The communication patterns of our society have undergone crucial changes due to the development of the digital public sphere and the formation of ‘hybrid media systems’ (Chadwick 2011). This transformation challenges professional journalism in its role as the fourth estate. It is obviously essential to re-think the role and functions of mass media in the modern ‘network society’ (Castells, 2010). Some experts even talk about the end of the “century of journalism” (Weischenberg, 2010), and others argue that it is just the end of the 20th century’s news-journalism and the beginning of the new kind of professional journalism that will still be able to fulfill its core functions of building the public sphere, in accordance with the conditions of the transformed society (Pöttker, 2012). For conventional mass media that means a major switch from ‘news’-journalism to ‘orientation’ journalism (Bruns, 2005). This transformation has been intensified in Russia by the protest movement that fueled a discussion among journ