Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Austria’s Media Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted every aspect of our lives, including the media industry. With the crisis creating great uncertainty, the media industry has played a crucial role in providing up-to-date information and entertainment during times of quarantine and social distancing. However, the pandemic has also hit the media industry hard, resulting in a loss of advertising investment and increased unemployment rates. As a consequence of such difficult times, the Austrian media industry faces unique challenges regarding (re-)financing its products and searching for new monetization models, mainly due to changes in user behavior in the digital and online sphere for both news and entertainment sectors. These challenges added to the existing problems of the media industry in Austria, where media companies were already struggling with shrinking revenues and declining readership even before the pandemic. Through this research project, we want to understand how the Austrian media industry has reacted to these challenges and the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on it. Thus, the project aims to record, analyze, differentiate, and compare the transformation processes initiated, forced, or accelerated by the pandemic and evaluate its economic, management, and cultural implications for media development in Austria. To achieve these goals, the project uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including market analysis, qualitative expert interviews with media managers and advertising industry representatives, a survey with media professionals from all media sectors to understand changes in media production and practice, and consumer surveys about media usage behavior, changes in media reception, and media performance during and after the pandemic. This research project is an important step toward understanding the pandemic`s economic, management, cultural, and journalistic implications on Austria`s media industry. It will help identify characteristics and trends unique to the Austrian media industry and compare them to international trends. The project findings will be of great interest to media managers and will help inform policy decisions and develop strategies to support the industry`s growth and sustainability.