Gibt es Hinweise auf einen „Enke-Effekt“? Die Presseberichterstattung über den Suizid von Robert Enke und die Entwicklung der Suizidzahlen in Deutschland

Considerations that media reports about suicides might be followed by additional suicides have a long tradition. The existence of the so-called “Werther effect” is by now internationally well confirmed—especially for press reporting. The effect seems to be even stronger when celebrity suicides are reported. In Germany, not long ago, the suicide of football-international Robert Enke caused high public attention. The paper examines the German press coverage of Enke’s suicide with regard to compliance with media guidelines on suicide reporting and analyzes possible changes in suicide rates in the wake of the reporting. It concludes that German print media do not respect the guidelines in a substantial part of their suicide articles. In addition, significant increases in total suicides and suicides by similar means are found.     

Politik mal anders: Die Politikdarstellung in „Harald Schmidt“ im Kontrast zur „Tagesschau“

Politics on television is no longer reserved for the news media; it is rather increasingly expanding into formats with their main focus on entertainment, e.g. late night comedy. However, so far research in German-speaking countries has more or less neglected these programs and their potential for political discourse. This article focuses on the specific characteristics in the depiction of politics in the German late night comedy Harald Schmidt and compares the results with the news-show Tagesschau. The interest is on the share of political issues, on the political actors and their depiction and on the presentation of the political stories. The quantitative content analysis includes all weekly episodes of one season of Harald Schmidt (2009/10), and for each episode the three preceding episodes of the Tagesschau. As expected Harald Schmidt has a lower share of political issues than Tagesschau. With regard to the selection of political actors, the late night comedy favors individual and national actors and focuses more frequently on private aspects. The presentation of the political stories is characterized by a lower degree of information, a higher degree of personalization and less balanced comments.     

Die meistbeachteten Autoren und Werke der Kommunikationswissenschaft

The bibliometrical analysis of papers published in the German journals Publizistik and Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft between 1970 and 2010 reveals, for the first time, the most cited research and researchers in communication science. The authors present the 57 most cited scholars and the 45 most highly regarded academic works in the discipline. This canon reflects the different theoretical approaches (action theory and system theory) as well as the subsections in the field of communication studies (media effect studies and journalism research). The study also draws some general conclusions about citation traditions in the discipline. In total there has been a rise in the number of citations since the mid-1990s due to the digital turn—electronic databases and especially the internet have greatly improved the accessibility of sources. The citation rate shows a pattern typical for scientific publications: most studies are hardly ever cited—only very few studies are rewarded with numerous citations.     

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.     

Womit befassen sich kommunikationswissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten?

Transfer is an e-journal of the German academic association of journalism and communication (DGPuK), publishing abstracts of excellent theses in communication in German speaking countries. Since 1999, more than 1.000 abstracts have been collected. This article presents a content analysis of all abstracts published between 1999 and 2008 (n?=?1.056). The objective is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the identity of German speaking communication research and thus adding results to existing studies on journal publications and surveys among researchers. The content analysis examines the issues, the media analyzed, the use of theoretical and empirical approaches and the dominance of public communication as issue – as compared to interpersonal communication – of the studies, based on the abstracts published. Results show that the issues analyzed and the methods applied have not changed much over the years. A somehow alarming result is the fact that only very few abstracts explicitly refer to a theory. This raises the question of the deceasing relevance of theories in today’s communication research.     

Frames und Positionen zur EU-Osterweiterung

While framing theory is concerned with the way media content is presented, news bias theory concentrates on the evaluative aspect. The study integrates both approaches of news structuring. A detailed argument analysis of two German quality newspapers, Die Welt and Frankfurter Rundschau, representative for two opposite editorial viewpoints, was conducted to test the assumptions of both theories. The examination of news coverage related to the accession of Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania to the EU contradicts previous results of framing and news bias research. Apart from finding a pronounced focus on economical topics in both newspapers, they clearly differ in their frames of reference and political positions on the issues, staying in line with their editorial orientation. A comparison of the different accession times reveals a change in the frames of reference and the advocates of these frames.     

