Abstract
This study examines the flexibility of journalistic role perceptions across reporting contexts and national settings within the framework of constructive journalism. Drawing on survey data from constructive journalists in Austria, Germany, and Italy, the study examines variations in the perceived importance of journalistic roles across climate and political reporting scenarios. Results indicate that constructive journalists adapt their role priorities situationally, emphasizing active and solution-oriented functions in climate reporting and more traditional, informational roles in political reporting. Cross-national comparisons revealed that Italian constructive journalists express stronger endorsement of advocacy-oriented and analytical roles, while Austrian and German constructive journalists favor market- and interventionist-oriented roles. These findings underscore role flexibility as a defining feature of journalistic professionalism and highlight the importance of national contexts and reporting scenarios in understanding constructive journalists’ role orientations.
Keywords
Introduction
Journalistic roles have been the subject of scholarly inquiry for several decades, giving rise to a wide range of conceptual and methodological frameworks (e.g., Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Raemy and Vos, 2021). Early studies primarily sought to conceptualize journalistic roles to define journalism’s function in society. Quantitative research, in particular, has contributed to a comprehensive global understanding of journalistic roles across media systems and cultures (e.g., Hanitzsch et al., 2019a).
Although journalistic roles are often understood as relatively stable constructs, they can evolve over time (Fein, 1990) and shift in response to contextual demands (Raemy and Vos, 2021). The question of how journalists adapt their role perceptions depending on the topic of coverage has received limited attention, particularly within comparative quantitative research, despite calls for systematic inquiry in this direction (Mellado et al., 2024; Raemy and Vos, 2021). Such research is crucial for understanding how journalists negotiate and adapt their roles across news topics and countries.
This paper seeks to address this gap by examining journalistic roles and their flexibility within the framework of constructive journalism, a journalistic approach that has garnered growing scholarly and professional interest in recent years, positioned between traditional journalism and more advocacy-oriented practices (Bro, 2019; Van Antwerpen et al., 2023). Existing research on constructive journalism has largely relied on case-based analyses (e.g., Hermans and Drok, 2018; Krüger et al., 2022), while comparative perspectives remain scarce (Lough and McIntyre, 2023). Little is known about how constructive journalists perceive their roles in diverse national contexts and across different topics (Kibarabara, 2023).
The goal of this study is twofold: first, to investigate role flexibility by examining how constructive journalists adapt their role perceptions when reporting on climate issues and on topics related to government and politics. Both topics are high on the agenda of many constructive journalists (Bro, 2019; Kibarabara, 2023; Krüger et al., 2022) and serve as examples of reporting scenarios (Raemy and Vos, 2021). Second, it advances comparative research on constructive journalism through a cross-national survey in three European countries: Italy, Austria, and Germany. The study explores variations in role perceptions depending on both national context and reporting scenario.
Results show that constructive journalists display clear role flexibility, emphasizing constructive, solution-oriented roles when covering climate issues, but shifting toward traditional informational roles in political reporting. Cross-nationally, Italian journalists differ from their German and Austrian counterparts, adopting more advocacy roles, while no significant differences can be found between Austrian and German journalists.
Flexibility of journalistic roles
The concept of journalistic roles has been extensively theorized and empirically examined across decades of research, originating in Cohen’s (1963) distinction between ‘neutral’ and ‘participant’ roles. Building on this foundation, subsequent scholarship has refined and expanded role conceptualizations in increasingly nuanced ways (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Weaver and Willnat, 2012).
In general terms, roles can be understood as the aggregate of norms, ideals, privileges, and duties attached to a social position. Hanitzsch and Vos (2017: 116) describe journalistic roles as “discursive constructions of journalism’s institutional identity, and as a struggle over discursive authority in conversations about the locus of journalism in society.” In this sense, roles shape journalists’ professional practices and confer legitimacy upon their work.
