Which Journalists for Which Democracy? Liberal-representative, deliberative and participatory roles among Austrian journalists

Although the impacts of journalistic phenomena on democracy are often contested, democracy as a concept rarely gets concretized in these debates. Some studies suggest that different models of democracy have different implications for public discourse and media performancehowever, journalistic roles as an important category of journalism research have not been sufficiently differentiated so far. This study addresses that gap by transferring the liberal-representative, the deliberative, and the participatory models of democracy onto journalistic roles, thereby showing how journalists should understand themselves and their work in order to play a functional role within each model, and then suggesting a way of measuring these roles in their different contexts. This deductive approach made use of data from a survey of Austrian journalists from 2014/15 (N=818). The results indicate that these journalists most strongly support a liberal-representative role, which corresponds to the state of Austrian democracy. However, potentials for alternative understandings of democracy were also found in nontrivial amounts. The journalistic news beat as well as media ownership influence the extent to which journalists identify with democratic roles.