Time-based Variability in the Presence of Infotainment, Service, and Civic Roles in Czech Quality Press

ABSTRACT

Evidence on how journalistic role performance changes in time and in relation to which factors is largely missing. This study investigates the presence of civic, infotainment, and service roles in the news, and examines whether their presence varies in time given the worsening economic conditions on the press market and changes in ownership type. A longitudinal content analysis of a representative sample of news (N = 1871) published in four Czech quality dailies during three year-long periods (i.e., 2006–2007, 2011–2012, 2016–2017) was conducted. Bivariate analyses showed that the presence of the roles varied in time for all of the newspapers but to a relatively small extent. Ridge logistic regressions revealed that the presence of all three audience-related roles was associated with specific dailies and ownership types, but not with worsening economic conditions. As compared to privately-owned newspapers, likelihood for the presence of the service role was bigger in corporate-owned newspapers, and for the civic role it was bigger in oligarchic-owned newspapers. The findings suggest that corporate-owned dailies responded to worsening economic conditions by preferring a service role rather than an infotainment role, and that the effects of oligarchic ownership on journalism practice are complex and far from being straightforward.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalistic role performance
• the Czech Republic
• media oligarchization
• media ownership
• content analysis
• quality press

Over the past decade, research into journalistic role performance has been growing rapidly (e.g., Tandoc, Hellmueller, and Vos 2013; Mellado and Van Dalen 2014; Mellado 2015, 2021a; Mellado et al. 2024). Researchers are increasingly interested in the factors that shape role performance. Mostly cross-sectional studies have focused on factors at several levels of influence, such as press freedom, market characteristics (Márquez-Ramírez et al. 2020), political system (Mellado et al. 2024), audience orientation (Humanes and Roses 2018; Mellado and Van Dalen 2014) or news beats (Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017). This research stream has yielded important insights, yet it has two crucial limits that will be addressed in this study.

First, while there is agreement that journalistic roles are never static (e.g., Hanitzsch 2018, 44; Mellado 2021c, 22), longitudinal research of how the role performance varies across time is very scarce (e.g., Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017; Pinto 2008). The current study extends prior research by focusing on how it may vary in time with worsening conditions and deepening economic uncertainty in the press market. This is an important matter because, journalism faces changes that are deep, multi-dimensional, and more dynamic than before (Preston 2009, 19). Particularly in the press market, changes are driven, among other factors, by shrinking revenues and increasing competition from digital news suppliers (Siles and Boczkowski 2012).

Second, despite calls to extend the evidence for journalistic role performance beyond a small number of Western countries with well-established democracies (e.g., Mellado 2021b, 11), the evidence from the CEE region is limited to cross-sectional findings from Poland and Hungary (see Stępińska et al. 2019; Szabó, Kormos, and Zagyi 2019). The CEE media systems are distinct from their western Europe counterparts because of the degree of the business and political instrumentalization of the media by their local owners, many of whom could be classified as oligarchs (Örnebring 2012; Stetka 2012). So far, no attention has been given to the impact of the oligarchic model of media ownership on journalistic role performance. Yet, as with any other form of news organization ownership (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018), the oligarchic model is linked to unique organizational principles and institutional logic that may uniquely impact journalistic practice. When defining the oligarchic media ownership model in CEE, Štětka (2015) pointed to the specific rationale behind media investment and the overall approach of oligarchic owners towards journalism. According to the model he proposed, the oligarchic owner's primary objective is to exert political or business influence. Relationship to politics is promotional or clientelistic. High level of instrumentalization can be observed; however, it varies among specific outlets, and according to the author, the “soft touch” approach is often preferred over direct control. Profits made outside of the media market help oligarchs finance their news outlets’ operations beyond advertising and sales revenues.

Addressing the limitations of prior research, a longitudinal content analysis of the news published in four quality Czech newspapers over a time span of 10 years (2006–2007, 2011–2012, 2016–2017) was conducted to shed light on time-based variability in the journalistic-role performance. This study pursued two aims. First, it examined time-based variability in the presence of civic, infotainment, and service roles in the news. Second, it examined whether the presence of those three audience-related roles were associated with the two time-varying factors, which were the worsening economic conditions in the press market and the media ownership type (and how).

The Czech media system is a suitable case to study in this context due to the structural changes in the press market that took place between 2008 and 2016. The gradual deterioration of the print press market could be observed globally even before 2008 (Siles and Boczkowski 2012). However, particularly in CEE countries, it was accelerated considerably by the 2008 financial crisis (Štětka 2013). Facing shrinking revenues from sales and advertisement, international publishing houses withdrew from the Czech media market.

Bolstered by relatively low media ownership regulations, it was now possible for local oligarchs to buy up all of the major publishing houses in a very short time (Hájek et al. 2015; Jirák and Köpplová 2020). In 2016, 92% of newspapers in the Czech Republic with newspapers readership share of 92% were owned by members of the local political and business elite (Vojtěchovská 2017). In addition, the entire vertical chain in the print media industry is now owned by oligarchs, which gives them control of the entire production process (Jirák and Köpplová 2020). In consequence, the Czech Republic has become one of the CEE countries with the biggest concentration of local oligarchs in the news media sector (Štětka 2015).

Unlike in Poland and Hungary, where political actors initiated and played the main roles in the political instrumentalization of media, the Czech industry was reshaped by business elites who acquired media in order to exert business and political influence and to achieve their particular economic goals (Hanley and Vachudova 2018; Innes 2014). Because similar development could be observed in the media markets of some other CEE countries, like Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia (Innes 2014; Stetka 2012; 2013), studying the Czech case may be a basis for a cautious generalization for the other media systems in CEE region.