The tradition of examining journalistic roles has generated a substantial body of research, producing a repertoire of empirically validated roles that extend across national contexts, journalistic cultures and media systems (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a; Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Weaver and Willnat, 2012). Large-scale comparative projects, such as the Worlds of Journalism Study (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a) and the Role Performance Project (Mellado et al., 2024), have been particularly influential in demonstrating corss-national variation in role perceptions and performances across countries, media systems, thematic beats, and over time. Historically, much of this scholarship has portrayed journalistic roles as relatively stable, institutionally anchored constructs (e.g., Cohen, 1963; Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). More recent work, highlights the discursive and negotiated nature of roles, suggesting that they should not be regarded as fixed scripts but as dynamic orientations that journalists adapt to context (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). This perspective shifts the emphasis from institutionalized norms to journalists’ personal orientations that guide practice (Raemy and Vos, 2021).
Seen through this lens, journalistic roles are not static but flexible, subject to adaptation over time (Fein, 1990) or even spontaneous shifts in response to immediate circumstances (Raemy and Vos, 2021). Importantly, role flexibility extends beyond long-term structural change: roles may shift situationally, depending on the topic or reporting environment (Raemy and Vos, 2021). This situational adaptability highlights the strategic dimension of journalistic roles, rather than rigid prescriptions (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Raemy and Vos, 2021).
Despite these theoretical advances, important distinctions remain in how role flexibility has been empirically addressed. Much of existing research, including large-scale international surveys, focuses primarily on inter-individual variations, examining how role perceptions differ between journalists, organizations, or national contexts (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a; Mellado et al., 2024). Less attention has been paid to intra-individual variations, that is, how the same journalists adjust their role perceptions across different reporting situations. Existing work tends either to examine the persistence of role conceptions across countries (e.g., Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Mellado et al., 2024) or to explore how journalists negotiate roles in practice (Raemy et al., 2024; Raemy and Vos, 2021). Although this research provides valuable foundation for role research, these approaches have rarely been combined in a way that systematically captures situational role shifts within individuals across contexts and countries.
In particular, there is a lack of comparative work examining how journalistic roles may shift across reporting situations at the intra-individual level and whether different patterns emerge in different countries. Therefore, further quantitative research is needed to provide a more comprehensive understanding of role flexibility and how journalists adapt their roles in real time, thereby operationalizing role flexibility not only as system-level phenomenon, but as a situational and intra-individual dimension of professional practice (Raemy and Vos, 2021).
In this context, constructive journalism offers a relevant case for examining situational role flexibility. As an approach that reinterprets established journalistic norms while remaining anchored in professional ideals (Aitamurto and Varma, 2018), it highlights how journalists may shift role orientations depending on reporting goals and contexts.
Constructive journalism
Since the early 2010s, constructive journalism has emerged as a distinct journalistic approach, premised on supplementing problem-oriented reporting with the presentation of potential solutions in order to engage and inspire audiences (Bro, 2019). This solution-oriented focus has been particularly influential in early academic and practice-based definitions of constructive journalism (McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2017). Existing scholarship also emphasizes that constructive journalism extends beyond the mere presentation of solutions. Core elements discussed in the literature also include future orientation, inclusiveness and diversity, empowerment, contextualization and co-creation, emphasizing audience agency in news production (e.g., Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019).
Although constructive journalism often situates itself close to traditional journalistic norms it has simultaneously been criticized for its perceived proximity to advocacy and activism (Aitamurto and Varma, 2018; Bro, 2019). McIntyre's (2015) work has been particularly influential in conceptualizing constructive journalism as an approach that applies techniques from positive psychology to create more productive and engaging news stories while adhering to journalism’s core functions. At the same time, scholars emphasize that constructive journalism is rooted in older traditions such as civic, community, and citizen journalism, and should be understood as an add-on rather than a replacement of established journalistic norms (McIntyre, 2015). Notably, literature contains relatively few attempts to offer a comprehensive definition of constructive journalism, in part because the field remains theoretically and empirically emergent (From and Nørgaard Kristensen, 2018). This definitional openness contributes to a plural and evolving understanding of constructive journalism.
