Virtual Foreign Correspondence: Experimental Instructions in Digital Foreign News Reporting

Within a series of six qualitative studies over seven years, this research in instructing journalism students investigates whether or not covering foreign news from home via Internet technology can substitute foreign correspondents on-site to reduce costs. Co-orientation and decontextualization can be described as characteristic for virtual foreign correspondence (VFC). In some cases, it can lead to high-quality products. However, virtual foreign correspondents (VFCs) cannot entirely substitute traditional foreign correspondents (TFCs) in terms of regional knowledge, background information, contextual insights, on-site investigations, and access to local sources and voices. Nevertheless, VFCs and TFCs could complement each other to optimize partition of work.