Time-based Variation in the Performance of Audience-related Roles

The current study focuses on the time-based variation in the presence of audience-related roles in the news media (Mellado and van Dalen 2017). Within the audience approach domain journalists perform roles subsumed under three dimensions (Mellado and Lagos 2014). The civic role is about empowering and motivating the audience to get involved in the civic life; infotainment role about entertaining the audience; and service role is about establishing helping relationship with the audience as clients who are to be given advice and guidance about their individual needs (Humanes and Roses 2021).

Findings of a large cross-sectional study based on data from 18 national journalistic cultures worldwide collected between 2012 and 2015 showed that, despite the significant variations across countries, overall, the performance of the infotainment role in the news media was slightly higher than the civic role. The service role turned out to be the least prevalent (Mellado 2021). Importantly, however, the three roles described above should not be understood as fixed practices (Mellado and van Dalen 2017). Unlike role conceptions, which have relatively stable and enduring characters (Tandoc, Hellmueller, and Vos 2013), the performance of journalistic roles has a more situational, fluid, and dynamic character (Mellado 2021b). Journalists constantly redefine their responsibilities towards the public along with changes in audience needs (Metyková 2009).

H1: The presence of the civic, infotainment, and service roles in the news varied significantly between three time periods (i.e., 2006–2007, 2011–2012, 2016–2017).

Studying the time-based variation in how news professionals approach the audience is important because different approaches enable the public to play different social roles in different ways (van Dalen, de Vreese, and Albæk 2012). For example, when performing the civic role, news professionals enable the public to play its role in democratic society (Humanes and Roses 2021). On the contrary, exposure to soft news, which is indicative of the infotainment role, was found to be associated with political cynicism and lower participation (Boukes and Boomgaarden 2015).

In the context of economic deterioration and media capture, the focus on the audience-related roles extends the ongoing academic reflection that is concerned with the content effects in the power domain that are associated with those two processes (e.g., Schiffrin 2017; Štětka 2015). Specifically, it extends it into the domain of “specific functions which journalism fulfils in society” (Mellado and van Dalen 2017), and opens up important question of how those functions are being affected by worsening economic conditions in the press market and by changes in media ownership. In the literature, there are clear theoretical links between the three audience-related roles and those two factors (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018; Humanes and Roses 2021; Mellado et al. 2021).

Worsening Economic Conditions and Journalistic Role Performance

The period under study embraced significant market and industry changes that shifted journalism towards increasing commercialization and profit orientation. For the press market, the most important were declines in sales and advertising revenues which were linked to advancements in ICT, such as the emergence of digital news platforms that offer free content or new solutions for targeting audiences online (Siles and Boczkowski 2012; Franklin 2014; Freedman 2009).

In the Czech press market, newspaper revenues decreased sharply between 2006 and 2017 (see Figure 1), with the biggest drop between 2011 and 2013 (Statista Search Department 2015), and since 2008, the competition from online news platforms grew considerably (see Figure 2). Whereas in 2005 only 12% of people over 16 were using the internet to read news or newspapers, in 2017 it was already 71% (Czech Statistical Office 2023). During the studied period, Czech journalists perceived economic pressure as the most important external influences on their work (Metyková and Waschková Císařová 2009; Volek and Urbániková 2017). Particularly for the editors of quality dailies, this economic imperative posed a key professional dilemma (Volek 2010).

Figure 1. Net profits on sales and gross advertising revenues of analysed newspapers across three time periods.

^aAuthors own elaboration based on data from the Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations. Net profit for each month was computed as follows: average circulation per issue * selling price per issue at given time * the number of issues per month—VAT at given time—distributors’ margin (33%). Monthly net profits for given time period were then summarized. ^b Data on gross advertising revenues were provided and aggregated by Czech Publishers´ Association.

Figure 2. Percentage of people over the age of 16 using the internet to read news, newspapers and magazines.

Note. Based on secondary data from Czech Statistical Office (2023, 26).

Increasing economic pressures may have a considerable impact on how newspapers approach their audiences. With the increasing competition for audience attention, news media organizations intensify editorial strategies aimed at adjusting content to perceived audience demand. For example, editors pay more attention to scandals, personal drama, and emotions to make news content more appealing and enjoyable (Metyková 2009; Patterson 2001). Even though quality newspapers may tend to focus on high-quality public-service-oriented news to keep their elite audiences (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018), the evidence from the Chilean press suggests that, while popular newspapers adopted an infotainment model to a greater extent, its presence increased between 2000 and 2010 also for quality newspapers (Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017). Similar trends were confirmed in the Czech media system (Jirák and Köpplová 2020).

H2: The presence of the infotainment role in a news story will increase with time.

Except for infotainment and tabloidization, service journalism is often placed in the context of increasing commercialization in the media (Hanitzsch and Vos 2018). It is perceived by editors as a new strategy for targeting readers and as a way for news institutions to appeal to new advertisers (From and Nørgaard Kristensen 2018).

H3: The presence of the service role in a news story will increase with time.

Shrinking revenues and the resultant emphasis on profitability may have suppress the presence of the civic role in the news. There is evidence that national newspapers reacted to the drop in advertising revenues by producing less hard news stories (Angelucci and Cagé 2019). Other studies found that the emphasis on entertainment is at the expense of public service journalism (Croteau and Hoynes 2006; Waisbord 2000). These tendencies can also be found in the elite press, although to a different degree than in the popular press (Mellado and Humanes 2015). The evidence from Chilean press showed that, between 2000 and 2010, the presence of a civic model in quality press decreased (Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017).

H4: The presence of the civic role in a news story will decrease with time.