Existing research on constructive journalism has largely concentrated on positive psychology and inspiring narratives (e.g., McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018; Rusch et al., 2022), its implications for trust in journalism (Garusi and Leonhardt, 2024; Van Antwerpen et al., 2023), and journalistic practice (e.g., Hooffacker, 2021). More recently, scholars have begun to investigate the role conceptions of constructive journalists (e.g., van Antwerpen and Hermans, 2025). For instance, McIntyre et al. (2018) found that younger journalists particularly valued solution-oriented approaches. Similarly, Abdenour et al. (2018) found strong support for constructive reporting among local television journalists in the United States. In Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya, more interventionist and constructive orientations appear deeply embedded in journalists’ professional role models (McIntyre and Sobel Cohen, 2024). Moreover, Li and Zhao’s (2025) analysis of young people’s understanding of constructive journalism revealed that both constructive and critical-monitorial roles are considered important in crisis contexts, like COVID-19.
In Germany, several studies have examined the professional roles of constructive journalists. Semi-structured interviews with proponents of constructive journalism have documented how the concept is understood and practiced in various editorial contexts (Heinrichs, 2021). Krüger et al. (2022) identified eight constructive role dimensions among German constructive journalists, with the most prominent reflecting a focus on social cohesion, societal transformation, critical accountability, emotionally storytelling, and innovation reporting. Compared to their peers more broadly, constructive journalists in Germany place greater emphasis on holding elites accountable, fostering civic participation, and contributing to social change, a tendency interpreted as a response to negativity bias in journalism and growing detachment within German newsrooms (Krüger et al., 2022). However, to our knowledge, no empirical research has examined these dynamics in the other two countries considered in this study: Austria and Italy. Together, previous studies suggest that constructive journalism encompasses a heterogeneous set of role orientations, including both traditional journalistic roles and constructive-specific roles related to solution orientation, audience engagement, civic empowerment, and contextual, long-term reporting.
Overall, the study of constructive journalism remains fragmented, often limited to single countries (e.g., Abdenour et al., 2018; Krüger et al., 2022; McIntyre and Sobel Cohen, 2024), specific media organizations (e.g., Hermans and Drok, 2018), or single journalistic cultures (e.g., Kovacevic and Perisin, 2018). Comparative perspectives remain limited, leaving open questions about how constructive journalism varies across contexts (Lough and McIntyre, 2023).
This study seeks to address this gap by advancing comparative research on constructive journalism while also investigating the situational flexibility of journalistic roles across reporting scenarios. A quantitative approach enables systematic comparison across countries and topics, revealing variation in role adaptation (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a). By analyzing role shifts through this lens, the study contributes to understanding journalistic roles as not only institutionally embedded but also situationally contingent (Raemy and Vos, 2021). Moreover, the quantitative design enables the identification of broader structural tendencies and cross-national consistencies in role perceptions, providing empirical grounding for theorizing role flexibility as a measurable and generalizable dimension of role work (Raemy and Vos, 2021). Two research questions are posed:
Method
Case selection
To address the research questions, we administered an online survey to self-identified constructive journalists operating in three countries strategically selected: Italy, Austria, and Germany. The countries were chosen to leverage the interplay of similarities and differences, enabling an investigation of key factors shaping constructive journalists’ role perceptions and flexibility (Gerring, 2017).
To investigate the influence of the national media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004), we considered Germany and Austria, countries with similar media systems, along Italy, which differs substantially. Germany and Austria are characterized by high levels of journalistic professionalism and low political parallelism, in contrast to the Italian media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). Their similarity allows investigation of differences related to national traditions of constructive journalism and media landscape structures. Constructive journalism is seemingly more entrenched in Germany, possibly owing to institutional influences like the Bonn Institute for Constructive Journalism (Bonn Institute, 2025) and the legacy of Robert Jungk (1913–1994), an early practitioner and theorist of constructive news (Krüger, 2017). Austria’s smaller media landscape makes news organizations more susceptible to political and economic pressures (Magin and Stark, 2015), thereby making it more difficult for constructive journalists and news outlets to establish themselves (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a).
A further criterion for country selection was the presence of a sufficient number of self-identified constructive journalists to enable robust statistical analyses.
Respondent sampling
The survey targeted self-identified constructive journalists rather than applying an externally imposed definition, given the diversity of academic interpretations of constructive journalism (From and Nørgaard Kristensen, 2018). Due to the conceptual overlap between constructive and solutions journalism, the latter group was also included (Krüger, 2017, 2022). To ensure that only self-identified constructive and/or solutions journalists participated in the survey, a filter question was placed at the beginning of the survey, asking whether the type of journalism they practice, or aim to practice, can be defined as constructive and/or solution oriented. If respondents disagreed, the survey terminated.
