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In the last ten years local radio stations have mushroomed in many regions in Africa, as well in Tanzania. Many refer to them as community radio stations. They receive support from international donors, due to their potential to inform the local population about local issues, to broadcast their voices thus to create a democratic space to publicly debate relevant issues of local people. The paper is based on two empirical research projects on rural radio stations in Tanzania in 2014 and 2015; an exploratory case study on the status of rural radio and a structured content analysis of radio news and programmes of 14 stations. The empirical results will be assessed against a model of economic sustainability of radio stations tested earlier in Uganda. The paper shows that the lack of economic viability is major constraint for local radio stations. They cannot generate sufficient revenues from advertisers to sustain the station. This leads to high turn-over of staff due to low pay, results in low quality of content and lack of capacity to do serious programming, which in the end hinders the achievement of the radio stations' objectives. It needs to be acknowledged that the challenges of local radio are interrelated, and so are the solutions. The paper will argue that the donor community has largely overlooked the need to invest in media sustainability of rural radio stations, as it has invested mainly in journalism capacity but hardly in media management capacity. The paper concludes that a viable economic model in Africa requires to simultaneously support three different fields, (a) the development of content jointly with (b) the development of media management capacities and (c) local media research covering the extent and satisfaction of the local audience in order to develop local advertising markets that serve local media.

Professional roles are one of the key topics in journalism research and are also fundamental elements when it comes to defining journalism as a profession (Hanitzsch, 2011; Keel, 2011). For many decades, journalism scholars devoted their efforts to analyzing normative standards and journalistic ideals. However, due to the lack of theorization of professional roles within the journalistic field, it remained often unclear how the role conceptions relate to and influence the journalistic role performance (Mellado and Dalen, 2014; Patterson and Donsbach, 1996; Schudson, 2003). Specifically, it remained unclear how professional roles relate to news decisions and the news outcome that reaches the public (Mellado et al., 2016; Weischenberg and Scholl, 1998, pp. 157–180). The concept of role performance focuses on the connection between journalists' beliefs about the role of journalism and the actual practice of producing the news. It connects studies on the professionalism of roles with those on news production and the sociology of news, and it draws its specific value from focusing attention on issues relating to structure, agency, culture, and political economy. In accordance with gatekeeping and hierarchy-of-influences studies, results from a previous study in Switzerland have shown a wide gap between professional ideals and professional practices at different levels (Raemy et al., 2019). With reference to the concept of hypocrisy brought forward by Nils Brunsson (1995), this can be explained by the assumption that hypocrisy is benefitting news organizations – like any other organization – more than is generally assumed, as these organizations have to serve contradicting expectations (Wyss 2008). Our research project focuses on this question by addressing the (dis)connection between ideals and practice in journalism, analyzing how different dimensions of professional roles materialize in the news product in different organizational, institutional, political and social settings. In order to do that, this research project analyzes 4200 articles and reports from 10 different media outlets of all media types in Switzerland, to see which of six pre-defined journalistic orientation is prevalent, and compares these results with the findings from interviews with 160 journalists who are responsible for the articles and reports.

