Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies

Vol. 2, No. 2, 2013, pp. 231-244

DOI: 10.1386/ajms.2.2.231_1

Teaching journalistic research skills

in the digital age: Between traditional
routines and advanced tools
Els Diekerhof, School of Journalism, Utrecht
University of Applied Sciences

The content of most journalism courses at journalism schools has been affected by the fast
digital and interactive developments in the field. The changing digital organization of infor-
mation and sources necessitates constant changes in news-gathering and research techniques
and affects education in research skills. How can educators cope with the new demands
concerning information gathering and selecting? Journalism students need to know how to use
the newest research tools, how to find quick and reliable information and data on the Internet
and how to best utilize social media for their journalistic research. Which research skills need
to be taught to journalism students in this digital age? This article attempts to map the salient
issues concerning changes in the syllabi of research skills courses by analysing scholarly litera-
ture, blogs and books by professional journalists and experiences at the – author’s – School of
Journalism in Utrecht (the Netherlands) with the implementation of newly designed research
courses. It is argued that digital developments have caused a shift from the information-
gathering stage to the selecting stage of the research process in journalism. This implies more
emphasis on evaluating and selecting skills in journalism education. New digital tools also
require different research skills such as more language skills for more efficient search strategies.
New digital sources, such as open data and the public on social media, call for more analyti-
cal skills and specific social skills to be added to the customary research skills.

Keywords: journalism education; research skills; information gathering; course development;

online research; journalism schools

ISSN 2001-0818 © 2013 Intellect Ltd

232    E. Diekerhof

Introduction
Journalism schools are challenged to adjust their programmes to the fast transformation
of journalism. Many journalism schools have recently altered and updated the curriculum.
The focus of this article is the consequences of the digital developments upon research
skills in journalism education. It grew out of the author’s involvement in the development
and updating of research skills at the Utrecht School of Journalism in the Netherlands.
Which research skills need to be taught to journalism students in this digital age is the question
of the Utrecht project (2012) and it is also the central question of this article.
Journalism is in a process of fundamental changes. New media technologies have
been transforming journalistic practice (e.g. Witschge 2013). The news production
process as well as research practices have changed. Most journalists, scholars and jour-
nalism educators seem to focus on new developments in journalistic production and
new media outputs, such as cross-media productions, publishing on social media, user-
generated content, participation of the public, new business models, etc., while less
attention seems to be given to changes in journalistic information gathering. However,
over the last decades, the journalistic research process has also changed enormously,
and since half of the working time of journalists consists of research activities (Machill
and Beiler 2009) journalism educators have to rethink teaching research skills.
Obviously, journalistic information-gathering routines have changed because of the
Internet and social media. The Internet as an interactive platform for information has
changed both speed and scale of news and information gathering in journalism. Most
information is now ‘space-based’ instead of ‘place-based’ (Heinrich 2013) and there-
fore easy and swift to access. New technology has brought a multiplicity of sources, as
well as search engines. The journalistic research process heavily suffers from ‘Google-
ization’ (Machill and Beiler 2009). Social media offer opportunities for new verifica-
tion practices (Hermida 2012; Phillips 2013) and new sources.
This article explores the challenges of teaching information-gathering skills to jour-
nalism students in a digital era. It explores the digital developments in journalism
practice with regard to the journalistic research process and attempts to overlook their
implications for the journalism curriculum. A mixed method has been used to exam-
ine which skills need to be taught. Experiences of other journalism educators in the
field and written recommendations by journalists to change and/or improve research
skills have been collected. Course descriptions of Utrecht’s J-school and material from
other J-schools were analysed with respect to research skills and research learning goals,
fellow educators were interviewed, and the author’s own observations and significant
experience in skills classes and with journalism students were also used. Although an
attempt is made to map all the important issues with regard to teaching research skills,
this article is more of an exploration than a complete study.

