• Rural Digital Europe
• Publications close
• Social Science Open Access Reposito... close

This article argues that the growing variety of new journalistic organizations and their diversification beyond the traditional newsroom may offer a deeper and broader understanding of change and innovation within journalism. Newly emerging organizations play a multifaceted role in journalism: They are both drivers and results of change; they serve as indicators of the ways in which the structures of journalism and its production processes are evolving; they reveal industry trends early on and enable longitudinal research. Despite the emergence of non-traditional organizations in journalism, existing studies on these new entities remain fragmented and have yet to coalesce into a sustained research program. Against this background, this conceptual article aims to contribute to the ongoing theoretical progress in journalism studies in three ways. First, it identifies key factors of why organizational innovations happen. Second, it systemizes recent studies exemplifying the plurality of new organizations in journalism according to different levels from organization studies, including the field level, the level of organizational populations, and the level of the single organization. Finally, the article proposes a research agenda for establishing “organizations as innovations” as a novel conceptual lens for understanding change and innovation in journalism studies.

Digitalization is engendering profound societal transformation that is significantly restructuring our working lives. For society, and the world of work in particular, digitalization presents a major challenge, as the digital transformation of work does not simply relate to technological innovation; rather, it involves a complex sociotechnical process that is socially prepared, technically enabled, and discursively negotiated, and that ultimately must be individually mastered. As a result, the ongoing digitalization of “working worlds” is characterized by multiple dimensions and processes that evolve and proceed unevenly. These processes interact in complex ways, not uncommonly contradicting each other. Against this background, this thematic issue explores some of the implications and dynamics of the digital transformation of work concerning social inclusion.

Digitalisation has a wide range of impacts on the workplace, such as enabling new work models with flexible work schedules, changing work content, or increasing workplace control. These changes directly affect not only individuals’ work but also their private lives. Scholars theorise that digitalisation either enables or impedes workers’ ability to maximise their work–life balance, which in turn fosters or inhibits the social inclusion of some societal groups and reduces or reproduces social inequalities. Focusing on the German healthcare sector, I explore the impact of using networked digital technologies on work–life balance, and whether it influences gender and educational inequalities. Pressured by government, economic concerns, and medical innovation, this sector is undergoing a transformation process that is expediting the introduction of new networked digital technologies. Thus, it provides an ideal setting for empirical investigation, as one core assumption about digitalisation is that technological innovation at work has societal consequences that must be individually mastered. To assess the relationship between digitalisation and work–life balance, I use survey data from hospital employees on the use of networked digital technologies and individual outcomes. The research is designed as a natural experiment. The treatment group comprises employees at a university hospital equipped with cutting‐edge networked digital technologies (N = 1,117); the control group comprises employees at several church‐owned hospitals (N = 415) with a level of digitalisation corresponding to the average for the sector. I first discuss confounders and then employ quantitative methods to establish a link between digitalisation and work–life balance, assess its direction, and address gender and educational inequalities.

The spread of digital communication in the employee–supervisor exchange relation has increased the risks of blurred boundaries between life domains and, subsequently, the need for work–life supportive supervisor behaviors (WLSSB). However, media richness and social presence theory indicate that WLSSB is simultaneously at risk because close bonds with supervisors are more difficult to develop and challenges in integrating work and personal life are more difficult to be signaled and understood. Following social network theory in the argument that it is not only the characteristic of the medium that is of importance but also the social embeddedness of its use, this research asks to what extent the association of digital communication with one’s supervisor and perceived WLSSB is context‐dependent. The overall results based on the European Social Survey (round 10) reveal that in‐person communication is more strongly associated with WLSSB than digital communication. However, more nuanced investigations suggest that this is not necessarily driven by the richness of the mode of communication. We find that the meaning of digital communication with one’s supervisor gains importance in size and significance (a) where it complements seldom in‐person communication, (b) where the organizational norm of high work devotion is weak, and (c) where work–life supportive state policies are pronounced. We conclude that the implications of digital communication for WLSSB are dependent on the centrality of digital communication in opportunities for the exchange of WLSSB and dependent on supervisors’ interest and agency to enact WLSSB in digital work communication.

