or experiential travel , training events , curriculum development , a translation project , and projects seeking funds to pay for protective gear (bullet-proof vests and helmets) for journalists working in conflict zones .

Across these categories, one feature that stands out – and goes against much of today’s focus on second-by-second news updates – is longer-form journalism, which tends to also take a broader, more in-depth look at news events. Magazine-related work, books and documentaries together accounted for 43% of projects funded by the public. And several other categories such as radio/podcasts, zines and blogs may have long-form, analytical elements as well.

Producers varied in the types of projects they tended to put forward. Single individuals were more likely than other types of producers to seek funding for books, which accounted for 26% of individuals’ projects compared with 12% or less for other types of producers. Media organizations, on the other hand, were the most likely to receive funding for website-related products (which made up 29% of their projects, vs. 15% or less for other producers) and radio/podcasts (17% vs. 6% or less for others).

Roughly a third of journalism projects were focused outside the U.S.

Though Kickstarter is a U.S.-based website, it allows residents from 18 different countries 5  to propose projects (16 countries in North America and Europe, plus Australia and New Zealand) – and, indeed, 16% of funded projects received their funds in currencies other than U.S. dollars. Nevertheless, 64% of the funded Kickstarter journalism proposals were for projects to be conducted within the borders of the United States, while 34% were to be conducted in foreign countries. Only a small percentage of proposals (2%) were for projects that explicitly were to be carried out in both the U.S. and one or more other countries.

The foreign-based projects touched all seven continents – at least 64 countries in all, from Tonga to Iraq and from Cuba to South Africa as well as the Palestinian Territories. Beyond the U.S., the UK had the greatest number of projects at 53, followed by Canada at 22. Other countries had somewhere between one and seven projects.

Among the types of journalism projects produced, documentaries and multimedia works were the most likely to have a non-U.S. focus, with roughly an even split between foreign and domestic. For all the others, though, U.S.-based projects were the majority, with audio works and books the most tilted toward U.S. – 77% and 70% respectively.

Travel is an integral feature of many journalism projects

Pew Research Center also studied the project narratives (both text and video) for evidence indicating that travel was an integral feature of the proposal. If a project was described as being geographically based in one city or one metropolitan area or region, researchers concluded that travel was not likely to be fundamental to the project. However, if the description specifically mentioned multiple locations, or traveling through different states or to different countries, travel was considered to be integral to the project. Using these criteria, travel was a core component of 38% of funded journalism projects overall.

Foreign projects were more likely to include travel than were domestic ones: Fully 54% of non-U.S./international projects included travel, compared with 29% of domestic ones. 6

Single individuals who produced projects were more likely than other groups to include travel as a part of a proposal – 47% of these projects, compared with just over one-third of projects from small groups of individuals (34%) and institutions (36%), and about a quarter (24%) of those from media outlets or organizations.

In many instances, the proposal narratives indicated that the funds requested were largely (if not exclusively) to cover travel expenses such as airfare, gas or hotels. For example, a Jewish educator proposing to host small, interfaith gatherings sought “funding to cover the costs of airfare, car rental and food,” while two friends seeking to blog about their drive from the U.S. to the southern end of Chile needed funds for a cargo boat to transport them and their truck over a roadless part of their journey. The journalism school of Stony Brook University successfully turned to Kickstarter for funds to send 16 student journalists to Kenya, as did TucsonSentinel.com in their project to send a team of photographers, editors, reporters and coders to document the complexity of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Journalism projects attracted nearly $6.3 million in backing

In all, the 658 funded journalism projects garnered a total of almost $6.3 million in backing. With one exception in 2013, funding grew year over year, with 52% of this – nearly $3.3 million – raised within the past two years, 2014 and 2015.

This $6.3 million over the six and a half years exceeded the total funding requested for these projects ($4,907,136) by almost $1.4 million dollars. The amounts asked for varied greatly, from a low of $1 for a project to provide online reviews of shows, restaurants and entertainment in Las Vegas to a high of $100,000 for the proposal from Civil Eats . 7

The majority of projects, 66%, raised just a small amount over their original ask – up to 124% of their goal, suggesting that the extra dollars were spread out fairly evenly. Eight projects attracted in excess of 500% of what was initially requested, with six of those having initial funding goals of $600 or less.

