Journalism studies is concerned with the study of journalism as a social practice, as well as its relationship with other domains, such as politics, economics, technology, and culture. It draws on approaches from political science, sociology, history, law, and cultural studies. In the digital age, journalism, like many other societal fields, is undergoing comprehensive transformations around the globe. Therefore, research in the Department of Communication is concerned with a wide range of approaches to studying journalism. These include historical studies of journalism in Austria, the study of news framing, news reporting on suicide, journalism and migration, news reporting on minorities, journalism and safety, regulation of news media, freedom of the press, digital transformations of journalism and journalism education, comparative studies of journalism, peripheral journalism, journalism and everyday life, journalism and collective memory, and reciprocal relationships between journalism and other societal fields.

The study of journalism is embedded across all areas of the department and has a particular focus of four research areas:

• Comparative Journalism Studies
  Through our involvement in a number of cross-national research projects – most notably the Worlds of Journalism Study – we study how journalism functions differently as well as similarly across a range of political, economic, technological and societal contexts. A focus lies here on how journalists articulate their professional views and how journalistic cultures are constituted through these narratives.

• Journalism and Everyday Life
  We are interested in the role that journalism plays in mediating identities and lifestyles to audiences, in particular through attention on lifestyle journalism. Of particular interest is the study of lifestyle journalists' professional views, and the influence that commercial logics play in their work.

• Transformation of Journalism
  This area is concerned with the ways in which journalistic practices and cultures are impacted by technological change, such as the use of web analytics, social media, and other audience feedback mechanisms. A further focus lies in how new kinds of journalism are appearing in the public sphere, which may challenge traditional journalism's authority. This includes studies of peripheral journalists working at blogs, social media, or even in corporate PR.

• Political Journalism
  We study the changing societal function of political journalism in the information age. For instance, we examine the role of political journalism in populist politics, and the impact of digitalisation on how political journalists search and verify information online. A strong focus also lies on investigating audience perceptions of innovation in political journalism.