Two concerns and a misunderstanding

Two concerns dominate the deliberations about the changing research routines in
journalism. In journalism practice and at journalism schools, the two concerns are:
‘How to cope with the on-going extension of online tools’ and ‘How to know what’s
 Teaching journalistic research skills in the digital age   233

true in the age of information overload’ (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2010). Before discuss-
ing the particular implications of the digital developments on the education of news-
gathering and selecting skills, both concerns need to be addressed.
The ever-expanding list of new digital tools is a problem facing journalism and
journalism education today. There is less debate on the necessity for teaching journal-
ism students some of these new online practical tools, to bridge this so-called ‘skills
gap’ (Bradshaw 2012a; Hirst and Treadwell 2011). In fact, it is not a skills gap. It is
a gap between the available new digital tools and the present tools in the journalistic
research toolbox. However, simply adding more tools to the syllabus to close ‘the gap’
avoids rethinking professional qualifications and underlines the ‘tyranny of technology’
(Witschge 2012) in journalism. It raises also, on the level of the mission of journalism
schools, the much debated question whether educators should follow the demands of
the media industry and journalism practice or have an independent, innovative, role
(Reese and Cohen 2000; Deuze 2006; Greenberg 2007; Hirst 2010). That journalists
and journalists-to-be need the appropriate digital skills to find relevant information
and sources and that most journalist and journalism students lack those skills is a
shared concern. However, most journalists, excluding web journalists, say that these
skills are important as long as the tools used are subordinate to principles of newsgath-
ering (d’Haenens et al. 2013).
The second concern relates to the increasing complications with the reliability and
accuracy of information from the Internet (Bradshaw 2011; Cassidy 2007; Drok 2013;
Fortunati et al. 2009; Keen 2007; Kovach and Rosenstiel 2010; Phillips 2013). On the
Internet and the social media, the line between truth and fiction is not always easy to
determine. Non-experts, even sock puppets, publish inaccurate and unreliable infor-
mation on websites, wikis and blogs. Rumours and other misinformation can easily
go ‘viral’ and are sometimes difficult to retract. To find out the reliability of an online
source has become more imperative and more complicated. Traditionally, to judge the
reliability of sources has been a crucial duty of the professional journalist’s truth-seeking
mission and key activity in the research process. Verifying facts and sources is a core
skill of the journalist as an objective reporter (e.g. Harcup 2004). The digitalization has
augmented the significance, and the concern of the evaluation of the reliability.
Journalism educators have assumed the initial level of digital skills of the new generation
of students to be high, as they are ‘digital natives’ and as they seem ‘to live online’ (Deuze
2012a,). This is a misunderstanding. Technological comfort is mistaken for online expertise
(Slocum 2007). Online information gathering and systematic, efficient, reliable, relevant
and accurate information and newsgathering for a journalistic story demand different skills.
In addition, this digital generation of students may be fast Googlers; however, most students
lack skills in evaluating the online material they find (Hartgittai and Hinnant 2008).

Teaching journalistic research skills

Defining and describing ‘journalistic research’ is complicated, since this is strongly
dependent on context. Dependent on national traditions in news production, reporters
see journalistic research as either a key task of reporters or a general activity of all
234    E. Diekerhof