Overall, website-based projects attracted by far the largest share of revenue, $1,829,451 or 29% of the total. That substantially exceeds the 16% of all projects they accounted for, meaning they made up fewer projects but tended to have a higher price tag.

The next most lucrative project categories were magazine projects ($1,029,438, or 16% of total), multimedia projects ($950,800, or 15%) and book projects ($849,431, or 13%); these categories’ shares of funding dollars were more in line with the share of projects they accounted for (20%, 12% and 16%, respectively).

The journalism projects also displayed a wide variation in the total number of backers they attracted – from one to 3,116 , with a median number of 54. The median dollar amount per project was $3,711. 8

There are again differences by project type, but as indicated in the graphic below, the general trend of more backers equaling a greater total dollar amount holds true. The magazine-related category, for example, had a median number of 55 backers and $3,498 dollars raised per project, while multimedia projects saw a median of 67 backers and $5,126. The website category, though it did not have the largest number of projects overall, attracted both the largest median number of backers (94) and dollars ($6,028).

Looking at the share of total funding flowing to various types of producers, projects from small groups of individuals attracted the largest share (36%), slightly outpacing the 29% of projects they account for. Single individuals’ projects, on the other hand, brought in a far smaller share of funds (29%) than of projects (43%), while media organizations were more on par – 29% of total funds compared with 22% of projects.

Kickstarter journalism projects feature both startups and expansions

Pew Research Center studied the descriptions of the individual projects to determine if they were wholly new endeavors, or if the projects were more accurately described as some kind of expansion of an existing project. A project was considered an expansion of something that already existed only if the narrative or video specifically pointed to a verifiable entity or work which related directly to the proposal at hand. For example, a book-related project about protests in Wisconsin that sought funds to provide copies of the already-written book to a number of state senators was clearly an expansion. A proposal to launch The Breeze , a free publication to be produced by the youth of Central Vermont, on the other hand, was a startup.

Using these criteria, the Center found that these funded projects were almost evenly split between startups and expansions (51% vs. 49% respectively). But there were notable (if perhaps unsurprising) differences between who tended to request funding for a startup versus who sought funds for an expansion of a project that was already underway.

Media organizations focused much more heavily on expanding existing efforts (90% of projects) . For example, The Vancouver Observer sought to expand its coverage of energy issues with the Tar Sands Reporting Project , and the International Policy Digest turned to crowdfunding to help increase interactive features on the home page as well as to initiate a partnership agreement with Agence France Press. Individuals and groups or collectives, however, were nearly twice as likely to seek funds for startup projects as for existing ones: 63% of individual projects and 67% of those from groups. For example, prior to the 2012 presidential election, a journalist launched a project to travel through U.S. swing states , talking to residents about their views in order to post them on his website; and a small team sought funds to launch Gummie , the first urban magazine in Johannesburg, South Africa. Institution-based journalism projects were the most balanced, with 42% startups and 58% expansion. Startup efforts included one from a Canadian school looking for funds to send a student to an event to write a blog post and another from a charter school raising funds for a yearbook for middle-schoolers ; expansion projects, meanwhile, included an upgrade from newsprint to glossy paper for a commencement magazine, as well as a request for funds to offset a shortfall in campus funds for a student publication.

Journalism projects are a small piece of the crowdfunding pie

Even as the Journalism category on Kickstarter has grown, it remains one of the smallest of the other 14 categories on a number of levels. To compare the various funding categories on Kickstarter, researchers needed to rely on data through Aug. 31, 2015 (rather than Sept. 15 as the rest of the report does), because this was the last day that data across all categories were captured.