Autonomie wird in der Journalismusforschung generell positiv gedeutet. Gemeint ist meist das möglichst starke Fernbleiben journalismusfremder Einflüsse auf journalistisches Handeln. "Journalismus soll autonom sein – unabhängig von der Macht, von der Wirtschaft, von der sozialen Stratifizierung und auch von einem Übermass an Subjektivität der Journalisten" (Esposito 2008: 327). In der empirischen Journalismusforschung wird Autonomie weitgehend auf der Akteurs- und Organisationsebene unter dem Stichwort der "inneren Pressefreiheit" diskutiert – durchaus unter Rückgriff auf ein systemtheoretisches Verständnis eines selbstreferenziellen Journalismus (Scholl/Weischenberg 1998: 147). Auf der empirischen Ebene wird untersucht, inwiefern Redakteure / Redaktionen gegenüber Verlagen/Sendern, sowie gegenüber politischen/ökonomischen Druckversuchen von aussen autonom handeln können (vgl. Scholl/Weischenberg 1998; Donsbach/Patterson 2002). So hat Hanitzsch bei starkem ökonomischem Einfluss seitens des Unternehmens "relatively little professional autonomy" festgestellt (2011: 492). Dieser Beitrag zeigt unter Rückgriff auf Daten aus einer repräsentativen Schweizer Journalistenenquête (2015) mit 909 Journalisten aus vier Sprachregionen, inwiefern unabhängige Variablen (Medientyp, Professionalisierungsgrad, Alter, Sprachraum etc.) die Autonomiewahrnehmung einzelner Journalisten bestimmen. Ein besonderes Ausgenmerk wird hier auf den Einfluss innerredaktioneller Strukturen der Qualitätssicherung gerichtet. So kann angenommen werden, dass die konsequente Anwendung bestimmter Instrumente des Qualitätsmanagements (etwa Leitbilder, Ethik-Kodizes oder Accountability-Systeme sowie Formen des Qualitätsmanagements/Instrumente der Qualitätssicherung wie Briefing, Gegenlesen, Feedback-/Kritiksysteme; vgl. Wyss/Keel 2009; Wyss 2012) eine organisationale Verantwortungskultur stärkt (Jarren 2007: 141), die sich funktional auf die "innere Pressefreiheit" auswirkt. Die statistische Analyse zeigt jedoch, dass die Autonomie in Redaktionen (Wahlfreiheit hinsichtlich Themen sowie journalistische Freiheit bei inhaltlichen Aspekten) mit ausgeprägten Strukturen der Qualitätssicherung als signifikant tiefer wahrgenommen wird, als wenn solche Verfahren fehlen). Dieser auf den ersten Blick ambivalente Befund kann durchaus so gedeutet werden, dass Strukturen der Qualitätssicherung zum einen den Autonomiespielraum des einzelnen Journalisten eingrenzen, zum anderen aber die Selbstreferenz und damit die Autonomie der Redaktion als Organisation gegenüber systemfremdem Einflüssen stärkt.

What impact does Virtual Reality (VR) have on political decision-making? By means of a 2 (format: VR vs. text) x 2 (argumentation: pro vs. con) between-subject factorial experiment, we assessed participants' voting outcomes on a fictitious initiative. Participants (N=175) first cast their vote with the traditional Swiss voting booklet. Next, participants were randomly assigned to either a VR or text stimulus (Swiss voting booklet) containing the same pro- or con-arguments. Finally, they could adjust their previously cast vote, if they wished. The presentation mode has an effect on participants' voting outcomes. For both, the pro and con VR scenarios, participants show an increase of YES votes, in favor of the presented initiative. These findings are reflected in the retrospective think aloud interviews conducted after the experiment. With this research, we hope to further shed light on how VR could be leveraged for the benefit of society in the political decisionmaking domain.

One of the strengths of virtual reality (VR) is to provide a highly realistic user experience. How would VR's power of realism affect political decision-making, for example, when experienced by citizens before they cast their vote on an issue? We set out to empirically assess if and how voting information presented in VR would influence people's voting behavior, compared to the traditional text presentation format. In a 2 (format: text vs. VR) × 2 (argumentation: pro vs. con) between-subject factorial experiment, we assessed participants' voting behavior on a fictitious popular initiative. We first asked all participants (N = 179) to cast their vote based on a brief text, inspired by the traditional Swiss voting booklet (baseline). We then randomly assigned participants to one of four experimental conditions containing the same pro or con arguments concerning the voting issue. Participants could then adjust their previously-cast vote. This was followed by retrospective interviews (N = 32) to gain deeper insights into the decision-making process of the participants. Our study shows that the presentation format has a reinforcing effect, that is, leading to more YES votes for the VR group, and fewer YES votes for the text group. Irrespective of the pro or con arguments, participants show an overall increase in YES votes in VR, which is not the case for the text group. We identified six factors that may have led to this positive change with VR: (1) the affirmative power of images, (2) the vividness of immersive images, (3) first-person storytelling and storyliving, (4) the greater affordances of VR for engagement through interaction, (5) the design of the VR environment, and (6) the novelty of the VR technology.

Special Issue: Comparing Journalistic Cultures ; Canada, Belgium and Switzerland are multicultural countries with several similarities including having French as a minority language. The trio also shares similar media landscapes, systems and approaches to journalism to those of other Western European and Northern American countries. These commonalities offer an opportunity to probe for the possibility of a language-based differentiation in journalists' professional identities. Our comparative analysis of Worlds of Journalism Study data suggests that francophone journalists in our three countries have much more in common than not with their other-language peers. However, the francophone journalists seem more likely to identify with a politicized role that includes agenda-setting, citizen-motivation and scrutinizing power, and less likely to be driven by attracting and satisfying audiences. A différence francophone exists, but it is modest.