Constructive Journalism Across Borders: Investigating Constructive Journalistic Subcultures in Europe

This study conceptualizes constructive journalism as a distinct journalistic subculture. While prior research has mainly addressed journalism at the national level, this study explores subcultural differentiation through a cross-national survey of constructive journalists in Austria, Germany, and Italy. It examines their orientations toward ethics, epistemologies, and professional roles to identify both shared and context-specific cultural patterns. The findings reveal that constructive journalists share a common interpretive epistemology and endorse core ideals, while differing in ethical reasoning and role conceptions across national contexts. These results suggest that constructive journalism constitutes a hybrid subculture that blends traditional professional norms with emerging constructive values and roles. The research advances comparative scholarship on journalistic subcultures and offers new insights into the evolving dynamics of constructive journalism in Europe.