The survey was developed in Italian and German and distributed via three country-specific public links. Because constructive journalists are difficult to sample and no census data exist, the overall population is unknown. Following the sampling strategy of quantitative studies focused on these journalists (Krüger et al., 2022) and on other types of journalists that are difficult to sample (Maares, 2025), we identified relevant outlets, associations, and journalists through online searches and personal networks, shared the survey via email and social media, and invited respondents to further disseminate the link with other potentially interested respondents. The survey was active from March to August 2025, yielding 46 responses in Italy, 64 in Austria, and 61 in Germany.
Regarding age, the samples in Austria and Germany consist, on average, of younger journalists than the national journalist population. Specifically, the average age of respondents is 35 in Austria and about 40 in Germany, compared to national averages of approximately 47 and 45, respectively (Hanusch and Josephi, 2025). In contrast, the Italian sample is, on average, older than the national population of journalists, with an average age of around 50 years versus approximately 47 (Hanusch and Josephi, 2025). Regarding gender, the distribution of respondents varies across countries but in each of them, the sample includes a higher proportion of women and a lower proportion of men compared to the national journalist population (Hanusch and Josephi, 2025). In Austria, the sample is composed of 53% female, 34% male, and 13% identifying as other. The Italian sample includes 61% female and 39% male, with no respondents identifying as other. In Germany, 50% of respondents are female, 28% male, and 22% other.
Since no data are available on the overall population of self-identified constructive journalists in Italy, Austria, and Germany, we cannot claim to have reached representative samples. Relatedly, we cannot assert that every self-identified constructive journalist had the opportunity to participate. In fact, our sampling strategy favors those actors who have an online presence and are in contact like-minded colleagues or organizations (Krüger et al., 2022; Maares, 2025). Nevertheless, after consulting several people with in-depth knowledge of the constructive journalism landscape in the countries under study, we believe that we were able to reach at least the core of the relevant professional milieu. The survey links were disseminated through well-established newsletters and networks focused on constructive and solutions-oriented journalism. In addition, we secured the collaboration of several prominent constructive and solutions-oriented news outlets in the respective countries, which shared the survey link directly with their journalists (see Krüger et al., 2022, for this approach).
Measures and analytical strategy
Respondents were asked to evaluate the importance of the same set of roles, from 1 (Not at all important) to 5 (Extremely important), in two different scenarios: when covering climate issues and when covering topics related to government and politics. These two scenarios were selected because they are central to the agenda of many constructive journalists worldwide (e.g., Bro, 2019; Kibarabara, 2023; Schäfer et al., 2022). While partly overlapping, since climate issues might be part of government agendas, the (constructive) reporting of these two has shown distinctive characteristics that make a comparison meaningful (Kibarabara, 2023). For instance, climate issues are seen in the context of constructive journalism as a pressing crisis that needs to be addressed by showing the public how to constructively handle it, besides raising awareness among political actors (e.g., Djerf-Pierre and Ekström, 2025; Schäfer et al., 2022).
The two scenarios were introduced to respondents as follows: “We will describe two scenarios that you may have already encountered: The first scenario concerns the production of information on climate issues. When you cover those issues, how important is it to you:”, followed by the battery of role perception items. Afterwards, to introduce the second scenario, the following appeared: “The second scenario concerns the production of information on the government and politics. When dealing with those issues, how important is it for you:”, followed by the same battery of items. Since not all constructive journalists deal with those topics, there was also the response category “Does not apply”.
Regarding the battery of items on role perceptions, from the Worlds of Journalism study, we derived the role items of Detached Observer, Analyst, Informer, Missionary, Watchdog, Entertainer, Marketer, Collaborator, Interventionist, and Community Advocate (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a; Riedl and Eberl, 2020), and added roles from lifestyle journalism (Lifecoach) (Hanusch, 2019) and constructive journalism (Encourager, Solutions Provider, Longterm Reporter) (Krüger et al., 2022). 1 This approach captures a diversity of roles exhibited by constructive journalists (e.g., Krüger, 2017).