journalists. For example, the divide between gatherer and processor is fundamental
in British journalism (Tunstall 1971: 41), but in the Netherlands (Deuze 2002: 72)
and Germany (Haller 2004: 25) job tasks are less strictly divided. To keep away from
confusion of tongues, this article does not define journalistic research and journalis-
tic research skills with regard to reporting, but relates to ‘information gathering’ in
general and to journalism education.
In journalism practice, ‘information gathering’ includes assessing reliability and
relevance of information and also selecting sources. For experienced journalists, it is
routine to combine gathering, evaluating and selecting of information: most selection
takes place while gathering. For journalism students, this is a complex routine. Selecting
sources – on the basis of evaluation of, in particular, relevance and reliability  – is a
separate skill. Therefore, in the context of journalism education, ‘journalistic research’
is different from ‘information gathering’, because ‘gathering’ and ‘selecting’ are distinct
activities that require different skills. So, ‘journalistic research skills’ in the context of
journalism education can be defined as the skills journalists and journalism students
need for professional performance of all activities that concern the gathering and selecting
of sources and information for the production of news and other journalistic stories.
To specify skills to be taught, professional educators usually take ‘competence goals’
and corresponding ‘learning goals’ as the point of departure. All journalism schools
have their own competence goal descriptions regarding research skills, but on a general
level all these look – more or less – like the competence goals 4 and 5 of the so-called
‘Tartu Declaration’ of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA 2006):
• ‘The competence to gather information swiftly, using customary newsgathering
techniques and methods of research’
• ‘The competence to select the essential information’.
The declaration also refers to the new, information literacy competency stand-
ards for journalism students and professionals, as appointed by the Librarians of
ACRL (ACRL Education and Behavioral Sciences Section Communication Studies
Committee 2012).
Journalism educators at universities need to explain the difference between ‘journalistic
research skills’ and ‘academic research skills’. Although some journalists borrow meth-
ods, tools and techniques from academic research – from empirical quantitative social
science (Meyer 1973) or qualitative academic research traditions (Iorio 2004) – day-to-
day research in journalism practice is quite different. In journalism practice, journalists
search first and foremost for sources. Without reliable sources for the attribution of factual
information and opinions, there is no story (Gans 1979: 116; Harcup 2004: 67–86).
Moreover, these sources need to provide information that fits in a particular story format
for that particular media (Blundell 1988; Houston and IRE Inc. 2009; Hunter 2011).
These source-centred and story-based research methods of journalism demand special
research skills and the ability to differentiate between ‘source’ and ‘information’.
The fast digital developments in journalism might imply a new extension of the
mentioned competence goals regarding research skills. Both new practices regarding
 Teaching journalistic research skills in the digital age   235

‘gathering’ and ‘selecting’ need to be mapped and evaluated with regard to probable
changes in skills. The central question of this article – which research skills need to
be taught to journalism students in this digital age – will be answered from these
two competence goals: ‘gathering’ and ‘selecting’, taking into account the concerns
regarding the ‘skills gap’ and the increasing importance of reliability while judging
abilities of students diminish.

Gathering
As argued, the information-gathering stage of the journalistic research process is
now fairly different from the pre-digital age because new digital technologies have
resulted in new easily accessible sources and digital search tools. These new sources and
these new tools require different and new research skills.
Probably the most important development in journalistic information gathering is
the ever-expanding availability of online primary and secondary sources. The Internet
is obviously the broadest – ranging collection of digital information, growing every
day with new sources. Both facts and opinions are swiftly found. Websites of the
government, companies and other official institutions provide important and relevant
factual information. Ordinary people, informal sources, give information and opinions
on their blogs and websites. Relatively new is the easy online access and increasing
availability of ‘raw’ open data. Clearly, journalism students need to know the reliable
websites for factual information, as knowing the most relevant sources has always been
an essential part of information-gathering skills.
But in addition to that, educators need to explain that a large amount of information,
the Invisible or Deep Web, will not be found by Google. This is new to most first-
year students. Knowing how to find documents that lay behind website portals and
using online databases for information gathering, for example media databases such
as LexisNexis, databases with scholarly reports and databases containing figures and
statistics, is now necessary for professional journalistic research.
Social media are a relatively new find-spot for sources. A growing amount of
reporters use social media sources for story research (e.g. Bates and Cision 2009) as
most journalists search on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for information. Social
media offer easy and immediate access to all kinds of sources, above all to sources
that provide opinions and experiences. Almost all (Dutch journalism) students are
on Facebook, but using social media professionally for research asks for a different
approach. Where and how to find information on social media and how to use sources
such as tweets and Facebook posts for a story need to be taught in research skills classes.
Important aspects of teaching how to research social media to journalism students are
awareness of the differences between private and public messages and recognition that
not all people are online, and that the ‘digital poor’ must not be forgotten as sources
(Volkmer and Firdhaus 2013).
So the Internet and social media have made an enormous amount of all kinds of
primary and secondary sources available for journalistic research. To cope with this
236    E. Diekerhof

