Die Rolle der Individual- und Massenmedien im Integrationsprozess von Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund

Migrant’s media use is a growing research field in communication. This article offers an integrated view on the relationship of media use, adolescents’ identity development and social integration. Based on Hurrelmann’s conceptualization of (media) socialization, Esser’s integration theory and Keupp’s concept of identity development, this study deduces a theoretical framework for analyzing the importance of individual and mass media in the process of adolescent immigrant’s social integration. Empirically, an exploratory-qualitative survey consisting of eight group discussions and ten face-to-face interviews highlights the importance of the hybrid character of socialisatio in multi-cultural entities (community of origin and admission). The media’s role in this process is limited.     

Publikumsvorstellungen im Rezeptionsprozess

This article addresses the question of how individual media users, who are part of a mass media audience, perceive their co-audience. We approached this question from an empirical social scientific communication research perspective by introducing a theoretical model of (situational) audience conceptions that might arise in the context of an anonymous, imperceptible mass audience. According to the model, both subjective media theories held by people and cues from the media content influence the users’ impression formation about their anonymous co-audience during media consumption. Audience conceptions would include assumptions on size, simultaneity, social structure and the experience of other consumers. We assume that, as soon as conceptions of the co-audience are formulated, they could influence cognitive and affective aspects of a person’s reception experience. The model states that the more the conception of the audience is salient in a viewer’s mind the stronger its influence on subsequent experiences will be. Possible effects on reception phenomena including social comparison processes and feelings of embarrassment are discussed exemplarily to illustrate fields the model could be fruitfully applied to. Finally, the concept of audience conception is illustrated in a model and brought into context with existing research.     

Was interessiert an Stars und Sternchen?

Presently people magazines are a huge success in Germany. During the past decades, their readership has increased as has the number of available titles dealing with the life of celebrities, movie actors or musicians. Based on the uses-and-gratifications approach, this article explores the motives of people magazine readers. In a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, the audience of three German publications (〉Bunte〈, 〉Gala〈, and 〉Stern〈) was surveyed. Our results indicate that several explanations for media use known as relevant for other types of media apply to people magazine readership as well. In our representative sample, expectations of readers and non-readers differed with respect to some items but were rather similar in general. This corresponds with earlier research in the field of media use but introduces additional dimensions specific to people magazine use. Thus, the study suggests a more differentiated view of uses and gratifications as they relate to certain types of mass media.     

Gespräche über Medien unter veränderten medialen Bedingungen

Media and media content affect the conversations that we have with other people. In which context do these conversations take place? And how have they changed in the last ten years? On the basis of a selection of theoretical approaches to the interplay between media information and spoken language, a repeated survey from the years 1996/97 and 2007 shows that about half of the talks about media deal with television content. The importance of the Internet as a source for conversation has increased. Most talks take place in a private setting. The subjects of the talks have become more heterogeneous, as media types as well as the media themselves have moved more into the focus of conversations. The results are a motivation for (re-)considering more strongly the factor of interpersonal communication when measuring media effects.     

Der Third-Person-Effekt — Über den vermuteten Einfluss der Massenmedien

The third-person effect claims that people generally suppose others to be more influenced by mass media than themselves. It is one among several perceptual phenoma that offer deeper insights into the media’s role in society and media impact. Almost 100 empirical studies of the third-person effect have so far been published, mainly in North America. They consistently support the phenomenon and additionally address its causes and consequences. This article contains a systematic overview of these studies, their findings and their theoretical explanations for the third-person effect. However, extensive theoretical work on the causes for the evidently solid difference between self-perception and perception of others is still lacking. In order to close this gap we develop an integrative theoretical model in which the third-person effect is linked to other perceptual phenomena (hostile-media phenomenon, optimistic bias, pluralistic ignorance, looking-glass effect). We assume that the perception of (alleged) media impact results in real behavior and therefore should play an important role in media effect theories. Moreover, this could lead to a conceptual extension of these approaches.     