To address RQ1, due to the non-normal distribution of variables (skewness and kurtosis joint tests for normality: p < 0.05), we performed a Friedman test to assess which roles are considered most important by respondents in the two reporting scenarios. In addition, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests examined whether there are differences in the importance assigned to the same role across the two scenarios. To answer RQ2, Kruskal–Wallis and post-hoc Dunn’s tests for significant results were conducted to explore differences in perceived importance of roles across the three countries under study.
Results
Comparing role perceptions across scenarios
To examine whether constructive journalists’ role perceptions vary between coverage of climate issues and government and political topics, we first conducted Friedman tests on the 14 professional role items considered, separately for each reporting scenario. For both the climate coverage (χ2 = 518.42, p < .001) and the political scenario (χ2 = 576.95, p < .001), the tests are statistically significant, indicating that respondents assign different levels of importance to the various roles.
In the climate scenario, journalists most strongly identify with the Encourager (MR = 11.43) and Solutions Provider (MR = 10.96) roles. This suggests that climate reporting is perceived as a space for inspiration, motivation, and problem-solving, where journalists see their role as encouraging audiences and highlighting possible solutions. The lowest mean ranks were assigned to the Collaborator (MR = 1.84) and Detached Observer (MR = 4.69), roles traditionally associated with alignment with institutional or governmental agendas and with journalistic neutrality, respectively.
Friedman test: Mean ranks: Roles.
Friedman test: Mean ranks: Roles.
Wilcoxon test: Roles (politics vs climate reporting).
a(r = ∣z∣/√N).
The most pronounced differences is observed for Solutions Provider (Z = −6.78, p < .001, r = 0.67) and Encourager (Z = −6.49, p < .001, r = 0.64), which are more strongly endorsed in climate reporting. These large effects demonstrate that climate reporting is perceived to require active, future-oriented, and community-engaging roles. On the other hand, Community Advocate (Z = 6.06, p < .001, r = 0.60) shows a strong effect with a higher prominence in political reporting. Moderate effects were also found for Informer (Z = 5.88, p < .001, r = 0.58), Longterm Reporter (Z = 5.81, p < .001, r = 0.57), and Detached Observer (Z = 5.68, p < .001, r = 0.56), which gained relatively greater importance in political reporting. Smaller, though still significant, effects emerged for the Lifecoach (Z = −2.64, p = .008, r = 0.26) and Marketer (Z = −2.01, p = .044, r = 0.20) roles. These patterns highlight that topic-specific contexts activate different professional role repertoires. Climate coverage tends to elicit constructive and motivational orientations, whereas political coverage reinforces informational roles rooted in the institutional tradition of journalistic objectivity.
Comparing role perceptions across countries
Means by country.
Kruskil Wallis test: Roles in climate reporting.
Dunn’s Posthoc test for country comparisons (climate reporting).
Kruskil Wallis test: Roles in political reporting.
Dunn’s Posthoc test for country comparisons (political reporting).
Significant cross-national differences were observed for several journalistic roles in the climate scenario. Specifically, variation emerged for the Detached Observer role, H(2) = 28.41, p < .001, the Informer role, H(2) = 16.38, p < .001, and the Missionary role, H(2) = 10.68, p < .001. Significant differences were also identified for the Marketer role, H(2) = 9.28, p = .010, the Interventionist role, H(2) = 15.45, p < .001, and the Community Advocate role, H(2) = 26.74, p < .001. Finally, the Encourager role varied significantly between countries, H(2) = 19.59, p = .046, as did the Longterm Reporter role, H(2) = 16.10, p < .001.
Pairwise comparisons using Dunn’s post hoc tests with Bonferroni correction revealed consistent cross-national patterns. Overall, Italian constructive journalists scored significantly higher than their German and Austrian counterparts across many professional roles, while Germany and Austria don’t differ from each other (p > .05).
