The European Journalism Observatory

The European Journalism Observatory (EJO) is a network of 13 independent, non-profit media research institutes in currently 12 countries: Germany, Great Britain, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Hungary. Partners from Norway and North Macedonia joined the network in December 2024. The EJO has also been cooperating with the Afro Media Network since 2024.

On the one hand, the EJO monitors trends and developments in journalism and the media industry, and on the other hand, it prepares research findings from media research in an understandable way and thus aims to help reduce the gap between research and practice. By preparing its texts and analyses in several languages, it overcomes linguistic and cultural barriers.

The German EJO website is managed by the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism and supported by the Presse-Haus NRZ Foundation. In 2019, the EJO was awarded the Günter Wallraff Prize for Journalism Criticism by the Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung (INA). In 2024, the EJO will celebrate its 20th anniversary and organized a pre-conference at this year's ECREA in Ljubljana to mark the occasion.

The EJO is active in these areas:

• Journalistic articles and analyses: The EJO publishes most of its articles exclusively on the EJO websites, some articles are also published in daily newspapers, media journals and scientific journals
• Research projects: The members of the EJO network conduct their own studies to analyze developments in various European countries as well as reporting on topics relevant in the EJO countries. Currently, many members of the EJO network are involved in a comparative study on migration reporting in European and African media (see AMAZE project) and are conducting a survey on climate change reporting in European and African journalism training. The EJO network is also involved in a project to identify disinformation using large language models (see PROMPT project).

Conferences and workshops: The conferences and workshops organized by the EJO facilitate an open, international exchange of ideas between media scholars, media practitioners and students.