Media Ownership Type and Journalistic Role Performance

The findings of two studies that empirically tested the direct association between the ownership type and the performance of audience-related roles in the news media did not find it to be significant (Mellado et al. 2021; Mothes, Schielicke, and Raemy 2021). However, one possible explanation for the non-significant findings is that both studies merged private- and corporate-owned media outlets into the same category. Prior literature, by contrast, suggests that as compared to other types of media ownership, corporate-owned news media organizations, including quality press newsrooms (Picard 2004), typically adhere to the profit-maximization principle (Dunaway 2008; Shoemaker and Reese 2014). Because middle-level management of such organizations aim to widen or at least to maintain audiences that are attractive to advertisers (Picard 2004; Mothes, Schielicke, and Raemy 2021), journalists employed in corporate-owned newspapers are more likely to perform the infotainment and service roles. In Eastern Europe, the profit-seeking orientation of most international media investors manifested in the rapid spread of the tabloidization of the news media (Stetka 2012).

H5: The corporate ownership increases the odds of the presence of the infotainment role in the news.

H6: The corporate ownership increases the odds of the presence of the service role in the news.

Media organizations with a strong market orientation obligated to maximize shareholder value, which is typical for the corporate model of ownership (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018), put a higher emphasis on profit than community goals (Edmonds 2004). Such newspapers typically publish fewer stories about the government and public affairs (Beam 2003), and underplay the civic role as compared to those with a weak market orientation (Mothes, Schielicke, and Raemy 2021).

H7: The corporate ownership decreases the odds of the presence of the civic role in the news.

Oligarchs are often seen to instrumentalize the media that they own to achieve their particular economic or/and political goals (Stetka 2012). The control of editorial mechanisms is much stronger in the case of news media owned by local owners when compared to corporate-owned media (Hanretty 2014). Data from the Worlds of Journalism study gathered between 2012 and 2014 (e.g., Hájek et al. 2015) show that after changes in ownership Czech journalists felt the rising influence of owners upon their news organizations. However, indirect rather than direct forms of inference prevailed such as the socialization to the newsroom culture and self-censorship. The interests of owners were being mediated by staff changes in middle-level management, which filtered it down to subordinates (Kotisova and Císařová 2023).

Because oligarchy benefits from the absence of a strong civil society (Klíma 2020), oligarchs who own media outlets might be interested in inducing apathy and depoliticization among citizens or, at least, not be interested in encouraging civic society’s growth (Medina and Stokes 2002). For example, Czech oligarch Andrej Babiš who acquired the Mafra publishing house was heard to resist the idea of granting civic and interest groups the opportunity to express their views on state infrastructure projects and he suggested reducing their freedom to do so. Hanley and Vachudova (2018) observed that discounting the participation of citizens and civic groups in social life was in line with the notion of anti-politics, which helps to legitimize the concentration of power in the hands of oligarchs.

For the civic role, it was found that the lowered level of perceived professional autonomy was associated with a bigger gap between role conception and performance (Mellado and Van Dalen 2014). Political instrumentalization poses a major constraint to professional autonomy of journalists (Hallin and Mancini 2004, 37). Therefore, the negative association between oligarchic ownership and the presence of the civic role in the news media may be given by the high level of political instrumentalization that is typical for oligarchic media ownership (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018). In consequence, journalists working in newsrooms owned by oligarchs may be less likely to perform the civic role even if they adhere to it.

H8: The oligarchic ownership decreases the odds of the presence of the civic role in the news.

Method

Research Design

This study draws on a longitudinal content analysis of news stories published in the four Czech daily newspapers over a time span of 10 years (2006–2017). The time span was chosen to embrace the two processes that were expected to have an impact on the presence of audience-related roles in the news media, that is, the worsening economic conditions and the rapid changes to the ownership structure on the Czech press market. Analysed news stories come from equally spaced three-year-long time periods, each starting in July and ending in the following June. The three-year-long periods were selected so that they did not contain significant events, such as parliamentary or presidential elections, the European migration crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemics. The five-year-long intervals between the studied periods were also used in other studies concerned with time-based variances in news characteristics (e.g., Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017; Pinto 2008).

The baseline time period (2006–2007) preceded both the changes in the ownership of all of the analysed newspapers and the sharp falls in sales and advertising revenues that took place between the first and the two subsequent periods (see Figure 1 and Table 1). During the second time period (2011–2012), one out of the four dailies had already undergone a change in ownership type. In the third time period (2016–2017), three of the four dailies had already been owned by local oligarchs (Štětka 2015; Vojtěchovská 2017). Economic conditions in the press market continued to deteriorate across the three periods.

Table 1. Owner, ownership type and average circulation for analysed newspapers across time periods.

Daily	T1 (2006–2007)	T2 (2011–2012)	T3 (2016–2017)
Hospodářské noviny
Owner	Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt	Zdeněk Bakala	Zdeněk Bakala^b
Ownership type	Corporate	Oligarchic	Oligarchic
Circulation	59,802^a	36,722	30,470
Lidové noviny
Owner	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Agrofert a.s. (Andrej Babiš^c)
Ownership type	Corporate	Corporate	Oligarchic
Circulation	71,301	37,190	35,125
MF Dnes
Owner	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Rheinisch-Bergische Verlagsgesellschaft mbH	Agrofert a.s. (Andrej Babiš)
Ownership type	Corporate	Corporate	Oligarchic
Circulation	317,187	194,876	135,578
Právo
Owner	Zdeněk Porybný (91.4%)	Zdeněk Porybný (91.4%)	Zdeněk Porybný (59.0%), Seznam a.s. (33.6%)
Ownership type	Private	Private	Corporate^d
Circulation	122,172	77,681	55,593

^a Based on data from the Czech Audit Bureau of Circulations. Data on average daily circulation for January were used to capture circulation during given time period.

^b Zdeněk Bakala is a Czech entrepreneur and investor, and a stakeholder in mining, energy, and financial businesses. He is not directly involved in politics, yet he financially supported right-wing conservative and neoliberal political parties, ODS and TOP 09 (Štětka 2013).

