The MSCA-IF fellow has conducted and written four academic papers in total related to the project, out of which all have been published/accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The first academic paper is entitled “Covering sustainable finance: Role perceptions, journalistic practices, and moral dilemmas” (Journalism; impact factor: 3.179); the second paper is called “Devil’s Advocate or Agenda Setter? The Role of Journalists Covering Sustainable Finance in Europe” (accepted to Journalism Studies, impact factor: 2.345). Both papers are based on 33 interviews among (financial) journalists in Europe, covering SF. The third paper is a conceptual paper, called “Communicating Sustainable Responsible Investments as Financial Advisors: Engaging Private Investors with Strategic Communication” (Sustainability; impact factor: 2.576) and the fourth paper, “Framing Sustainable Finance: A Critical Analysis of Op-eds in the Financial Times” is a critical text analysis, accepted for publication in the International Journal of Business Communication (impact factor: 1.326).
What is more, the fellow successfully managed to advance the content analysis of SF coverage in the UK and Germany. Prof. Strauß has collected the news data, constructed and tested a codebook (reliability tests) and trained two coders. By the end of the fellowship period, all news articles for the UK (approx. 600) and three quarter of the German sample (400) were manually coded for a wide range of items (e.g. topic, actors, sentiment, frames). In addition, the fellow familiarized herself with the method of focus groups and survey experiments. She conducted a literature review and designed several communication materials dealing with green/ethical banking (social media campaigns, video, poster).
Beyond the empirical work related to the MSCA-IF, the fellow also engaged in additional research projects that were either a continuation of previous research positions (e.g. postdoc at Media Innovation Lab at the University of Vienna) or emerged during the fellowship period through collaborations (e.g. project on heatwave coverage in European news with Dr. James Painter; consortium and project proposal for the European Green Deal Call LC-GD-10-2-2020). Furthermore, Prof. Strauß also continuously provided academic services (e.g. reviewing for a range of journals, conferences, and the Swiss National Research Fund).
The project work and research findings were/are to be presented at eleven international conferences in total. Besides the three publications from the fellowship, four more publications were achieved, resulting from previous academic positions/work of the fellow. In terms of outreach, the fellow was two times covered in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, interviewed for a podcast by SWR2, covered in the newsletter “Climate Narratives,” invited to a panel discussion on SF at Bogazici University, and published six blog posts related to the fellowship on the project website:
https://www.nadinestrauss.com/sustainable-finance(öffnet in neuem Fenster). Furthermore, the fellow regularly communicated about SF and her fellowship on Twitter, contributed to policy work through Finance Watch (board) meetings, and engaged in outreach and networking activities through the education platform and podcast Sustainonomics, that she developed together with Adele Desana in 2020.