Regarding climate coverage, Italian constructive journalists scored higher than Austrian and Germans for the Detached Observer role. This pattern was echoed in the Informer role, where Germany and Austria both differ significantly from Italy. Italian constructive journalists also express stronger endorsement of the Missionary role than Germans (Z = 4.45, p < .001) and Austrians (Z = −3.61, p = .001). However, Italian constructive journalists rate the Interventionist role as of lower importance than Germans (Z = −3.81, p < .001) and Austrians (Z = 3.81, p < .001) in the context of climate reporting. Italians also rate the Marketer role lower than German constructive journalists (Z = −2.96, p = .009) and Austrian ones (Z = 2.48, p = .04). Distinct patterns emerge for community-oriented roles: Italians scored higher than Germans for Community Advocate (Z = 4.79, p < .001) and Austrians (Z = −4.59, p < .001). A similar gradient appeared for the Long-term Reporter role, with Italian constructive journalists again scoring higher than German (Z = 3.55, p = .001) and Austrian (Z = −3.75, p = .001) ones. German and Austrian constructive journalists score similarly across roles, and show no significant differences.
In the political scenario, further significant cross-national variation was observed for several roles. Differences emerge for the Detached Observer role, H(2) = 26.21, p < .001, the Analyst role, H(2) = 10.37, p = .006, the Missionary role, H(2) = 16.68, p < .001, and the Marketer role, H(2) = 14.09, p = .004. The Watchdog role also differ significantly between countries, H(2) = 6.98, p = .031, as does the Collaborator role, H(2) = 6.03, p = .049, the Interventionist role, H(2) = 14.87, p < .001, the New Solutions Provider role, H(2) = 23.28, p < .001, and the Encourager role, H(2) = 19.59, p < .001.
Pairwise comparisons revealed clear national patterns in how constructive journalists perceive their professional roles. Overall, Italian constructive journalists tend to emphasize both traditional and constructive roles more strongly than their German and Austrian counterparts, while Germany and Austria show again no significant differences (p > .05).
Italian constructive journalists place greater importance on more detached and analytical functions, scoring higher for the Detached Observer than Germans (Z = 4.92, p < .001) and Austrians (Z = −4.28, p < .001) as well as for the Analyst role (Italy–Germany: Z = 2.98, p = .009; Austria–Italy: Z = −2.89, p = .012). Italians also show stronger identification with socially engaged roles such as the Missionary role (Italy–Germany: Z = 3.94, p < .001; Austria–Italy Z = −3.39, p = .002). As in the case of climate reporting, the role of Marketer is more prominent in Austria and Germany (Italy–Germany: Z = −3.66, p = .001; Austria-Italy: Z = 3.02, p = .007) in the context of government and politics coverage, suggesting a greater orientation toward audience connection.
For the Solutions Provider and Encourager roles, Italian constructive journalists again score higher than Germans (Solutions Provider, Z = 4.40, p < .001; Encourager, Z = 4.32, p < .001), while Austrian constructive journalists scored lower on both (Solutions Provider, Z = −4.40, p < .001; Encourager, Z = −3.59, p = .001). These results suggest that German and Austrian constructive journalists lean more toward audience-oriented conceptions of their work, whereas Italians favor participatory and mission-driven, and combine them with analytical and detached professional identities. No significant differences are again found between Austria and Germany.
Discussion
The findings substantiate the notion that journalistic roles are situationally contingent rather than fixed (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Raemy et al., 2024). Consistent with prior research, they highlight the fluid and dynamic nature of role conceptions, showing that journalists adapt their professional orientations to the perceived demands and normative expectations of specific reporting contexts (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018; Raemy and Vos, 2021). This reflects functional flexibility, whereby journalists recalibrate their normative stance depending on the topic.
Regarding RQ1, the scenario-based analyses reveal high role flexibility among constructive journalists when reporting on climate versus political issues. Climate reporting encourages more constructive and participatory orientations, emphasizing engagement, empowerment, and solutions, while de-emphasizing collaborative and detached roles. Roles such as Solutions Provider and Encourager were strongly endorsed, aligning with constructive journalism’s focus on societal problem-solving (Aitamurto and Varma, 2018; Bro, 2019). Conversely, political reporting was anchored more firmly in informational and watchdog functions, paired with constructive ideas like Longterm Reporter (Krüger, 2017), while placing relatively lower relevance on entertainment and the constructive roles of Solutions Provider and Encourager. This pattern likely reflects concerns of partisanship, leading journalists to reaffirm norms of factuality and critical distance (Thier and Namkoong, 2023). Constructiveness thus coexists with traditional ideals depending on context, challenging assumptions that constructive journalists reject detachment altogether (Krüger et al., 2022). The strong endorsement of Longterm Reporter in political reporting indicates greater temporal depth than traditionally associated with political journalism (Vincent and Heider, 2022), emphasizing a forward-looking lens (Bro, 2019).