^c Andrej Babiš is a Czech entrepreneur and the owner of Agrofert holding company, which is the largest Czech firm operating in the agriculture, food, chemical, construction, logistics, forestry, and energy industries (Štětka 2013). In 2011, he founded the populist centrist political party ANO. In 2013, he became the Minister of Finance and in 2017 he became the Prime Minister for the first time.

^d In 2013, Czech media company Seznam a.s. bought 33.6% of Borgis a.s. stocks from its majority owner, a former journalist and editor-in-chief, Zdeněk Porybný. In 2014 Zdeněk Porybný stopped to be executive chairman of the company (MediaGuru.cz 2014). Because of the lower level of control by the majoritarian owner and the higher level of profit orientation due to expectations of a new stakeholder, in terms of its organizational goals, newspaper has shifted from a private ownership model towards a corporate ownership model. Therefore, based on this premise, at T3 daily Právo was subsumed under the corporate type of ownership.

The analysed newspapers (i.e., Hospodářské noviny, Lidové noviny, MF Dnes, Právo) were selected for the following reasons: (a) to reduce the between-newspaper variability in the role performance, since together they made up the sub-segment of quality press dailies; (b) they were published throughout the study period; and (c) they showed time-based variability in considered factors (i.e., economic conditions, ownership type).

Sample

The representative sample of the analysed news stories (N = 1871) was selected with a stratified random sample method. The sample consisted of the two constructed weeks for each of the year-long periods. In order to account for both daily and monthly variations in content, each year-long period was divided into two six-month periods and then set a random starting day.¹ Then a 3–4-week interval were used to set the subsequent days of the week. After the half-year point the process was repeated. The same technique of stratified sample selection was used in other studies of journalistic role performance in news content (e.g., Mellado and Rafter 2014). News stories (i.e., no opinion pieces, no interviews) that were longer than a paragraph were included in the analysis. In order to limit the topic-related variability in the role performance, only news stories associated with the national desk were considered (including front pages, excluding news agency content).

Coding Procedure

The unit of analysis was an individual news story. News stories were coded for descriptive variables and the presence of the civic, infotainment, and service roles. Before the coding process started, three independent coders—graduate students of a media studies and journalism programme—were trained in the application of the codebook. Upon completion of the training, intercoder agreement between the three coders had been established on 5% of the sample, with average pairwise κ = 0.834 (0.654—0.998). See Table A1 in Appendix 1 for average pairwise κ for all coded indicators.

Measures

The coding manual included descriptive variables, such as newspaper title, date of publication, page number, length (i.e., number of paragraphs), and authorship. For the coding of specific role indicators, standardized operationalizations of journalistic roles in the news content proposed by Mellado were used (2021). The stories were coded “0” for the absence of an indicator and “1” for its presence. More than one indicator of more than one role could be present in a single news story. Due to the sampling distribution of the individual indicators in the analysed data (see Tables A11 and A12 in Appendix 2), in contrast to the approach developed by Mellado (2021), mere presence of the role was measured as opposed to the role performance. The presence of a role was indicated by at least one indicator of a given role in the news story.

The independent variables considered in this study were time period, ownership type, and specific daily. Because economic conditions on the Czech press market deteriorated over time (see Figures 1 and 2) the ordinal variable time period was a proxy measure for economic conditions with “T1” standing for the 2006–2007 time period, “T2” for 2011–2012, and “T3” for 2016–2017.

Ownership type was a categorical variable with “1” representing private ownership by an individual owner, “2” representing corporate ownership by diverse stakeholders (Dunaway 2008), and “3” representing the oligarchic model of ownership. The specific codes were assigned based on information concerning the owner and the proportion of the company's shares held. The information has been retrieved from annual reports of a respective media company for each time period considered in the analysis. The specific category of ownership type assigned to a news outlet could vary across time (see Table 1). Two Czech entrepreneurs, Zdeněk Bakala and Andrej Babiš, were considered oligarchic owners due to multiple business interests and having primary sources of profit lying outside the news media market. Andrej Babiš has been directly involved in politics since 2011 when he founded a civic initiative that later transformed into a political party.

The specific daily was categorized with “1” for Hospodářské noviny, “2” for Lidové noviny, “3” for MF Dnes, and “4” for Právo.

Data Analysis

In order to test H1, a series of chi-square tests of independence and pairwise comparisons were performed. To test H2–H8, a bivariate analysis with chi-square tests of independence was conducted and the values of Cramér's V were computed to examine the effect sizes. Hierarchical logistic regressions were conducted separately for each of the three audience-related roles. In each next step a new predictor was added: (1) the time period, (2) ownership type, and (3) specific daily. Model diagnostics revealed multicollinearity between the ownership type and the specific daily (see Appendix 2, Tables A4, A7, and A10). The multicollinearity has been solved with the ridge logistic regression which is being used to reduce the impact of multicollinearity (Barker and Brown 2001). Because the coefficients resulting from ridge regression are usually biased towards zero, conventional inference by hypothesis tests and confidence intervals based on standard errors are difficult to apply (Šinkovec et al. 2021). Therefore, to provide additional analytical context, results obtained from binary logistic models are presented in Tables A2–3, A5–6, and A8–9 in Appendix 2.

Data were analysed in R (v4.2.0; R Core Team 2021), ridge regression analyses were conducted with glmnet (Friedman, Hastie, and Tibshirani 2010) and ridge (Cule, Moritz, and Frankowski 2022) packages.

Findings

Time-based Variability in the Presence of Infotainment, Service, and Civic Roles in News

As demonstrated in Table 2, at the level of the whole-market segment, significant differences across time periods were found only for the presence of the civic role, which was higher in T2 and T3 than in T1.

