Pro-active media accountability? — an Austrian perspective
Klaus Bichler (Medienhaus Wien, Austria),
Matthias Karmasin (University of Klagenfurt, Austria),
Daniela Kraus (FJUM Forum for Journalism and Media, Austria)
ABSTRACT: The article analyzes media accountability instruments in Austria and how far they are designed to allow transparent, pro-active and participative operations. Firstly, the authors will have a look at traditional media accountability instruments and examine how they act, what their deficits are and to what extent they include audiences. Secondly, web-based accountability processes will be analyzed, focusing on their participation possibilities and on the problem of reactivity. Thirdly, the state of the art and the chances of online transparency of news production will be discussed. Next to a practice check, the implementation of such tools will be discussed. The authors argue that transparency on all these levels is an important, yet undervalued principle to media accountability. The analysis will be completed with recent data from the Austrian part of a comparative study on media accountability done in the context of the EU-funded RP7-framework research project MediaAcT.