Goal: This article-based doctoral dissertation, Recognition-Oriented Journalism, aims to establish audience-related sensitivity, empathy and recognition as teachable, evidence-based professional competences for journalists — rather than personality traits or professional liabilities — and to translate them into concrete learning outcomes for journalism education, so that journalism can better sustain public trust and support media and information literacy in a hybrid media environment.
Phases: The dissertation proceeds in three interlinked stages. The first article establishes the problem empirically: journalism students frame their own emotional responsiveness as a professional risk rather than a resource. The second article develops and empirically tests a recognition-based framework of audience interaction competence in three pioneer European membership-driven newsrooms (De Correspondent, Republik, Uusi Juttu), currently in the data collection and analysis phase. The third article, also currently in the data collection and analysis phase, extends this framework to societal significance, examining how the same competences can support audiences’ media and information literacy (MIL) in a hybrid, disinformation-prone media environment.
New competence: Together, the three articles produce an empirically grounded, EQF-compatible competence framework — spanning empathetic understanding, recognition-based audience interaction, and MIL-supportive practice — that can be adopted directly into journalism curricula.
Tutkimus oli alkuperäiseltä työnimeltään ”Yleisövuorovaikutus journalistisena ammattiosaamisena”.