Table 2. The presence of infotainment, service and civic role and their individual indicators per time period.

	T1 (2006–2007)		T2 (2011–2012)		T3 (2016–2017)			Cramér's V
	N = 701		N = 693		N = 477		χ^2 (2)
	N	%	N	%	N	%
Infotainment role indicators:
Personalization	52	7.4	64	9.24	57	11.95	6.95*	.06
Private life	25	3.57	13	1.88	12	2.52	3.89	.05
Sensationalism	69	9.84	40	5.77	32	6.71	8.92*	.07
Emotions	19	2.71	20	2.89	16	3.35	0.42	.02
Morbidity	20	2.85	14	2.02	11	2.31	1.06	.02
Infotainment (presence of at least one indicator)	144	20.54^a	120	17.32^a	97	20.34^a	2.77	.04
Service role indicators
Impact on everyday life	67	9.56	92	13.28	58	12.16	4.89	.05
Tips and advice (grievances)	7	1.00	4	0.58	8	1.68	3.40	N/A
Tips and advice (individual risks)	8	1.14	9	1.30	7	1.47	0.24	.01
Information/consumer advice	62	8.85	72	10.39	48	10.06	1.03	.02
Service (presence of at least one indicator)	136	19.40^a	164	23.67^a	107	22.43^a	3.90	.05
Civic role indicators
Citizen reactions	58	8.27	104	15.00	49	10.27	16.44***	.09
Citizen demand	29	4.14	58	8.37	27	5.66	11.11***	.07
Credibility of citizens	22	3.14	36	5.20	17	3.56	4.16	.04
Local impact	36	5.14	46	6.64	26	5.45	1.58	.02
Educating on duties and rights	16	2.28	30	4.33	20	4.19	5.12	.05
Contextual background information	35	4.99	41	5.92	45	9.43	9.81**	.07
Citizen question	1	0.14	2	0.29	0	0.00	1.49	N/A
Information on citizen activities	23	3.28	48	6.92	16	3.35	12.87**	.08
Support of citizen movements	6	0.87	16	2.31	4	0.84	6.79	.06
Civic (presence of at least one indicator)	140	19.97^a	206	29.73^b	130	27.25^b	18.59***	.10

Notes. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test of association at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Looking at the newspapers separately provides a different picture (Table 3). There was time-based variation in the presence of the infotainment, service, and civic role, but patterns for individual roles were inconsistent across the newspapers and they did not form consistent trends in time. Therefore, H1 was partly supported. The values of Cramér's V (0.12–0.18) indicate that the effect sizes for all of the statistically significant associations were small.

Table 3. Within-newspaper between-time-period breakdown of articles containing at least one indicator of audience-related roles.

Daily	T1 (2006–2007)	T2 (2011–2012)	T3 (2016–2017)	χ2(2)	Cramér's V
	%	%	%
Hospodářské noviny (N = 362)
Infotainment	8.94^a	11.43^ab	21.21^b	7.84*	.15
Service	28.46^a	29.29^a	28.28^a	0.04	.01
Civic	21.95^a	38.57^b	34.34^ab	8.76*	.16
Lidové noviny (N = 326)
Infotainment	27.19^a	14.39^b	27.50^a	7.63*	.15
Service	17.54^b	30.30^a	18.75^ab	6.71	.14
Civic	18.42^a	22.73^a	38.75^b	11.01*	.18
MF Dnes (N = 429)
Infotainment	32.92^a	21.56^b	16.83^b	10.09*	.15
Service	18.01^a	28.74^b	27.72^ab	5.86	.12
Civic	26.71^a	32.34^a	30.69^a	1.29	.05
Právo (N = 754)
Infotainment	16.17^a	19.29^a	18.78^a	1.05	.04
Service	17.16^a	13.78^a	18.27^a	1.91	.05
Civic	16.17^a	26.77^b	17.26^a	10.97*	.12

Notes. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test of association at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Associations Between Worsening Economic Conditions, Ownership Type, and the Presence of Infotainment, Service, and Civic Roles in News Stories

Table 4 shows a significant association between the time period and the presence of the civic role. Significant associations were also found between the ownership type and the presence of the service role, as well as the civic role. Finally, significant associations were found between the specific dailies and the presence of all three of the audience-related roles. Effect sizes for all of the associations were small.

Table 4. Bivariate relationships between the independent variables and the presence of infotainment, service and civic role in news stories.

	Infotainment role %	Service role %	Civic role %
Presence in news stories	19.3	21.8	25.4
Daily	χ2(3) = 19.11***, V = 0.10	χ2(3) = 25.63***, V = 0.12	χ2(3) = 23.68***, V = 0.11
Hospodářské noviny	13.3^c	28.7^a	31.8^a
Lidové noviny	22.1^ab	23.0^a	25.2^ab
MF Dnes	24.7^a	24.5^a	29.8^a
Právo	17.9^bc	16.3^b	20.0^b
Time period	χ^2(2) = 2.77, V = 0.04	χ^2(2) = 3.90, V = 0.05	χ^2(2) = 18.59***, V = 0.1
T1 (2006–2007)	20.5^a	19.4^a	20.0^a
T2 (2011–2012)	17.3^a	23.7^a	29.7^b
T3 (2016–2017)	20.3^a	22.4^a	27.3^b
Ownership type	χ^2(2) = 2.93, V = 0.04	χ^2(2) = 19.47***, V = 0.10	χ^2(2) = 31.15***, V = 0.13
Private	17.6^a	15.6^b	21.0^a
Corporate	20.9^a	23.3^a	23.4^a
Oligarchic	18.1^a	26.7^a	35.7^b

Notes. V = Cramér's V. Cells with different superscript letters are significantly different; cells with the same superscript are not statistically different by chi-square test ofassociation at the p < .05 level, with p-values adjusted by the false discovery rate (FDR) method for multiple comparisons (see Benjamini and Hochberg 1995).

