Journalismus, Medien und Technologien stehen in engen Wechselbeziehungen, wobei neue Technologien ihr Potenzial in den kulturellen Kontexten entfalten, in denen sie eingesetzt werden. Der Band betrachtet, wie sich medientechnologische Innovationen in einem Zeitraum von über 150 Jahren durchsetzten oder scheiterten. Dabei stehen die Konsequenzen des raschen technologischen Wandels im Zentrum: der Einfluss auf die Arbeitsanforderungen und -prozesse in den Medienbetrieben sowie auf die Berufsrollen und sozialen Selbstbilder von Journalisten.

Clemens Zimmermann ist Professor für Kultur- und Mediengeschichte an der Universität des Saarlandes. Martin Schreiber ist dort wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter.

Introduction: Towards a New Perspective on Journalism and Technology Clemens Zimmermann and Martin Schreiber Technologies, media and journalism are closely interrelated. This is true for the present time as much as in historical perspective. Technologies such as telegraphy and the rotation press contributed to the multiplication and globalization of news and accelerated their distribution (Bösch 2011, 128-142). The piecemeal use of photography led to fundamentally new conjunctures of text and image and facilitated considerably expanded potentials for layout and new journalistic formats (Zimmermann and Schmeling 2006). While countless representations of journalistic practices at present and in history largely ignore technological aspects and factors, a perspective on the 'impacts' of technologies is virtually impossible. It is thus necessary to take into account economic, social and cultural determinants of the history of usage of relevant technologies. Although the implementation of digital computer technology decisively changed the overall process of the production of media and especially journalistic practices over the last decades, the yet unanswered question is who used it, where it was used and for what motives. This volume hence approaches this complex from an interdisciplinary perspective and aims to contribute to its analyses of the manifold interplay between science and technology on the one hand and between society, culture and politics on the other. These correlations imply that the causal relationship between technologies and their effects is distinguished, that both the production and sphere of consumption count in the history of applied technologies, and that not only continuities but also discontinuities should be observed in the implementation of technologies (Boczkowski and Lievrouw 2008). In this way, the volume ties in with the discussion of the social construction of technologies, which was directed against technological determinism. This discussion worked out that 'relevant social group' and 'interpretative flexibility' are among the key concepts of such an approach (Bijker 2008). In the German research context, the concept of 'appropriation' (Aneignung) was strengthened (though in relation to audience and not journalism research). Appropriation is to be understood as the complex historical process during the course of which new media and technologies are incorporated into standards of conduct, in which those perceptions and requirements of the users are adopted that are understood as acting subjects (Schmidt 1998). 1 The Current State of Research In the history of media so far, the question of the technological implications of journalistic professional practice assumes in a positively striking way only a very limited significance. Neither for the 19th nor the 20th century have studies on the history of media paid even remotely sufficient attention to the question of technologies in the workplace and journalists' interaction with communications systems such as telegraph, telephone, teletypewriter and Internet. Research focuses on questions of political context, commercialization processes, cultural appropriation of American journalistic styles in Europe (investigative practices) and the political self-conceptions and dependencies of journalists (Zimmermann 2006; Hodenberg 2006). Media history has so far largely bypassed above all the massive economic and technological upheavals of the last decades, right up to today's medial applications (Agar 2005). However, general acceleration and globalization processes of medial communication were worked out and the nationally diversified parameters of journalistic practice repeatedly highlighted in the history of mass media (Barbier and Bertho Lavenir 2000; Requate 2010). Within communications studies and journalism, on the other hand, which are open for the question of the actual impact of technological innovations on journalistic work and the appreciation of technologies by journalists, but where the question is also posed as to how important technologies as a whole are in the alteration of journalistic practice (Cottle and Ashton 1999), historical perspectives play practically no role at all. There are, however, striking exceptions: Especially the effects of the acceleration of global information flows and the alteration of the forms and content of newspapers by new means of communication have been addressed on different occasions. Such effects emerged by no means automatically, and the 'old' and the 'new' forms of reporting stood side by side. This means, at the same time, that earlier linear models of modernization in favor of more complex perspectives were abandoned (Bonea 2010). For the USA, the links between technological developments, the emergences of news agencies and, as a result, new forms of cooperation on the part of newspapers were highlighted (Blondheim 2000). It was likewise demonstrated for the USA how the industrialization and professionalization of newspaper journalism prepared current developments in the arena of news work and the convergence of media against the backdrop of the growing economic concentration of media enterprises. The history of technology is incorporated from this perspective into the history of growing institutional differentiation and division of labor in media (Nerone and Barnhurst 2003). Current research shows that journalists strongly perceive changes in their work as being determined by technology, since they are confronted by it directly and on a daily basis in their workplace (Örnebring 2010, 58). It equally demonstrates a whole suite of studies that interpret changes predominantly as technology-driven (McNair 1998, Pavlik 2000, Welch 2000). These studies therefore follow a perspective of technological determination and stress economic efficiency. Applied to the area of media and journalism, this deterministic model that was disseminated in the USA supported a perspective according to which technology substantially determines the form in which content is presented. Conversely, European and in particular German research has underestimated the technological basis of the media. This tendency is simultaneously supported by the traditional dichotomy of research into media and communication: Technological developments are subjects of engineering and the natural sciences, while dimensions of content are studied by the social sciences and humanities. This dichotomy, however, has been relativized with time. Now, in their definitions of the notion of 'media,' communication studies-traditionally more concerned with the person specification (work requirements) than with technological aspects of the journalistic profession-relate the media's characteristics to the state of the art of technologies used for the production and distribution of information and entertainment offers (Kleinsteuber 1992, 305; Weischenberg 1995, 15-16). Since the mid1980s and against the backdrop of an accelerating advancement of digital computer technology, media technology increasingly became the subject of media and communication studies. On the one hand, new technical systems and their effects on the editorial process were considered; on the other it was attempted to estimate future trends in journalism via surveys of users (Weischenberg 1978, Prott 1983, Mast 1984, Weischenberg, Altmeppen and Löffelholz 1994, Weischenberg, Malik and Scholl 2006). The results of such studies were quite contradictory. While some observed the disintegration and 'Taylorisation' of journalism, others stated that new technologies allowed for more autonomy and 'holistic' use (Haas 1999, 77-78). Many (meanwhile themselves historic) future scenarios turned out to be wrong. Yet it is worth noting that the findings of media and communication studies regarding the mechanization are often just snapshots and thus quickly relativized or superseded by new developments. Resear...

Hersteller:
null