Politikvermittlung durch Boulevardjournalismus

Research on tabloid journalism suffers from two shortcomings: On the one hand, scholars regard tabloid journalism mostly as an entertaining but apolitical form of journalism with little societal relevance. On the other hand, empirical research measures a variety of supposedly tabloid features but fails to ground these aspects in a theoretical concept of tabloid journalism. The paper addresses these shortcomings by theorizing tabloid media as mediated arenas for a distinct public sphere, which may very well contribute to the political functions of mass media for democracy. On this theoretical basis, the paper identifies indicators that researchers should consider when measuring the political dimension of tabloid journalism.     

Strategy and Tactics in Strategic Communication: Examining their Intersection with Social Media Use

While public relations industry leaders have proposed a strategic approach to social media, industry research has found that social media practices may be more tactical than strategic. Likewise, scholarly research has focused more on specific parts of strategic planning, such as message—and channel-level communication in social media, but little research has been done to understand program-level communication planning. The purpose of this study was to examine the confluence of current trends in social media use with strategic communication processes through in-depth interviews and a national survey of public relations practitioners. The in-depth interviews revealed two overarching themes: (1) social media use should be guided by strategic planning and (2) social media tactics should revolve around conversations. The survey results showed that practitioners are involved in social media strategy development and tactical implementation, yet see their involvement as linked mostly to their organizations’ strategic rather than tactical social media activities. In addition, practitioners delineate social media strategies and tactics differently than theoretical conceptualizations.     

?Wir sind besser als die anderen??

The paper applies social psychology??s results on the theory of social comparison to media content. The finding that people tend to evaluate themselves better than they evaluate others, even if there is no foundation for that in reality, presents the starting point of these considerations. Such an optimistic bias can also be observed in social groups. It is established and distributed in small groups by interpersonal communication and contributes to the individuals?? identification with the group and, thus, to the group??s stability. The paper argues that this phenomenon should be applicable to larger social groups such as religious and ethnic groups or social strata. In these cases, the optimistic bias would have to be communicatively distributed through the media. We introduce a theoretical model that combines the role of media content, its individual reception and processing, and the reciprocal effect of processing on social structure. Subsequently, first empirical evidence of optimistic-bias presentations in media discourses is presented, and resulting problems for future research are discussed.     

Das Paradox der Medienwirkung auf Nichtnutzer

The article presents data from a secondary analysis of the project »Wählerwanderungen und Politikverdrossenheit« from 1994. The data allow to conduct time series analysis on a day-to-day basis. The focus is agenda setting in combination with a thesis formulated by Marcus Maurer — published in Publizistik 2004 — on the paradox of media effects on non-users. In contrast to Maurer, the paper is not concerned with the methodological but the theoretical paradox: Can there be such a thing as media effects on media non-users? The hypothetical effect is analyzed in comparison of daily and less than daily TV news users. The analyzed models confirm the agenda-setting effect: The media agenda affects the public agenda at later points in time, but the public agenda does not have effects on the later media agenda. In addition, there are indirect effects on people who seldom use TV news. As they do not watch every day, there is no direct immediate effect of the media input on them. But there is a significant effect some days later, which we interprete as a consequence of conversation. The effect of the media on the daily users is passed on to less frequent users by interpersonal communication.     

Von »Kommunikation für Entwicklung« zur »cultura mediática«

In Latin America, theoretical and empirical approaches in media research concerning the interrelation of changes in the media, community, and society have a long tradition. They include the analysis of changes in interpersonal communication and cultural communities as well as research on the relation between communication, development and »nation building«. It is a tradition that can be successfully applied to the analysis of the impact of the implementation of New Information and Communication Technologies, and to changes in communication, the constitution of meaning, and identity. This article describes the development of the theoretical debate and studies concerning the interrelation of changes in the media, community, and society in Latin America, and stresses the impulses for European communication research.     