Presence of the Infotainment Role in News Stories (Multivariate Analysis)

The infotainment role was present in 19% (N = 361) of the analysed stories. The ridge regression model (see Table 5) revealed that, when controlling for the effects of all variables simultaneously, the odds of the presence of the infotainment role in a news story did not increase with time. Therefore, H2 was not supported. Also, none of the ownership types predicted the likelihood of the infotainment role. Therefore, H5 was not supported. The likelihood for the infotainment role to be present in news stories was associated only with the specific daily—it was significantly lower for Hospodářské noviny (OR = 0.64) and Právo (OR = 0.84), as compared to MF Dnes.

Table 5. Estimates of regression coefficients of ridge logistic regression model of the presence of infotainment role.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.20	–	–	0.30
Time period [:T1]
T2	−0.15	−3.08	1.90	0.86
T3	0.01	0.17	1.68	1.01
Ownership type [:Corporate]
Private	−0.08	−1.49	1.66	0.92
Oligarchic	−0.03	−0.50	1.79	0.97
Daily [:MF Dnes]
Hospodářské noviny	−0.44***	−7.56	1.92	0.64
Lidové noviny	0.00	0.07	1.86	1.00
Právo	−0.18*	−3.78	1.60	0.84

Notes. OR = Odds ratio. Model formulation: infotainment role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.0276. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.011.

Presence of the Service Role in News Stories (Multivariate Analysis)

The service role was present in 22% (N = 407) of the analysed stories. The ridge model (see Table 6) revealed that, when controlling for the effects of all of the variables simultaneously, the likelihood for the service role to be present in a news story was associated with the ownership type and to the specific daily. The association between the time period and the likelihood that this role would be present in the news (H3) was not found. The service role was significantly more likely to be present in news stories published in newspapers with corporate (OR = 1.14) as compared to private ownership. Therefore, H6 was supported. Concerning the effect of specific newspapers, it was more likely that this role was present in news stories published in Hospodářské noviny (OR = 1.15) and less likely in Právo (OR = 0.85) as compared to MF Dnes.

Table 6. Estimates of regression coefficients for ridge logistic regression model for the presence of service role the news.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.26	–	–	0.28
Time period [:T1]
T2	0.08	1.72	1.04	1.08
T3	0.00	0.03	0.93	1.00
Ownership type [:Corporate]
Private	−0.15***	−2.97	0.86	0.86
Oligarchic	0.07	1.29	0.94	1.07
Daily [:MF Dnes]
Hospodářské noviny	0.14*	2.46	0.99	1.15
Lidové noviny	−0.00	−0.03	1.03	1.00
Právo	−0.16***	−3.35	0.83	0.85

Notes. OR = odds ratio. Model formulation: service role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.106. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.014.

Presence of the Civic Role in News Stories (Multivariate Analysis)

The civic role was present in 25% (N = 476) of the analysed stories. The ridge model (see Table 7) revealed that the likelihood for the civic role to be present in a news story was associated with the time period, the ownership type, and the specific daily. The likelihood for the civic role to be present in a news story was significantly higher for new stories published in T2 as compared to T1 (OR = 1.34), and for new stories published in newspapers owned by oligarchs as compared to privately-owned newspapers (OR = 1.48). The effect for corporate ownership was not found. Therefore, neither of hypotheses related to the presence of the civic role (H4, H7, and H8) were supported by analysed data. Finally, the likelihood that the civic role was present in a news story was significantly higher for news stories published in Hospodářské noviny (OR = 1.22) and MF Dnes (OR = 1.37), as compared to those published in Právo.

Table 7. Estimates of regression coefficients for ridge logistic regression model of the presence of civic role in news.

	B	B (scaled)	SE (scaled)	OR
Intercept	−1.39	–	–	0.25
Time period
T2	0.29***	5.97	1.72	1.34
T3	0.05	1.01	1.66	1.05
Ownership type [:Private]
Corporate	−0.58	−1.24	1.58	0.56
Oligarchic	0.39***	6.97	1.34	1.48
Daily [:Právo]
Hospodářské noviny	0.20*	3.41	1.54	1.22
Lidové noviny	0.09	1.44	1.84	1.09
MF Dnes	0.29***	5.25	1.59	1.37

Notes. OR = Odds ratio. Model formulation: civic role ∼ time period + ownership type + daily [family = binomial]. Lambda = 0.032. Pseudo R²_McF= 0.022.

Discussion

Using a country from the under-researched CEE region, the current study analysed the presence of the infotainment, service, and civic roles in news stories published in four quality Czech daily newspapers during three time periods (i.e., 2006–2007, 2011–2012, 2016–2017). It examined whether the presence of audience-related professional roles varied in time given the worsening economic conditions on the press market, and whether it was associated with ownership type—a predictor that has the strong potential to make a difference (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018), but that has not yet been examined with regards to oligarchic ownership.

Results showed that the presence of the roles varied over time in all of the analysed daily newspapers, but to a relatively small extent, and that, for some roles in some newspapers, it stayed constant. This study did not find evidence of the direct association between the worsening economic conditions in the press market and the presence of audience-related roles in the news content. Yet, it found that the ownership type was associated with the likelihood that the service and civic roles were present in a news story. The editorial policies of individual newspapers were significant determinants for the presence of audience-relate roles in news.

Time-based Variability in the Presence of Audience-related Roles in the News

In line with H1, the presence of the civic, infotainment, and service roles varied significantly across time. The variability across the three time periods was more visible when looking at the newspapers separately as compared to the whole market segment of the quality press. The analysed newspapers showed significant differences between the newspapers and the time-based variability in the performances of their audience-related roles. Pinto (2008), who analysed Argentinian mainstream news from 1985 to 2005, arrived at similar findings: the within-newspaper variability in the presence of the watchdog role was bigger as compared to the time-based variability at the level of the market segment.