Over this time period, the number of proposed journalism projects over the seven-year time frame lagged behind every category but Dance, which saw just slightly fewer proposals (2,858). And Music and Film & Video both outpace it grandly, with more than 40,000 proposed projects each. However, Dance saw the highest rate of successful funding – 64% of all projects compared with Journalism’s 22%. Here, though, Journalism is more on par with a number of other categories including Fashion, Technology and Crafts. And in raw dollars, Journalism is again near the bottom, accumulating a mere sliver compared with the over $350 million that went to Games, roughly $250 million to Film & Video and$140 million to Music. Dance-related efforts, on the other hand, were close to Journalism at $8.6 million.

• The vast majority of the projects (84%) requested funding in U.S. dollars (554 of 658 projects). For this analysis, funding amounts requested in other currencies were translated to U.S. dollars using conversion rates as of Sept. 15, 2015, on Oanda.com . Researchers also analyzed the total amount of funds both requested and pledged in foreign currencies using OECD average monthly conversion rates as of the month that the projects were launched on Kickstarter. The analysis revealed that the difference between the two methods produced only a 1% difference in the total overall level of funding across all projects. ↩
• 63 more projects received funding in the last three months of 2015, for a total of 236. ↩
• For this analysis, “seven year time period” refers to calendar years for which data were available. The exact elapsed time was from April 28, 2009 – September 15, 2015. ↩
• When Kickstarter launched, the platform did not have a category dedicated to journalism, but it added one in 2014 and retroactively assigned earlier projects to it. ↩
• US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg. ↩
• Two of the 13 U.S.-international projects did not explicitly mention travel, so they could not be coded as such, but the two projects had people based both in the U.S. and abroad. ↩
• For this analysis, the median – or midpoint – number of backers and dollars is used rather than the average, due to outliers at the high end of the spectrum that push the averages far above the midpoint. ↩

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Committee of Concerned Journalists: The principles of journalism

In 1997 the Committee of Concerned Journalists began a national conversation to identify the principles that underlie journalism.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Leighton Walter Kille, The Journalist's Resource November 26, 2009

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/principles-of-journalism/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

In 1997 the Carnegie-Knight Task Force, then administered by the Project for Excellence in Journalism , began a national conversation to identify and clarify the principles that underlie journalism.  After four years of research, including 20 public forums around the country, a national survey of journalists and more, the group released a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles. These became the basis for The Elements of Journalism , a book by PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel and CCJ chairman and PEJ senior counselor Bill Kovach.

Here are those principles, as outlined in the original Statement of Shared Purpose.

Statement of Purpose

The central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society. This encompasses myriad roles — helping define community; creating common language and common knowledge; identifying a community’s goals, heros and villains; and pushing people beyond complacency. This purpose also involves other requirements, such as being entertaining, serving as watchdog and offering voice to the voiceless.

Over time journalists have developed nine core principles to meet the task. They comprise what might be described as the theory of journalism:

1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth

Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can — and must — pursue it in a practical sense. This “journalistic truth” is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation. Journalists should be as transparent as possible about sources and methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information. Even in a world of expanding voices, accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built — context, interpretation, comment, criticism, analysis and debate. The truth, over time, emerges from this forum. As citizens encounter an ever greater flow of data, they have more need — not less — for identifiable sources dedicated to verifying that information and putting it in context.

2. Its first loyalty is to citizens

While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization’s credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers. Commitment to citizens also means journalism should present a representative picture of all constituent groups in society. Ignoring certain citizens has the effect of disenfranchising them. The theory underlying the modern news industry has been the belief that credibility builds a broad and loyal audience, and that economic success follows in turn. In that regard, the business people in a news organization also must nurture — not exploit — their allegiance to the audience ahead of other considerations.

3. Its essence is a discipline of verification

Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method of testing information — a transparent approach to evidence — precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction or entertainment. But the need for professional method is not always fully recognized or refined. While journalism has developed various techniques for determining facts, for instance, it has done less to develop a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation.

4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover

Independence is an underlying requirement of journalism, a cornerstone of its reliability. Independence of spirit and mind, rather than neutrality, is the principle journalists must keep in focus. While editorialists and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is still their accuracy, intellectual fairness and ability to inform — not their devotion to a certain group or outcome. In our independence, however, we must avoid any tendency to stray into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism.