Der Einfluss des Tenors von TV-Nachrichten auf die wahrgenommene öffentliche MeinungThe effect of television news slant on public opinion perception

The Persuasive Press Inference is a theoretical approach that attempts to explain how the slant of single articles or programs influences perceptions of public opinion. An online experiment was conducted including N = 933 participants, who saw three versions of a public service TV news story on the “energy turnaround” in Germany. The three versions differed only according to their slant. The results confirm the central assumptions of the Persuasive Press Inference: The participants inferred the general tone of news coverage from the news item (extrapolation) and aligned their perceptions of public opinion to the perceived general tone (inference). The results even persist when participants’ attitudes towards the energy turnaround are controlled for (hostile-media-effect, projection of personal opinions). Besides the indirect effect of news item slant, a direct effect can be observed that was not considered by research so far.     

Auf dem Weg zur Normalwissenschaft

The articles in academic journals can be regarded as a valid indicator when it comes to the definition of the status quo of a discipline, especially if the discipline experiences a period of transition, as Communication Science does. This study builds upon earlier work (Brosius 1994; 1998; Donsbach et al. 2005) in order to outline the discipline’s evolution throughout the last 25 years. Using content analysis of the two most important German journals Rundfunk und Fernsehen respectively Medien &; Kommunikationswissenschaft and Publizistik of the years 1983 to 2007, subjects for research are the various topics and research questions, the authors’ professional backgrounds and institutional affiliations, as well as publication activities and citation behavior. Results indicate an ongoing institutionalization: more than two-thirds of the research published in these journals originates from scholars affiliated with faculties of Communication Science. There is an increasing trend of concentration on the levels of academic institutions and individual authors: only few scholars and faculties produce a large share of the contributions in the journals analyzed. The pattern of publication activities found by the authors corresponds to a rule known as “Lotka’s Law,” another indication of the discipline’s continuing institutionalization.     

Politische Skandalberichterstattung: ein Forschungsüberblick und Systematisierungsversuch

Political scandals are a frequent feature of political communication around the world nowadays. Scandals serve important societal functions, e.?g., public discussion and reformation of norms in a society; holding political actors accountable for certain (political) behaviors. Scholars have argued that the news media are increasingly reporting about norm violations of political candidates. Surprisingly, no review of international research dealing with the dissemination and media coverage of political scandals is available. Thus, in the current paper the state-of-the-art in research on political scandals is systematically reviewed. Based on an extensive literature research a total of 20 relevant studies (published in German and English language) could be found. These studies were selected and examined in depth. The results revealed that – within the last two decades – there is an increasing number of political scandals around the world (data from 31 countries were examined). Besides increases in news reports about political scandals in Germany and the United States these studies show, for example, that there is a steep increase of political scandals in northern European countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), and therefore in countries that used to be considered as rather “scandal-free” in the past. Furthermore, the results indicate that in specific countries (e.?g., United States, UK) political news are increasingly presented in a scandalizing way. Based on these findings, the number of political scandals (the number of individual cases published by the news media) has to be analytically separated from scandalization in political communication more generally (e.?g., the expression of public anger, the use of language of escalation, or the public condemnation of a behavior in political communication). Moreover, the results reveal that particular ownership structures, partisanship of a news organization, and the competitive context tend to influence news coverage about political scandals. The results also show that the definition and operationalization of political scandals – partially – remains unclear. More precisely, definitions used in previous research are either too unspecific and broad and thus do not allow for a precise operationalization and measurement of political scandals. In contrast, other definitions used in previous studies are too specific and needlessly restrict the measurement of political scandals. Thus, quite relevant cases are not accounted for. Therefore, an improved definition and operationalization of political scandals is proposed. According to that, scandals are defined as follows:Political scandals refer to real or conjectured norm transgressions of political actors or institutions. A particular norm transgression may occur in the context of political processes or in a politician’s private life and may or may not have legal consequences (e.?g., official investigation by the office of the district attorney). National scandals have to be repeatedly covered by two or more independent media organizations (e.?g., The New York Times and CNN in the U.S.). Regional scandals have to be repeatedly covered by two or more independent regional media organizations (however, the above-mentioned criterion for national scandals does not have to be fulfilled). News coverage about an alleged norm transgression must be framed as scandalous (scandal frame) and the scandalous behavior has to be unambiguously condemned.Based on the review, several research gaps are identified and a model for predicting the intensity of political scandal news coverage is introduced. The model comprises four central dimensions to predict the intensity of scandal news coverage (intensity is defined as duration, frequency, thematization, extent, and valence of coverage). The first dimension relates to the features of a particular scandal. Cases relating solely to verbal norm transgressions (talk scandals) are differentiated from cases involving other forms of scandalous behavior. Furthermore, cases with/without official investigations are differentiated and cases high/low in moral reprehensibility are distinguished. The second dimension relates to specific features of a particular politician (e.?g., type of position, popularity, if he or she has made moralizing/hypocritical statements in the past). As a third dimension, the model takes the particular reaction of a politician to scandal allegations into account (reaction appropriate/inappropriate). Finally, the fourth dimension takes the general context into consideration (e.?g., the particular media agenda, political leaning of a news outlet, social/cultural/economic context). Based on these four dimensions, as is argued, the intensity of scandal news coverage can be predicted and – in line with the model – specific assumptions are formulated that may be tested in future research. For instance, it is assumed that the news media will cover a case intensively when a political candidate is accused of transgressing a norm (e.?g., corruption) that engenders an official investigation (e.?g., state’s attorney) and is high in moral reprehensibility. Furthermore, the model predicts that the coverage will be intense when a politician’s popularity is rather low (compared to high), when a candidate made moralizing/hypocritical statements in the past (compared to no such comments), when he or she holds a high office (e.?g., president, minister compared to a back-bencher), and when he or she reacts inappropriate (e.?g., unconfident, contradictory, incredible statements) to an allegation (compared to more appropriate reactions). Finally, the model predicts that the news coverage of a political scandal will be more intense, when there are no other important topics (e.?g., terror attack, disaster) on the news agenda and when a potential norm violation is culturally especially relevant in a particular society (e.?g., sex scandals in the United States).     

