How Investigative Journalists Around the World Adopt Innovative Digital Practices

ABSTRACT

This article explores how investigative journalists around the world adopt innovative digital practices in their daily work, what challenges they perceive to the adoption of digital practices, and how they cope with those challenges. We interviewed 133 journalists from 60 countries. Utilising the lens of the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, we found that journalists generally perceive the impact of digital practices as positive, but structural and individual factors heavily influence the adoption processes. Journalists from the Global South stress the importance of simple everyday technology and report that they only have limited access to data, which is in stark contrast to interviewees from the Global North. Journalists across countries feel overwhelmed by the need for digital skills, especially those related to digital security. They often work in interdisciplinary teams to address these challenges, which allows them to combine skills and tackle more complex topics. Overall, we found that traditional approaches remain indispensable to investigative work around the world, while innovative digital practices are adopted cautiously in accordance with the journalistic mission. We call for a global network to facilitate diffusion of digital practices, addressing that journalists from the Global South are often laggards against their will due to contextual factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Diffusion of innovations theory
• digitalisation
• digital journalism
• digital practices
• digital skills
• investigative journalism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for the substantive and caring reviews. We are also indebted to the students who conducted the interviews for their valuable work and their enthusiasm: Samira Debbeler, Shorouk Elkobros, Tom Gerntke, Margarita Ilieva, Melina Kersten, Jana Krest, Carlotta Kurth, Paul Meerkamp, Christina Rech, Julian Schröder, Felicitas Vach, and Leonie Wunderlich. We also thank Fabian Severin for his great support in literature research and data cleaning. Last but not least, the project would not have been possible without the support of Thomas Schnedler of Netzwerk Recherche.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).