5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power

Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve as watchdog over those whose power and position most affect citizens. The Founders recognized this to be a rampart against despotism when they ensured an independent press; courts have affirmed it; citizens rely on it. As journalists, we have an obligation to protect this watchdog freedom by not demeaning it in frivolous use or exploiting it for commercial gain.

6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise

The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.

7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant

Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. The effectiveness of a piece of journalism is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society.

8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional

Keeping news in proportion and not leaving important things out are also cornerstones of truthfulness. Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. The map is only an analogy; proportion and comprehensiveness are subjective, yet their elusiveness does not lessen their significance.

9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

Every journalist must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility — a moral compass. Each of us must be willing, if fairness and accuracy require, to voice differences with our colleagues, whether in the newsroom or the executive suite. News organizations do well to nurture this independence by encouraging individuals to speak their minds. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. It is this diversity of minds and voices, not just numbers, that matters.

10. Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news

This principle was added to the original nine principles when The Elements of Journalism was revised in April 2007.

This article is based on one from Pew Research Center ‘s Project for Excellence in Journalism . 

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cold war dreamers —

The golden age of offbeat arctic research, the cold war spawned some odd military projects that were doomed to fail..

Paul Bierman, Undark Magazine - Sep 8, 2024 11:12 am UTC

In recent years, the Arctic has become a magnet for climate change anxiety , with scientists nervously monitoring the Greenland ice sheet for signs of melting and fretting over rampant environmental degradation . It wasn’t always that way.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over American and Soviet citizens, ­idealistic scientists and engineers saw the vast Arctic region as a place of unlimited potential for creating a bold new future. Greenland emerged as the most tantalizing proving ground for their research.

Scientists and engineers working for and with the US military cooked up a rash of audacious cold-region projects—some innovative, many spit-balled, and most quickly abandoned. They were the stuff of science fiction: disposing of nuclear waste by letting it melt through the ice; moving people, supplies, and missiles below the ice using subways, some perhaps atomic powered; testing hovercraft to zip over impassable crevasses; making furniture from a frozen mix of ice and soil; and even building a nuclear-powered city under the ice sheet.

Today, many of their ideas, and the fever dreams that spawned them, survive only in the yellowed pages and covers of magazines like “ REAL: the exciting magazine FOR MEN ” and dozens of obscure Army technical reports.

Karl and Bernhard Philberth, both physicists and ordained priests , thought Greenland’s ice sheet the perfect repository for nuclear waste. Not all the waste—first they’d reprocess spent reactor fuel so that the long-lived nuclides would be recycled. The remaining, mostly short-lived radionuclides would be fused into glass or ceramic and surrounded by a few inches of lead for transport. They imagined several million radioactive medicine balls about 16 inches in diameter scattered over a small area of the ice sheet (about 300 square miles) far from the coast.

Because the balls were so radioactive, and thus warm, they would melt their way into the ice, each with the energy of a bit less than two dozen 100-watt incandescent light bulbs—a reasonable leap from Karl Philberth’s expertise designing heated ice drills that worked by melting their way through glaciers. The hope was that by the time the ice carrying the balls emerged at the coast thousands or tens of thousands of years later, the radioactivity would have decayed away. One of the physicists later reported that the idea was shown to him, by God, in a vision .

Of course, the plan had plenty of unknowns and led to heated discussion at scientific meetings when it was presented—what, for example, would happen if the balls got crushed or caught up in flows of meltwater near the base of the ice sheet. And would the radioactive balls warm the ice so much that the ice flowed faster at the base, speeding the balls’ trip to the coast?

Logistical challenges, scientific doubt, and politics sunk the project. Producing millions of radioactive glass balls wasn’t yet practical, and the Danes, who at the time controlled Greenland, were never keen on allowing nuclear waste disposal on what they saw as their island. Some skeptics even worried about climate change melting the ice. Nonetheless, the Philberths made visits to the ice sheet and published peer-reviewed scientific papers about their waste dream.