gigantic volume, digital search tools are indispensable. New technologies have added
a wide variety of new online search tools for news and information gathering to the
journalistic toolbox (Bakker and Bakker 2011; Boers et al. 2012; Bradshaw 2012a,
2012b; Newton and McLellan 2012). Journalism students need skills and knowledge
to use these digital research tools. But most journalism educators and scholars argue
not to add too many new digital tools to the curriculum, since digital tools change so
rapidly (e.g. Sotomayor, Cooper, Becker in Powers 2012)
Apparently, teaching research skills in a digital age includes teaching how to use
online search tools. In general, it seems more important to teach journalism students
on the function and features of specific (new) online research tools than to explain the
use of a specific tool in detail. For example, knowledge of the availability of tools that
search for former web pages is relevant for future journalists, but specific use of the
‘Wayback machine’ (archive.org) or Google’s ‘cache’ button, which changes places
regularly is less important. Teaching them skills to use the ‘advanced search’ options of
search tools and to know how to find information and sources on a particular date or
particular location are basics for journalistic research courses.
Using online search tools, above all Google search, is standard routine now in the
journalistic research process. Relatively new are ‘automatization’ techniques for news and
information gathering (Heeswijk 2012). Not all information has to be gathered by hand
with search tools for websites and social media. Smart tools, such as RSS feeds, Tweet
deck filters, Google alerts and other feeds and alerts, automatically bring the required
news and information and thus help journalists to stay on top of a specific trend or issue.
This ‘ordering’ of information, instead of the ‘gathering’ of information, requires differ-
ent routines and ways of thinking. Even though some media-savvy students already use
such alerts and other automatization tools for personal matters, the professional way to
use it, especially for newsgathering, is part of contemporary techniques to teach. This
also includes teaching of analytical skills, such as categorizing information in order to
organize and structure the information streams, since these tools require suitable filters
and other settings to provide appropriate and useful news and information.
Information gathering in journalism is not only about finding the right docu-
ments, but in particular about finding the right people (Gans 1979: 117). As stated,
social media offer new professional opportunities for swift and easy contact with both
formal and informal sources. But social media offer more than sources for a story.
Since social media are interactive, participation of the public in information gathering
has become an option (Hermida 2012). Journalists can ask ordinary citizens, personal
and professional ‘friends’, and followers to help with a story. They can use ‘crowd
sourcing’, outsource part of their information gathering, for example on Twitter by
using #daretoask. The participation of the public might go further. Journalists can
work together with citizens, for instance on hyper-local platforms, or create their own
communities to involve the public. This kind of ‘networked journalism’, of collabo-
ration between professional journalists and amateurs, requires ‘networked journal-
ism skills’ (Mensing 2010). For journalism education, this might imply adding more
specific social skills to the customary research skills.
 Teaching journalistic research skills in the digital age   237

Journalists and journalism students need specific social skills for this emerging
‘networked journalism’, but also because in journalism information-gathering prac-
tices online communication has begun to erode face-to-face and telephone contacts
(Pavlik 2004). Social skills are important for effective communication and interaction
with sources and public. The appropriate ‘tone of voice’ is vital to get information.
Knowing which words are suitable and persuasive requires the right estimation of
social relationships, the more so because most professional online communication is
verbal only. Teaching journalism students that social skills in personal communica-
tion differ from social skills in professional communication, such as teaching them
neutral and formal writing styles and even ‘etiquette’, has been recommended as part
of information-gathering skills courses in the digital age. Of course, complaining
about students’ lack of ‘good manners’ has always been a habit among educators, but
this plea for decent, appropriate and effective social skills is a requirement of digitaliza-
tion of communication.