Symbolic Repertoires for City Branding Beyond Casinos: The Case of Macau

ABSTRACT

This study attempts to identify the symbolic artifacts shared by Chinese and English media in regard to cultural and historical representations of Macau beyond its known image as a casino city. It applies Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) and Fantasy Theme Analysis (FTA), aiming to provide a new operational method for textual analysis of Macau city branding. It examines fantasy themes embodied in media reports, blog articles and promotion materials, which were collected from three media types, namely earned media, shared media and owned media. Then the symbolic realities in varied media are compared. This research has identified 11 fantasy themes that have nongaming elements. We found the symbolic pictures of Macau represented in various media types to be different. The rhetoric of the themes was just flowing on the surface of the senses, and hardly ignites a deeper and enduring emotion for brand recognition.     

Transnationalisierte Öffentlichkeit und Klimapolitik

For decades, the analysis of public spheres has been a core field in communication science and neighboring disciplines. Its special importance is grounded in the assumption that the public sphere is the primary realm of societal self-understanding, a sphere in which collectively relevant issues, potential solutions and the activity of political and other stakeholders is discussed and put up for scrutiny and legitimization. In much of this research, the media have played a key role, as they were seen as the generally accessible, permanent and comprehensive “master forum” of the public sphere.In recent years, however, scholarship on the public sphere has undergone a “major theoretical shift”, namely, a widening of the analytical perspective from national to transnational concepts of public spheres. Against the backdrop of a general transnationalization of the social sphere, communication scholars have increasingly paid attention to transnational forms of public sphere(s). Many of them, however, have focused on the (potential) emergence of a European public sphere in light of the expansion of the European Union, and only recently has research started to address transnational public spheres beyond Europe.This study ties in with this field of research. An empirical analysis of (potential) transnational public spheres was conducted by focusing on a subject which has been interpreted as a focal point for the emergence of a transnational or even global public sphere: international climate change policy. Due to its high priority and wide reach, international climate policy is said to constitute conditions conducive for a potential transnationalization of public spheres.We understand transnationalization as a pervasion of national public spheres with transnational references that can be distinguished along two analytical dimensions: “Vertical” transnationalization describes the extent to which organizations and actors representing a form of supranational governance are represented and/or (de)legitimized in national public spheres. The “horizontal” transnationalization describes the extent to which organizations or actors from foreign countries are represented within national public spheres.In addition, we differentiate a “strong” and “weak” variant of vertical resp. horizontal transnationalization. For example, a “weak vertical transnationalization” characterizes a case where supranational governance institutions are merely mentioned within a national public sphere; whereas a “strong vertical transnationalization” characterizes a situation where actors from supranational governance institutions have the opportunity to actively express themselves.Our main research questions are 1) to what extent is the media coverage about climate policy in the examined countries pervaded by transnational references? 2) Which patterns of transnationalization can be identified in the media coverage about climate policy in the examined countries?We conducted a manual as well as an automated quantitative content analysis of newspaper coverage about climate change policy in 15 countries. We analyzed 4955 news articles from quality, tabloid and local newspapers for the whole year of 2014. The articles were downloaded from databases like LexisNexis and Factiva, using a complex search string in four languages. The automated content analysis—used to identify the weak variant of transnationalization—followed the “dictionary approach”, with dictionaries based on elaborated word lists (in German and English) that were translated into Portuguese and Spanish and further adapted for this study. The results of the automated content analysis were tested against a manual