The third wave of this cross-national project will include data from more than 470 news media outlets across 59 countries​.

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Building on the first two waves of the study, the third wave systematically analyzes journalistic roles across four media platforms—print, television, radio, and online—while examining various thematic beats within current affairs news in a diverse sample of news cultures.

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The study employs a quantitative design. Using a standardized operationalization of the interventionist, watchdog, civic, loyal-facilitator, infotainment, and service roles in journalism, role performance is measured through the presence of these roles and their corresponding indicators in the news via content analysis.

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In parallel, each national team collects information at the organizational/institutional levels of their news organizations and the societal level of their countries.

 

The third wave of our study will rely on a sample of news published in 2026. The fieldwork for the content analysis and the compilation of organizational and societal-level data will be carried out between January 2026 and March 2027.  

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Our research uses a most different systems-design based on a comparative study of advanced, transitional, and non-democratic countries. In order to obtain a heterogeneous sample, we selected countries representing a variety of political regimes, geographic regions, and media systems. Our study includes countries from North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania.

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The data is gathered by the respective national teams in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Honduras, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, México, Nigeria, Pakistan, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, The Philippines, U.S, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. 

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All participating countries are required and agreed to follow a general agreement and ethical rules: to conduct the content analysis of news in their respective countries; to efficiently train their news content coders and interviewers; and to submit high-quality – clean, genuine, and reliable – data. The principal investigators in all countries are also expected to actively participate in project meetings, to participate in the data analysis and manuscript preparation, as well as to promote the project in their academic circles.