Regarding RQ2, results reveal that national context significantly shapes how constructive journalists conceptualize their roles. Across both scenarios, constructive journalists from Italy, Germany, and Austria display distinct orientations that reflect and sometimes contradict their respective media system logics (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). German and Austrian constructive journalists exhibit similar role conceptions, consistent with broader professional patterns in these countries, despite structural differences that might influence how constructive journalism is perceived. In both climate and political reporting, they assign greater importance to Marketer and Interventionist roles than Italian ones, expressing constructiveness through stronger stance-taking, contrary to classic Democratic Corporatist assumptions (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). This also points to climate reporting that is both “scientifically informed and politically empowering” (Hackett, 2017: 7), emphasizing its informative and interventionist nature (Aitamurto and Varma, 2018).
By contrast, Italian journalists display a mix of advocacy-driven and interpretive styles alongside elements of detached reporting. They assign greater importance to the roles of Detached Observer, Missionary, Community Advocate, and Longterm Reporter, reflecting a model combining moral expressiveness, typical of constructive journalism (Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019), with traits of the Polarized Pluralist media system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004). The simultaneous emphasis on Detached Observer, though seemingly contradictory, reflects a peculiarity of the Italian journalistic landscape. Journalists opposing mainstream practices, like data journalists or those specializing in covering migration (Garusi et al., 2022), invoke objectivity to signal quality while still advocating their viewpoints. This duality illustrates the broader tension between professional journalism and its hybridization with emerging forms of practice (Mellado et al., 2024).
Taken together, these findings underscore that constructive journalism is not a universal journalistic movement or practice, but a contextual reinterpretation of existing role conceptions that both align and diverge from national journalistic cultures. Journalists incorporate constructive ideals, such as solution orientation, audience empowerment, and contextualization (Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019), through their own normative and institutional frameworks.
While differences emerge between countries and topics, notable similarities also appear. Overall, the consistently high relevance of the Watchdog, Informer, and Analyst roles suggests constructive journalism is widely understood through critical observation, analytical reporting, and public enlightenment grounded in factual accuracy, highlighting parallels to investigative journalism (Weaver and Willnat, 2012).
Moreover, constructive journalists largely align with broader national patterns of journalistic role conceptions, pointing to embeddedness (Vos and Hanusch, 2024) within their journalistic cultures. Despite situational differences, constructive journalists share a similar understanding of journalism’s societal role with their peers (Vos and Hanusch, 2024). These similarities reflect structural and historical continuities in journalism’s institutional functions, particularly those related to political life and civil society (Hanitzsch et al., 2019a; Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017).
Cross-national and cross-scenario variations highlight the interplay between situational flexibility and cultural influences. While journalists emphasize different roles across contexts, this flexibility operates within normative boundaries of their media systems (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017). Flexibility, therefore, is not arbitrary, it takes culturally specific forms, expressed through engagement-oriented practices in some contexts and informative modes in others.
This finding contributes to scholarship viewing journalistic roles as discursively and dynamically negotiated, rather than static scripts (Raemy and Vos, 2021). It also refines understandings of roles by showing that flexibility may be structured and normative, reflecting situational demands and culturally embedded values (Raemy et al., 2024; Raemy and Vos, 2021). Constructive journalism thus serves as a revealing site for studying role flexibility, demonstrating how journalists reconcile traditional ideals of truth-telling and objectivity with context-specific imperatives of engagement and social responsibility (Krüger et al., 2022).