?Wie und nach welcher Richtung entwickelte sich das Lesebedürfnis der Arbeiterschaft?“

Media use in the early twentieth century has to be seen before a background of an epoch in media history that Jürgen Wilke describes as the age of the unleashing of mass communication. In this sense, the aim of my historical-empirical case study is to generate consolidated findings about the amount and the extent of media use, particularly of the mass press, at the beginning of an emerging modern media system during the time of the German Empire. The basic source of this paper is a survey of early German empirical social research: Adolf Levenstein??s empirical studyDie Arbeiterfrage (1912). Like other studies from the corpus of sources of early social research, this one provides an exciting historical basis for writing a history of media use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. All in all, Levenstein??s study offers various important findings on the consumption of books, magazines, newspapers and pulp fiction, that is to say; primarily on the pre-communicative phase in the (mass) communication process including individual costs (monetary, mental, time budget) and motives (needs, expectations, functions, interests, routines) for the use of modern mass media, which cannot be taken for granted.     

Das Jahrhundert des Journalismus – ökonomische Grundlagen und Bedrohungen

Only when the characteristics of a capitalist media system had been established and solidified in the late 19th century journalism was able to control government and become modernity's monitor of society. In the context of differentiation theory, one can argue that in addition to the process of media differentiation from the political system, there is a correlated process of homogenization, in which the media are subject to the economy of market forces (e.g. Imhof 2006, S. 200). A balance between government power and market forces has served as the foundation for the century of journalism, but this balance is now threatened by increasing commodification of the media. The aim of this paper is to expand research on current processes of media transformation with the addition of a historical dimension.     

Strategic Communication of Israel’s Intelligence Services: Countering New Challenges with Old Methods

This study sheds light on the strategic communication of intelligence services in the new media age. Intelligence services operate in the dark, as far away as possible from the attention of the media and the public. However, in the new media age, intelligence services face a fresh set of unfamiliar challenges, including a dramatic change in the concept of time, the presence of alternative voices in the new media and a dramatic reduction in the ability to manage and control information. Using a case study approach, three traditional methods employed by Israeli intelligence services when addressing situations of exposure are examined: censorship, gag orders and the Editors’ Committee. The study addresses the organizations’ dilemmas, choices and difficulties in adjusting to the new media environment. On a broader theoretical level, the research demonstrates the importance of recognizing the differences among the diverse actors in the field of strategic communication as manifested within the well-established concepts of strategic communication, adaptation and adjustment. Since the field of strategic communication aims to include so many types of organizations and actors, it is crucial that nuances and differences among them are identified and analyzed within their specific context.     

Social Media Activities of Political Communication Practitioners: The Impact of Strategic Orientation and In-Group Orientation

The question of why political communication practitioners use social media for strategic political communication activities has rarely been investigated. By using well-established theoretical approaches of communication research, such as the influence of presumed influence approach, this study sought to determine the extent to which the subjective perceptions of German political communication practitioners explain their professional social media activities. The results of a survey (N = 1,067) indicate that the more political communication practitioners perceived that other political communication practitioners used and were influenced by Facebook and Twitter, the more often they used social media themselves. In contrast, the presumed reach of Facebook and Twitter among politicians, journalists, and citizens, as well as the presumed influence of both media on these groups, were not related to the practitioners’ social media activities. These findings suggest that the practitioners’ social media activities are driven more by an in-group orientation toward their colleagues and less by a strategic orientation toward external stakeholders.     

Gibt es einen transmedialen Nutzungsstil?

The article deals with the question of whether there are individual patterns of media use that can be observed not only across different situations but also across media types.We do not deal with the question in which quantity individuals use different media types; we rather focus on the media-specific style of usage they exhibit. As example, we assume that persons who usually choose television programs spontaneously also prefer spontaneous and heuristic selection styles when using other media types. Starting with an overview of previous theories, an explanation of the concept of ?trans-media use patterns‘ (TMUP), and some earlier empirical evidence, the paper develops a catalogue of different dimensions of TMUP and suggests media-specific operationalizations for television, daily newspapers, magazines, and web sites. This catalogue was submitted to n = 382 persons as a part of a questionnaire in summer 2004 (representative quota sample). The results confirm the concept: Almost all dimensions of TMUP correlate across the four media types; most of them significantly. Furthermore, the study shows how close the different media types are to each other in terms of usage and handling when looked at from the users’ perspective. A final outlook discusses the relevance of the concept and sketches future steps for theoretical and empirical research.     