While the presence of the roles within individual newspapers varied over time, the effect sizes were small and, in most cases, the presence of the roles oscillated or fluctuated rather than displaying clear linear trends. One possible explanation is that the current study analysed a time span of only 10 years and for a evident linear trend to be detected at the level of the whole segment of media market, a longer time span might be needed. On the other hand, Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui (2017), who analysed the performance of journalistic roles in Chilean news during longer time period, found that, while the presence of infotainment role had been consistently increasing over time (especially for popular press), the presence of civic role oscillated across their studied periods. Also, Pinto (2008) found that the presence of the watchdog role within some newspapers fluctuated in time.

Such time-based instability in the presence of journalistic roles in the news media may be related to various contextual factors, like the political situation (Mellado, López-Rabadán, and Elortegui 2017). The findings of the current study provide further empirical support for this claim and suggest that, for specific models of media ownership, this association may be more salient. The current study found an increase in the presence of the civic role at T2 (2011–2012) for two dailies only, which were Hospodářské noviny and Právo (Table 3), and, at the level of the individual indicators of the civic role, it found an increased presence for citizen reactions, demands, and information on citizen activities (Table 2). This pattern might have been related to the specific political situation in the Czech Republic. At that time, the austerity fiscal policies proposed by the right-wing conservative government of Petr Nečas triggered civic dissatisfaction and recurring protests, which were mainly organized by trade unions, but also other civic platforms (Guasti 2018).

One possible explanation for the increased presence of the civic role at this period, but only for two out of four analysed dallies, might be the fact that, unlike corporate owners, both private and oligarchic media owners are typically involved in civic and political activities and prefer to maximize their influence rather than profitability (Picard and van Weezel 2008). At that time, Právo was privately-owned by Zdeněk Porybný and ideologically close to the views of the Czech Social Democratic Party and the trade unions. Hospodářské noviny were owned by Zděněk Bakala, an entrepreneur and investor, who openly supported the government of Petr Nečas, including with financial donations (Štětka 2013). Therefore, the increased presence of the civic role indicators at those two dailies might have reflected the specific interests of both owners in the ongoing political situation.

Other patterns found in the data indicate that change in how newspapers approach their readership may result from the attempts made by their publisher or the editors to redefine or adjust the editorial policy to the changing conditions in the market. A book on new trends in Czech journalism, which was published in 2012, mentions “turn to service journalism” as one of the new strategies aimed to secure sales by the editors of quality dailies (Čuřík and Burgr 2012, 130). Findings of the current study support this observation because they showed a drop in the presence of the infotainment role and the increase in the presence of the service role at T2 (2011–2012) as compared to T1 (2006–2007) for the two dailies owned at that time by the same corporate owner, that is for MF Dnes and Lidové noviny. Interpretation, according to which the change in the presence of the infotainment and service roles in those two dailies resulted from the deliberate adjustment of editorial strategy to actual market conditions (i.e., decline in sales), can be further supported by the fact that the change in the presence of both roles was preceded at both newspapers (2006 at MF Dnes, and 2009 at Lidové noviny) by a change to the editor-in-chief (MediaGuru.cz 2013a; 2013b).

Effect of Worsening Economic Conditions on the Press Market on the Presence of Audience-related Roles in News Stories

In line with prior research and theory, due to worsening economic conditions, the prevalence of a market model should increase with time at the expense of public service journalism, even in the quality press segment (Mellado and Humanes 2015). However, the analysed data did not provide evidence to confirm these theoretical expectations (H2-H4) and this suggests that, within the quality press segment, both the tabloidization effect of commercial pressure and the profit orientation manifest in less straightforward ways.

At the level of the whole market segment, the presence of infotainment and service roles stayed constant across the time periods. One possible explanation for this pattern is that quality dailies may opt for the differentiation strategy identified by Patterson (2001). In responding to the competitive media environment, quality newspapers, in order to differentiate themselves from other news providers, tend to increase the volume of substantive and public service reporting at the expense of sensationalism and emotionally appealing content. The analysed data showed that, for the corporate-owned dailies MF Dnes and Lidové noviny, the presence of the infotainment role dropped while, for the privately owned Právo, it stayed constant. At the level of the individual indicators of the infotainment role, the current study observed a decrease in the presence of sensationalism, which may reflect a shift away from tabloidization (Table 2). Another pattern that substantiates the differentiation hypothesis is the increase in the odds in the presence of the civic role in news stories over time (against H4). On the other hand, the significant increase in the presence of the infotainment role in Hospodářské noviny at T3 as compared to its low presence at T1, given by the increased presence of personalization, suggests that even the elite press may opt for the infotainment role.

Another, and not necessarily alternative, explanation is the ceiling effect. For the analysed newspapers, the increase already took place in the period before T1. There is research that shows that tabloidization increased between 1995 and 2005, even for quality press titles (Trampota and Končelík 2011). For quality press, it may be the case that, even if they adopt editorial strategies that result in the increased presence of the infotainment role in the news, after reaching some threshold, its presence no longer increases. One reason is that, otherwise, they could lose some part of their high-brow audience (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018). Such concerns may lead to the preference of the differentiation strategy rather than tabloidization (Patterson 2001). It thus seems that the impact of worsening economic conditions on audience-related role performance is not straightforward and that is heterogonous across different newspapers and different segments of the media market.

Effect of Corporate and Oligarchic Ownership on the Presence of Audience-related Roles in News Stories

The current study did not find a higher likelihood for the presence of the infotainment role (against H5) neither for lower presence of the civic role (against H7) for corporate-owned newspapers. However, in line with H6, it found a higher likelihood for the service role to be present in news stories published in a corporate, as opposed to privately-owned, media outlet.