Conclusion
The present study aimed to explore how journalists’ role perceptions vary across different reporting contexts and national settings. Building on the framework of role flexibility (Raemy and Vos, 2021), the analysis examined whether journalists’ self-perceptions shift according to contextual demands, specifically when covering climate versus political issues, and whether these shifts differ across countries and journalistic cultures. The findings contribute to research demonstrating that journalistic roles are not static institutional constructs but dynamic, contextually adaptive orientations that respond to both situational and cultural influences (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Raemy and Vos, 2021).
Taken together, the findings offer three core insights into journalistic role flexibility in the context of constructive journalism. First, constructive journalists demonstrate a high degree of role flexibility. The analyses revealed that journalists’ role priorities shift between reporting contexts. When reporting on climate issues, journalists tended to emphasize more active, solution-oriented roles such as Encourager or Solutions Provider, while in political reporting, they prioritized more traditional, informational functions such as Informer or Watchdog, supplemented by the Longterm Reporter role. This pattern reflects domain-specific expectations: climate reporting invites future-oriented, problem-solving approaches aligned with constructive journalism’s ethos (Bro, 2019; Hermans and Gyldensted, 2019), whereas political reporting foregrounds accountability and scrutiny (Harcup and O’Neill, 2017). Thus, flexibility is guided by perceived professional boundaries, empirically confirming that roles adjust to normative demands of specific issues (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Mellado et al., 2024).
Second, constructive journalism is not a homogeneous model, but a culturally embedded practice. Cross-national analyses revealed consistent differences: Italian journalists scored higher on advocacy-oriented roles, as well as roles directed at analysis and detached reporting, while German and Austrian journalists showed greater emphasis on marketing and interventionist roles. The strong similarities between Germany and Austria suggest shared cultural and institutional foundations, whereas Italy’s Polarized Pluralist model promotes a more advocacy-oriented, civically expressive adaptation of constructiveness (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Hanitzsch, Seethaler, and Wyss, 2019b). These differences underscore that constructive journalism must be understood within national media cultures and professional norms (Krüger et al., 2022).
Third, these findings highlight role flexibility as a defining feature of journalistic identity (Raemy and Vos, 2021). By demonstrating that constructive journalists adjust their self-understanding across contexts, the study conceptualizes roles as fluid normative configurations, continuously reinterpreted in relation to context, and institutional constraints (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2017; Raemy and Vos, 2021).
Future research should examine factors that enable or limit this adaptive capacity, including organizational structures and newsroom routines. Mixed-methods and comparative approaches would help capture how role perceptions translate into actual practices, and extending research beyond Europe could further illuminate cultural diversity in role flexibility.
Beyond the use of self-reported data and the geographically limited sample, the study’s sampling strategy warrants more detailed reflection. Constructive journalism is not a formally bounded category, making it inherently difficult to delineate who counts as a ‘constructive journalist’. In this context, self-identification is not merely a sampling constraint but a constitutive feature of the phenomenon under study. Journalists who adopt the label of constructive journalist do so as part of ongoing professional debates about journalistic purpose, norms, and societal roles. By focusing on journalists who self-identify as constructive journalists, the sample captures a subgroup for whom constructive role orientations are particularly salient at the level of professional self-understanding. This makes the approach well suited for examining situational variation and context-sensitive role flexibility within this professional subset. In this sense, the sampling strategy reflects a broader methodological challenge in journalism studies: accessing and delineating professional groups in a field characterized by fluid boundaries (Carlson, 2016).
In addition, the relatively small number of respondents per country limits the statistical power of the cross-national analyses. It implies that some potentially meaningful country differences may not have been detected. Consequently, non-significant differences across countries should be interpreted cautiously. Despite these limitations, the study contributes by offering empirical support for context-sensitive role flexibility as a key feature role work (Raemy and Vos, 2021).
Ultimately, this study underscores that journalism is governed not by fixed scripts but by continual role negotiation that responds to shifting societal expectations, issue contexts, and media cultures (Raemy and Vos, 2021). Constructive journalism exemplifies this adaptive process: redefining professional purpose through engagement, empathy, and solution orientation (McIntyre and Gyldensted, 2018). These findings highlight the value of comparative approaches to studying constructive journalism and the flexibility of journalistic roles.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical considerations
The ethical and data protection aspects of the study were reviewed in advance by the institutional Research Board (IRB) of the University of Vienna.
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.