Medien-Priming — Grundlagen, Befunde und Forschungstendenzen

Media priming is the process by which information from the media make disposable units of knowledge cognitively more easily accessible. This increases the chance that they be better applied to subsequent information from the environment than less accessible units. Research on cognitive media effects, though, does not seem to agree on what the bases of media priming are, what the state of knowledge is, and what remains to be studied. This article attempts to do away with these disagreements by (1) describing the (cognitive-)psychological bases of the concept of media priming, (2) by structuring the crucial empirical results with regard to these bases, and, starting with the traditions and also the deficiencies of recent research, by (3) presenting a program for future research.     

Gesucht und gefunden: das Stimulus-Response-Modell in der Wirkungsforschung

For a long time, text books and histories of mass communication research presented the stimulus-response-model as the first relevant theoretical paradigm of emerging effects studies. This view was gradually replaced by a more refined perspective in recent years. Stimulus-response-models are presently no longer regarded as the only theoretical approach in communication science between 1920 and 1960. In a 1998 essay published in 〉Publizistik〈, Hans-Berd Brosius and Frank Esser disputed the widespread notion that the stimulus-response-model ever had a decisive impact on communication research. According to their perspective, this assumption was nothing but an ex-post-construction by a succeeding generation of researchers. This paper examines sources of early effects research, suggesting that in propaganda and communication research the stimulus-response-model was indeed a heavily employed theoretical concept central to empirical research during the formative years of the discipline. At the same time, the paper advocates a position which does not globally regard all types of »strong« media effect assumptions as being affected by stimulus-response-thinking.     

Personenorientierte Medienrezeption: Ein Zwei-Ebenen-Modell parasozialer Interaktionen

Since its original formulation in 1956 by Horton and Wohl, the concept of parasocial interaction has received remarkable attention among communication scholars. However, it still suffers from a range of desiderata and lacks a coherent theoretical foundation that could guide empirical research. In this article, we present a two-level model of parasocial interaction (PSI) that is intended to lead to a better understanding of the processes of PSI. By refering to theories of media and social psychology, two levels are distinguished: «Low-Level-PSI» comprise the less intensive, superficial modes of media person perception whereas «High-Level-PSI» refer to intensive and elaborated forms of interpersonal involvement with a media character. Both levels are discussed in terms of cognitive, emotional and conative processes which characterize person-oriented media reception. Subsequently, media factors as well as individual characteristics are introduced which are likely to facilitate the intensity of PSI processes as reception is going on. The article concludes with a prospect about useful further developments of the two-level model as well as its implications for empirical audience and reception studies.     

Das Bild der Nanotechnologie in deutschen Printmedien. Eine frameanalytische Langzeitstudie

According to a recent survey, roughly every second German has no mental association with the concepts of nanotechnology and nanomaterials. This is similar to reports from other countries. Nanotechnology is something that cannot be experienced and observed directly, which is hardly surprising, given that a nanometer is defined as one billionth of a meter. Accordingly, what people know about nanotechnology, and their interpretations and opinions of this knowledge, are based mainly on information from the mass media. Therefore, this first systematic study of the German media coverage aims at analyzing the media frames of nanotechnology. The analysis is based on a standardized content analysis of nine print media for the period 2000?C2008. The results indicate that the German media framing is predominantly highly positive towards nanotechnology, with particular emphasis being placed on its medical and economic benefits. The German media offers only a very limited critical alternative to this one-sided perspective of progress in this field. The situation is thus essentially the same as for media coverage in other countries.     

Warum täuscht sich die Öffentlichkeit über ihre eigene Meinung?

The widespread belief that one has to conform to the expectations of others often leads individuals to adapt their own personal judgment and behaviour to what they imagine to be the group standard. Against this background perceptions and misperceptions of political majorities are crucial for private and collective opinion formation on political issues. Two theoretical concepts address this topic. The spiral of silence focuses on the role of media in shaping the climate of opinion, pluralistic ignorance is more concerned with social and cultural conditions that foster false perceptions of the attitudes of others. The present research uses both concepts to analyse public opinion perception in a direct democratic referendum process. The results show that mass media and interpersonal communication are unable to influence public opinion perceptions in cases where the privately held views of the majority seem to break a political taboo.