Selecting
‘To select the essential information’ is the key to the journalistic research process.
As stated, a major concern is the reliability of information (e.g. Kovach and Rosenstiel
2010). In selecting reliable sources and information, professional journalism is demon-
strated. Objective and impartial reporting and ‘truth-finding’ are important principles
of professional journalism (e.g. Harcup 2004: 60–70). Journalists select information
on the basis of these professional principles. The evaluation and selection of informa-
tion in journalism also implies professional routines such as check and double check,
separation of facts and opinions, and balance in the choice of sources. These stand-
ards and principles seem not to be up for debate (Drok 2013), and have always been
important in journalism education. However, digital technology has changed the prac-
tices regarding the selection of information enormously and this could have resulted in
changes in research skills courses.
The use of search engines is the most dominant development in selecting infor-
mation in journalism practice. Search engines, especially Google search, perform a
function similar to that of the classical gatekeepers (Machill, Beiler and Zenker 2008).
Search engines have taken over part of the selection process. Search engines are clearly
indispensable to online searches, but search engines work from specific algorithms for
ranking according to principles such as personalization and geo-targeting. All search
results are filtered and biased (Pariser 2012; Heeswijk 2012). So as to keep the needed
control over the search results and to select relevant information, it is important that
journalism students are aware of this filtering. They also need instructions on changing
the default search settings, as journalistic search is not default.
Professional use of search engines requires different skills. Most journalists have
no efficient digital search strategies (Machill and Beiler 2009). For efficient and
swift selection of information, with, for example, Google advanced search or Twitter
advanced search, more language skills are needed. Journalism students need to develop
238    E. Diekerhof

a ‘documents state of mind’ (Houston and IRE Inc. 2009: 5; Van Ess 2010) to use
the appropriate search words and search sentences for their online search. This also
implies the skills to swiftly think up synonyms and antonyms. And it requires an
advanced command of English (Opgenhaffen,d’Haenens and Corten 2013) as impor-
tant documents are not limited to a particular nation. Journalism educators can teach
these particular language skills, by offering exercises for thinking up the right search
words and by correcting ‘wrong’, usually non-specific, words (e.g.: ‘organization’).
Professional and efficient use of search engines not only requires more language skills;
efficient online search strategies also include some mathematical insight. Knowledge of
words and techniques that narrow or enlarge the amount of search results has become
important. Teaching Boolean logic (e.g. Hansen and Paul 2004: 90–92) or instructing
students to combine different search boxes of the advanced options of search engines
might be part of research skills courses. Probably one of the most important insights to
be gained by journalism students is that the quality of online search is not determined
by the quantity of the search results but by the quality, by the number of useful search
results – useful in the way that the information provided relates to the information
needed based on story idea or research question.
As the Internet also provides an increasingly wide range of irrelevant, unreliable,
even fake, information, present and future journalists need tools and skills to judge
the reliability of online sources and information. Customary tools comprise check-
lists with judging criteria (Bolding 1996) for online reliability, such as the ‘Content,
Context, Code Method’ (Bradshaw 2011). More advanced tools comprise so-called
‘domain tools’ to find out who is owner and author of a website, when an ‘about-us-
button’ is lacking. The use of these new tools, techniques and lists are an essential
part of new digital research skills. Although digital and relatively new, all are based
on the traditional important questions regarding journalistic evaluating and selecting
information: ‘Where did this come from?’ and ‘Who is behind it?’. The use of methods
for identifying the author, to evaluate interests and motives, as to judge reliability are
crucial issues to teach journalism students. Research skills classes should offer practical
assignments and in-class instruction to judge websites and other online information
on criteria such as motives, interests, expertise, reputation, authenticity, representa-
tiveness and validity (date) and proximity.
‘Selecting the essential information’ also means selecting accurate information. To
check the accuracy of facts has become both easier and more complicated. Google
brings facts swiftly and Wikipedia provides fast factual information. Journalism
educators lecturing research skills should encourage students never to trust facts
from secondary sources, such as Wikipedia, and, again, find out the credibility and
reliability of the author delivering these facts. Teaching them that at least three online
sources are needed to identify which facts are the correct, and, in addition, to recog-
nize aggregated content is also important in this digital age.
The verification of facts and of statements of facts is a vital part of selecting sources
and information. It might even be the essence of journalism (Kovach and Rosenstiel
2001: 71). Since Twitter has entered the journalistic arena, verification routines are
 Teaching journalistic research skills in the digital age   239