Primary health services are subjected to intensified digitalisation to transform care provision. Various smart and assistive technologies are introduced to support the growing elderly population and enhance the opportunities for independent living among patients in need of continuous care. Research has shown how such digitalisation processes evolve at the intersection of different and often competing discourses, oriented towards service efficiency, cost containment, technological innovation, client‐centred care, and digital competence development. Often, increased technology use is presented as a solution to pressing problems. However, how discourses are negotiated in work contexts and their mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion in evolving work practices have received less attention. This article examines how care workers in the primary health sector are discursively positioned when care technologies are introduced in the services. We employ a perspective on discourses and subject positions in analysing strategic documents and interviews with care workers in a large Norwegian city. We show how managerial discourses that focus narrowly on the implementation and mastery of single technologies provide limited spaces for workers to exert influence on their work situations, while discourses that emphasise professional knowledge or broader technological and organisational aspects provide a variety of resources for workers’ agency. The way care workers adopt and negotiate subject positions varies based on their tasks and responsibilities in the organisation. We discuss the need to move beyond “solutionism” in efforts to digitalise care work in order to provide inclusive spaces supporting the contributions of various worker groups.

Wie steht es um den Staat im »digitalen Zeitalter«? Der Wandel des Staates in der Leistungsdimension und der Staatlichkeit in der Steuerungsdimension ist eher die Regel als eine Ausnahme. Für die 1990er-Jahre wurde er mit dem Modellwechsel vom »intervenierenden Leistungsstaat« zum »kooperativen Gewährleistungsstaat« als Transformation beschrieben. Im Angesicht der »Digitalisierung« und weiterer Megatrends zeigen sich die nächsten tiefgreifenden Wandlungsprozesse. Samuel Greef beleuchtet den neuen Mix aus Steuerungsformen und -instrumenten sowie eine hybridere Leistungserbringung, welche die Gestalt des Staates in unterschiedlichen Politikfeldern prägen. Sein Fazit: Deutschland befindet sich heute auf dem Weg zum »kontingenten Patchworkstaat«.

The Covid‐19 pandemic caused a digitalization boost, mainly through the rise of telework. Even before the pandemic, advancing digital transformation restructured the way of working and thereby changed the quality of jobs—albeit at a different pace across occupations. With data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), we examine how job quality and the use of digital technologies changed during the first pandemic year in different occupations. Building on this, we analyze change score models to investigate how increased workplace digitalization connects to changes in selected aspects of employees’ subjective job quality. We find only a weak association between the digitalization boost in different occupational fields and the overall decrease in subjective job quality. However, telework—as one aspect of digitalization—is connected to a smaller decrease in work–family reconciliation and conformable working hours. Thus, it may buffer some detrimental pandemic effects on job quality. In addition, telework is connected to increased information overload, creating a new burden for specific employee groups.

This article is about those who need or want to make a living from working on online platforms. Moreover, questions of financial dependence are related to why this work is done and what social recognition the workers expect from it. Our mixed‐methods approach captures this heterogeneous field of online platform work by dividing it into three categories: (a) microwork, (b) mesowork, and (c) macrowork. Microwork involves offering short, repetitive tasks to an anonymous crowd, such as human intelligence tasks. Macrowork consists of market‐based freelance platforms offering highly skilled professionals complex and more extensive tasks. In between, mesowork covers platforms offering specialized tasks such as software testing or content creation. While income opportunities and working conditions vary widely between these platforms, common features include self‐employment and the ability to work from anywhere. Quantitative results show that only for a few highly skilled workers does income from platform work account for a crucial share of their household income. Surprisingly, workers’ household incomes do not differ by skill level. Qualitative results complement this picture by giving us a more contextual understanding of the significant variation among workers. We find cases in which monetary remuneration is not the only reason for doing platform work. So, despite all the criticism of precarious working conditions, platform work does have some positive aspects and can also hold the potential for the social inclusion of people who cannot participate in traditional labor markets. This article contributes to these discussions by providing workers’ perspectives on the risks and challenges of online platform work, acknowledging their different living situations, socioeconomic status, and health issues.