Cross-Border Non-Profit Investigative Journalism Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Field

Krüger, Uwe; Knorr, Charlotte und Finke, Florian (2019): Cross-Border Non-Profit Investigative Journalism Networks: A Structural Analysis of the Field. 11th Global Investigative Journalism Conference 2019, Hamburg, Germany, 26. - 29. September 2019. In: Academic Track Reader : A Collection of Research Papers Submitted for the Global Investigative Journalism Conference September 2019, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: Investigative Journalism Education Consortium. S. 404-428

Abstract

This study presents on overview of the field of cross-border non-profit investigative journalism networks, i.e., organizations or projects such as International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), or the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and shows the structure of the field and the structure’s development in the last two decades. With desk research, we tried to grasp all organizations and projects in North America and Western Europe that are part of the field in a wider sense, and we collected the names of all their staff and board members in the period from 1998 to 2018. Then we conducted a Social Network Analysis of 67 organizations or projects and 3.410 individuals, dividing the 21-year-period of analysis into three phases of seven years each. The analysis shows that the field has grown constantly and the network of actors has become more dense, for the number of organizations and projects has increased over time as has the number of involved individuals and the connectivity between them (the average number of linkages of each actor to others). Phase I (1998–2004) we name “Establishment” of the new field, phase II (2005–2011) we call “Expansion and Commingling”, and phase III (2012–2018) is a time of “Expansion and Consolidation”. Besides, we identify the central actors in the field. The study shows that in each phase US organizations resp. projects and US journalists are the most influential; only three Europeans made it into the Top Ten of influential individuals.

• Dokumententyp: Konferenzbeitrag (Paper)
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Institut für Kommunikationswissenschaft und Medienforschung (IfKW)
• Themengebiete: 000 Informatik, Informationswissenschaft, allgemeine Werke > 070 Publizistische Medien, Journalismus, Verlagswesen
• Ort: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
• Sprache: Englisch