changing. Part of the process of sorting fact from fiction, of the selecting of the ‘true
facts’ and the right, reliable sources, of weighting and selecting sources, is public now.
Unfinished and unchecked news and stories are tweeted. Social media reframe the
role of the journalist, and ‘collaborative verification’ (Hermida 2012) might become a
new routine in the research process. The implications of these probably new routines
for the research skills at journalism schools cannot be determined, yet, apart from
the general instruction to all journalism students that professional micro-blogging/
twittering is part of the job now.
A special new kind of evaluating information is the analysis of data. Since journal-
ists have easy access to an increasing amount of open data, they need special skills
such as statistics and other data analysis techniques to select the elements for a story.
Data journalism, and therefore data-analytic skills, might become more important
because it provides context and interpretation, instead of just bare facts and news
(Gray et al. 2012; Powers 2012; Yarnall et al. 2008; Ess and Kaa 2012). Although
data journalism is very popular in both journalism and journalism education, it might
have to be customized to include it in the mandatory part of the curricula, especially
because many journalism students are ‘math-phobic’ (Yarnall et al. 2008). Journalism
schools could decide to offer advanced data skills in optional courses or as part of a
Master’s degree.

Conclusions
This article is an attempt to map the most significant issues when updating and
improving the research skills of journalism students. Three general issues can be iden-
tified with regard to the research skills that need to be taught to journalism students
in this digital age.
First, the core of the research process in journalism is still to gather and select
information. Compared with the pre-digital age, sources and tools and techniques
have changed, but, in general, the necessary basic skills focus nonetheless mostly on
traditional skills. Journalism students need to be taught the traditional issues and values
regarding the gathering and selection of information. Teaching the importance of reli-
ability of information, as hallmark of professional journalism, is essential. Journalism
students also need practical instructions to use customary and new research tools. The
latter new digital tools need not be mastered in detail, but need to be understood with
regard to the effects and uses in the journalistic research process.
Second, in the journalistic research process, the emphasis shifted from ‘gathering’
to ‘evaluating and selecting’. Because of the increasing availability of – both legiti-
mate and illegitimate online sources, and the increasing amount of both neutral and
biased – research tools, more and different skills for evaluating information are required.
Teaching these skills is also more essential because the present generation of students
lives a 24/7 online unfocused media life, and focus is needed to evaluate and select.
The third issue is the use of social media as a source and participating party in infor-
mation gathering and verification. It goes without saying that journalism students
240    E. Diekerhof

need to be taught to search the social media for news and trends, and sources and
information. However, to use the public for information gathering and verification
and to establish online communities is not common practice (yet?) and goes beyond
the traditional research skills. This ‘networked journalism’ implies a different concept
of journalism and requires new skills. For journalism education, this implies adding
specific social skills to the customary network skills.
Finally, the digital age requires teaching of new, different and advanced research
skills and also teaching ‘traditional’ principles and routines to journalism students.
However, probably the most vital characteristic of journalistic research still advocates,
also in this digital age, the fact that journalistic information gathering always occurs
in the context of a good and relevant story. Teaching future journalists ‘story-based’
research skills and teaching them also ‘research-based’ storytelling skills might remain
the most important challenge for journalism educators.

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244    E. Diekerhof

Suggested Citation
Diekerhof, E. (2013), ‘Teaching journalistic research skills in the digital age: Between
traditional routines and advanced tools’, Journal of Applied Journalism & Media
Studies 2: 2, pp. 231–244, doi: 10.1386/ajms.2.2.231_1

Note on Contributor
Els Diekerhof is a senior lecturer at the Utrecht School of Journalism and researcher at
the research group Crossmedial Quality Journalism in the Faculty of Communication and
Journalism of the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. She also is the
coordinator of the international education European Culture and European Journalism.
Contact: Faculty of Communication and Journalism, P.O. Box 8611, 3503 RP Utrecht,
The Netherlands.
E-mail: els.diekerhof@hu.nl

Els Diekerhof has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be
identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.