Obwohl dem Journalismus seit Jahren eine Legitimitätskrise attestiert wird, zeigt sich seine anhaltende Relevanz unter anderem darin, dass er auch in modernen Medienumgebungen Adressat und Absender von absichtsvollem und interessengeleitetem Handeln ist. In diesem Beitrag argumentieren wir, dass solches Handeln die Transformation von Journalismus antreibt. Aus diesem Grund kann die Identifikation dieses Handelns sowie der dahinterliegenden Antizipationen und Intentionen einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu leisten, die aktuelle (und zukünftige) Gestalt von Journalismus sowie seine gesellschaftliche Rolle zu erklären. Wir schlagen in diesem Beitrag mit den kommunikativen Interventionen ein Konzept vor, das es erlaubt, den analytischen Blick der empirischen Journalismusforschung auf die Komplexitäten des Wandels zu schärfen. Wir konzipieren kommunikative Interventionen als auf Kommunikation beruhende, performativ sichtbare Handlungen, die von Akteur*innen in spezifischen Interventionskontexten und mit antizipierten Interventionszusammenhängen intentional angewendet werden. Mit Bezug auf Journalismus lassen sich drei Interventionsrichtungen (in, im und durch) unterscheiden. Das heuristische Potenzial des vorgeschlagenen Konzepts zeigen wir exemplarisch anhand von ausgewählten Interventionen in (Künstliche Intelligenz), im (Diversitätsinitiativen) und durch (interpretativer Klimajournalismus) Journalismus.

In view of the dynamic developments in digital and fragmented media societies, journalism research is faced with the challenge of capturing the forms of current and future journalism, both theoretically and empirically. While some progress has been made in empirical research, there is still a lack of holistic perspectives on transformation processes in (digital) journalism. To better understand the complex relationship between actors, content, and structures, we argue that it is necessary to explore the analytical potential of interdisciplinary concepts from outside the field of journalism studies. In this sense, based on a sociologically inspired concept of interventions, this article argues for communicative interventions as a powerful heuristic for examining the causes, forms, and consequences of journalism-related transformation processes. We propose a concept of communicative interventions that sharpens the analytical focus of empirical journalism research on the complexities of transformation and change. We conceptualise communicative interventions as communication-based, performatively visible actions that are intentionally used by actors within specific intervention contexts and with anticipated intervention relations. With regard to journalism, three directions of intervention (in, within, and through) can be distinguished.

Widespread assumptions about the social relevance of journalism make it both an addressee and a sender of intentional, interest-driven action, which in turn—as we argue in this article—is a key driver of its transformation. Our aim is to contribute to the theoretical foundation for understanding journalism in transition. The starting point of our considerations is that there is currently a lack of explanation for why journalism, including its role, practices, and structures in society, is constantly changing. In order to explain the long-term causes of change, we argue that a logic of consequences is needed: one that is argumentative and offers as much predictive power as possible to anticipate future developments.

We explore journalism-related actions as a driver of both journalistic and broader social change. With communicative interventions, we propose a concept that allows empirical journalism researchers to sharpen their analytical focus on the complexity of change. As a theoretical concept, communicative interventions serve as a heuristic for a theory-based empirical analysis of intentional transformation processes in journalism.

We are aware that various facets of journalism-related change processes have already been labelled as intervention. Therefore, we are not entering a completely new territory. However, a glance at the use of the term also shows that it has not been sufficiently and theoretically explored. In this article, we aim to exploit this yet untouched theoretical potential and make it fruitful for journalism analysis. To this end, we have systematised various facets of the term and developed them further for journalism research.

We understand interventions as communication-based, performatively visible actions that are applied by actors within specific intervention contexts guided by anticipated intervention contexts. These actors associate their interventions with concrete assumptions about their effects and apply certain measures to a situation they themselves define. Three perspectives of intervention can be found in journalism: intervention in, within, and through journalism. Even though these different directions of intervention are closely related—hinder, condition, and/or reinforce each other—it is both legitimate and analytically necessary to treat them separately for a detailed analysis. We do so by using three exemplary contexts of interventions (AI, diversity, interpretive climate journalism) to demonstrate how the concept sharpens our analytical view of transformations in journalism. In general, the notion of communicative interventions is open to different methodological approaches. However, survey-based studies, especially qualitative interviews or ethnographic newsroom observations, seem particularly appropriate, as they allow to explore the complex covert of motives, measures, anticipated situations, and intended effects.

We introduce communicative interventions as a purely analytical concept. We are aware that this is not without difficulty, as the term certainly has normative connotations in everyday understanding. Interventions are based on a hierarchical relationship in which the more powerful—legitimately or illegitimately, beneficially or detrimentally, depending on the context—intervene in the sphere of their inferiors in order to change it. However, an analytical concept of intervention in our sense has neither positive nor negative connotations. Communicative interventions happen. They are not per se good or bad for journalism, nor are they per se functional or dysfunctional in terms of its social services.

Overall, we see our concept as a template with the potential to make certain causes and consequences of journalistic change visible. However, it only makes these things visible by concealing other aspects. A limitation of the concept is the identification of the initiating actors and the starting points of interventions. This is by no means trivial. To solve this problem, we suggest that observers must first decide which action or measure they understand as an intervention. Only then it is possible to identify the participants and the beginning of the process. Future empirical studies will prove whether the concept is more powerful than previous ones in recognising, explaining, and predicting changes in journalism’s practices, structures, and roles in modern societies.