This pattern of findings corroborates the notion that the corporate-owned quality newspapers are interested in preserving or even increasing the size of their high income/high education audiences (Benson, Neff, and Hessérus 2018). In consequence, they employ profit-driven strategies that are alternatives to “infotainment at the expense of public service” and allow to preserve professional recognition (Mellado and Humanes 2015; Patterson 2001; Preston and Metyková 2009). The longitudinal design of the current study made possible to observe the shift towards the service role in the news published by the two corporate-owned newspapers (i.e., Lidové noviny and MF Dnes) and its constant low presence in privately owned Právo. Private and oligarchic owners are mostly involved in civic or public activities and they pursue profit to a lesser degree than corporate owners, so they are less motivated to redefine their editorial policy towards profit orientation (Picard and van Weezel 2008; Štětka 2015).

Concerning the effects of oligarchic ownership, the current study expected a lower (H8), but found a higher, likelihood for the civic role to be present in the news stories published in newspapers owned by oligarchs. There are at least two explanations for this specific pattern of findings.

First, the higher presence of civic role in media owned by oligarchs is a by-product of the owners’ interests in the public realm. It has already been shown that such owners prefer the coverage of substantive issues that may directly affect audiences and help in pushing their political goals (Dunaway 2008). An example for this may be a news story about a statement made by the head of the Chamber of Commerce of the Czech Republic that opposed draft regulations in a food market sector. The story depicts a citizen’s reaction to a policy proposal. Yet, at the same time, it may comply with the political agenda of the media owner or it may be a part of a campaign to promote the owner’s business goals. Due to this ambiguity, under oligarchic ownership journalism content and practices have become less transparent and comprehensible for readers (Vojtěchovská 2017). Evidence from the Czech Republic shows that, during the studied period, one could observe a decline in the trust in the press, in the perceived credibility of journalists, and in the decreasing prestige of journalism as a profession (Volek and Urbániková 2017, 93–95).

According to an alternative explanation, the higher presence of the civic role in the newspapers owned by oligarchs can be understood as resulting from working of a defensive professional mechanisms which is “based on the idea of the journalist as an independent agent of the public, whose duty is to cultivate readers’ (Volek 2010). Hájek et al. (2015) observed that changes in the ownership structure within the Czech press market were followed by “ownership turmoil”. Among Czech journalists, including those employed in news organizations owned by oligarchs, there was a shift towards higher sensitivity and a particular adherence to those normative values and professional roles that were perceived as being endangered by changes in ownership. Perhaps triggered by the journalists’ own conflicting perceptions of the “ownership turmoil”.

Obtained findings suggest that the impact of ownership changes on performance of audience-related roles in quality press is complex and far from straightforward.

Limitations

The current study has several limitations. First, future studies could extend the analysed time period and examine time-based variability in performance of journalistic role in a longer term. Second, as compared to other studies on journalistic role performance (e.g., Mellado 2021a), its findings are based on a relatively small sample size of news stories from one national market segment. This resulted in a relatively low number of newspapers in the specific categories for the explanatory variables. As a consequence, the study could not consider some potentially relevant predictors, like audience orientation (i.e., popular versus elite) or the differences between oligarchs (i.e., those who are active politicians and those who are not), nor could it consider predictors at the different levels of analysis, such as news beats, which all resulted in a relatively low proportion of variance explained by analytical models considered in this study. Future studies should collect data from a larger number of countries, perhaps from the CEE region, where the oligarchic ownership is widespread, to validate the findings of the current study on more robust samples and across a higher number of media systems. Second, due to the already mentioned limitations of analysed dataset and the resulting multicollinearity, findings of this study were based on a relatively basic statistical models. Future studies should use models that allow for the accounting of a higher number of predictors, both at multiple levels of influence as well as for the time-based variance in journalistic role performance and the associated factors. Finally, the current study focused only on audience-related roles. Future studies should address this limitation and examine the changes in performance and the time-varying predictors of the remaining dimensions of the professional roles as well.

Conclusions

Based on the analysis of data from an understudied country, the current study responded to recent calls for systematic longitudinal research on journalistic role performance (e.g., Mellado et al. 2021). It showed that the presence of audience-related roles varied over time, but to a relatively small extent, nevertheless supporting theoretical claims that the role performance in the news has a situational, fluid, and dynamic character (Mellado and van Dalen 2017). It also showed that corporate-owned quality newspapers responded to worsening economic conditions by shifting to a preference for the service role rather than the infotainment role. Overall, however, neither worsening economic conditions, nor corporate ownership, that is the two factors associated to increased profit orientation and economic instrumentalism, were found to predict increased presence of roles associated to market model (i.e., infotainment, service) or decreased presence civic role associated to public service orientation (Benson 2018). The higher likelihood for the presence of the civic role for news stories published by a daily under oligarchic ownership suggests that effects of oligarchic ownership on journalism practice may be complex and far from straightforward. Finally, the editorial policies of individual newspapers were found to be significant determinants for the presence of audience-related roles in news content.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the individuals who have contributed to the publication of this research paper. To Lenka Dědková and Lenka Waschková Císařová for invaluable guidance, support and feedback. To Tomáš Katrňák, Albert Kšiňan, Michaela Lebedíková, Martin Tancoš, Marína Urbániková, and to Jan Pochman for valuable suggestions and pieces of advice. To coders Anna Absolonová, Vojtěch Dufek, and Kristián Xaver Kirnág.

Disclosure Statement

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

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 In the case of Hospodářské noviny for three 6 months period which yielded very low number of news stories (2012, 2016, and 2017) number of constructed weeks was doubled in order to reduce imbalance between subgroups and meet assumptions of chi-square test.