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Today's Climate

Fossil fuel funding is ‘embedded’ across academia. what does that mean for climate research, oil and gas companies often help fund climate research on campuses. but these ties could pose major—and often underreported—conflicts of interest, new research finds..

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28 Million Acres of Alaska Public Lands Protected from Oil Drilling Following Trump-Era Reversal

When a Glacier Melts, What Does It Leave Behind?

After a Quiet Start, Climate Gets More Attention as the DNC Wraps Up

In the most extensive analysis of its kind, new research suggests that fossil fuel influence is widespread across universities in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. 

Oil and gas companies have poured funding into campuses for decades. But scientists, journalists and students are only just starting to uncover the true extent of these financial ties—and how potential conflicts of interest in higher education could hinder efforts to combat climate change, the study’s authors say. 

“It’s a really troubling lack of transparency that kind of has created this situation where people have been trying to pull back the curtain on some of this, but struggling because a lot of this data just is not in the public domain,” study co-author Geoffrey Supran , an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, told me. “We observe that fossil fuel companies have embedded themselves widely within universities.” 

In the past few years, student activists have increasingly pushed their universities to divest from oil and gas on campus and in investment portfolios. Now, this movement is trickling into the university research community amid a growing push to increase transparency of fossil fuel funding sources—and potentially cut ties altogether. 

Fossil Fuel Funding: Supran has firsthand experience with fossil fuel money permeating the research space. The first year of his doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was funded by an oil company. 

“They took us to fancy Italian banquets, they gave us free stationery with their logos on, they funded the first year of my Ph.D. And so my only association with them was positive,” Supran said. He explained that this type of treatment could result in reciprocity bias, which is when someone may feel the expectation to return favors after receiving gifts or incentives.

“It wasn’t until I started to pay more attention to the oil industry’s political machinations that I started to open my eyes,” he said. 

MIT did not respond to a request for comment about how the university mitigates this type of bias. 

Supran noted that “conflicts of interest are not necessarily implied bias.” However, a 2022 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found university research centers funded by fossil fuel companies were more supportive of natural gas than those that are not. 

The new study finds a dearth of research investigating other potential ways that fossil fuel funding can influence climate research. As part of their work, the scientists parsed through around 14,000 peer-reviewed articles about conflicts of interest, bias and research funding across all industries. Just seven discussed fossil fuels. 

But their own analysis of literature, news reports and other sources revealed hundreds of instances of fossil fuel ties on campuses—from industry representatives sitting on governing research boards to fossil fuel-sponsored scholarships, internships and field trips for students. Some experts argue that these types of university partnerships could help fossil fuel companies “greenwash” their image. 

In other cases, oil and gas companies could have outsize control over what types of climate research occurs, such as ExxonMobil’s influence on carbon capture projects at Louisiana State University, which The Guardian and The Lens reported on in April . 

In March, my colleague Phil McKenna wrote about a new climate change initiative at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and some of his sources noted their concern that the school could seek future funding from fossil fuel companies, as it has before with other projects. MIT’s Energy Initiative, a separate research center dedicated to developing low-carbon solutions, has raised more than $1 billion for energy research since 2006, approximately 45 percent from oil and gas companies, a spokesperson for the MIT Energy Initiative told Inside Climate News. 

Other fields have faced similar scrutiny from the public for industry ties, particularly in the biomedical and tobacco sectors. 

Shining Light on Financial Ties: With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise, students across many campuses are demanding that their universities drop all direct investments in fossil fuels. Since this movement began, more than 200 educational institutions have pledged to divest, including New York University and Dartmouth College. 

Now, there is a call to action from experts in the climate space to impose policies that ban fossil fuel influence on university research, which University of California, San Diego’s Craig Callender calls “divestment 2.0.” 

“Before, it was divesting the portfolio of the university. Now it’s looking at all these entanglements throughout the university and wanting to disassociate in this way as well,” Callender, who studies ethics and philosophy in science and was not involved in the new research, told me. “This [new study] proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this knowledge institution is being weaponized against the public good.”

In 2022, Callender wrote an op-ed for The Chronicle of Higher Education about how fossil-fuel funding is influencing university research articles in favor of oil and gas. Academic studies are often cited in efforts to enact energy policies in government. More than 750 academics signed a letter in 2022 pushing for a ban on fossil-fuel funding for climate research. 

However, pulling this funding could have widespread consequences for the universities that rely on it. Over the past decade, state governments have invested significantly less money on research at public colleges and universities than in the past, forcing many institutions to find the money elsewhere. Instead of a full-scale ban, some schools, such as UC San Diego, are pursuing policies that require public disclosure of all external funding, including from oil and gas. 

However, Supran said these efforts aren’t happening fast enough.

“We also have observed a kind of worrying delay that has occurred between when civil society initially began to raise the alarm about this problem in the early 2000s until when scholars, and especially university leaders, have begun to pay attention to this issue,” he said. 

More Top Climate News 

The stats are in: This summer was the hottest on record in the Northern hemisphere, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The average global temperature over the past three months was 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 1991-2020 average. There was also a revolving door of scorching extreme weather events and catastrophes—from devastating heat waves in Europe to fires that burned through California. 

In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted above-normal hurricane activity this season. But the past three weeks have been unusually quiet on the hurricane front in the Atlantic —in what is typically the throes of this season. This has scientists wondering if the forecast was wrong or if we are in for a late season blitz over the next month, Judson Jones reports for The New York Times .

Attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a burning oil tanker is idling in the Red Sea—and emergency workers ditched an initial effort to tow it away due to poor conditions , Jon Gambrell reports for The Associated Press . This could represent a looming ecological disaster: Experts say more damage on the boat could trigger one of the worst oil spills in recent history. 

“The onus is on the Houthis, again, to look at the impact that they’re having, not only in the short term, but on the long term as it relates to the environment, the economy and the safety of those that are transiting this important waterway,” U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said in a statement . 

On a visit to Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Pope Francis issued a joint statement with Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar calling on Muslims and Catholics to push for “decisive action” in the face of climate change . 

“The human exploitation of creation, our common home, has contributed to climate change, leading to various destructive consequences such as natural disasters, global warming and unpredictable weather patterns,” the statement reads. The people of Jakarta are intimately familiar with the impacts of climate change as the city is quite literally sinking into the ocean while simultaneously being swallowed by rising sea levels.

As winters get hotter with climate change, ski resorts are hoarding stockpiles of snow to use during the peak season , Chris Baraniuk writes for Wired . To do this, owners are stashing the icy mounds under insulating blanket systems developed by companies that say the products can prevent melting even during hot summer days.  

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Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.

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Kiley Price is a reporter at Inside Climate News, with a particular interest in wildlife, ocean health, food systems and climate change. She writes ICN’s “Today’s Climate” newsletter, which covers the most pressing environmental news each week.

She earned her master’s degree in science journalism at New York University, and her bachelor’s degree in biology at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Scientific American and more. She is a former Pulitzer Reporting Fellow, during which she spent a month in Thailand covering the intersection between Buddhism and the country’s environmental movement.

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Women's Health Research at Yale: Pilot Project Program Funding

Women's Health Research at Yale (WHRY) is now accepting letters of intent for Pilot Project Program funding.

The Pilot Project Program funds studies providing new approaches to understanding the health of women, and/or the influence of sex and gender on health.

Funding opportunities include:

• Annual Pilot Project Award ($35,000 max) for research designed to meet a clear need in advancing the health of women.
• The Wendy U. & Thomas C. Naratil Pioneer Award ($50,000 max) for highly inventive, new research on the health of women designed to achieve a breakthrough, or ongoing research in which funding is needed to achieve a discovery.
• Community-based Research Awards ( up to $35,000) for data-driven community place-based research designed to advance the health of women as a pathway to economic and social mobility.

Letters of intent must be received via email by 12 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024 . Please address your inquiries to Marco Mutonji .

For complete information, visit the WHRY website .

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Wii invites applications from indian nationals for 47 contractual positions of research/project personnel under various research projects. (advt. no. wii/advt. 1/rp–cell/september, 2024).

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