analysis of 50 randomly selected articles, with very good reliability for each language-specific dictionary (Krippendorff’s Alpha above 0.909). Regarding the manual content analysis—used to identify the strong variant of transnationalization—11 coders were trained and achieved a satisfying to good reliability (Krippendorff’s Alpha above 0.72).Firstly, our analysis shows a visible transnationalization of public debates about climate change policy. In all countries, foreign and supranational actors dominate the domestic news coverage (weak pattern). Conversely, regarding the strong pattern of transnationalization national actors who actively express themselves are dominant.Secondly, our findings show that the transnationalization of the public sphere differs depending on the dimension examined. On the one hand, the horizontal transnationalization appears more often than the vertical one: References to actors from other countries in climate policy-related debates appear more often than references to supranational institutions. On the other hand, transnational references tend to appear rather in a weak than a strong pattern: Foreign or supranational actors are mentioned more often than they express themselves actively. Furthermore, transnational references seem to concentrate on a few actors like the UN, the EU, China and the USA.Thirdly, we found country and media type-related differences regarding the extent, structural patterns and reach of transnationalization. Media type differences seem to correspond with the findings research about European public sphere yielded: News coverage of quality papers is more transnationalized than regional and especially tabloid papers.     

Digitale Spaltung im Zeitalter der S?ttigung

Using Bourdieu??s Habitus-Capital theory and a representative dataset this study shows that social position influences internet use. The study is thus connected to the research about thedigital divide. A secondary analysis of the ACTA 2008 (n?=?7.623, representative of Germans between 14 and 64 years who use the internet) shows on the one hand that there are still gaps in internet usage (gender, generation, and education gap). On the other hand the results indicate acapital gap. Since the accumulation of capital in the internet is connected with education as well as economic status, there is a threat of a downward spiral: Those who have less capital (education, money) gather less internet knowledge. Since cultural capital influences a person??s social position, internet use enhances social inequality.     

Reliabilit?tstests in Inhaltsanalysen

A content analysis of all articles published in Publizistik and Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft between 2001 and 2010 shows that reliability documentation has improved considerably in Germany. However, this documentation if often imprecise and incomplete, and almost a third of all articles do not even mention coding reliability. Although both scholarly journals explicitly require certain documentation standards, the actual reporting practice varies considerably. Precise quality standards for content analyses are therefore necessary.     

Von pragmatischen Post-Docs und progressiven PraktikernAbout Pragmatic Post-docs and Progressive Practitioners

Scientific journals are a key factor for the integration of a research discipline. For their integrative capacity it is mainly important how members of a discipline use these journals as readers and authors and how they assess them. To gain more insight into this topic, all members of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Science (DGPuK) were asked to take part in an online survey during the summer of 2015. Object of this survey were the three journals Publizistik, Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft and Studies in Communication | Media. Participants were asked about the utilization of those journals, their fulfillment of general expectations towards journals in German communication science as well as about publication behavior and expectations towards the publication process. Using a cluster analysis, participants were split in five different groups, discriminant in terms of expectations, assessments and forms of utilization. Results show that the analyzed journals still do not use their full potential to create long-term commitment, especially among younger academics.     

Zeitungsberichte im Alltagsgespräch

The article analyses media use and media effects in the Wilhelmine empire. Based on secret police reports covering conversations in pubs, it tackles the question if and how the working and lower middle classes talked about newspaper stories. An analysis of conversations about selected scandals complements this focus, which is also discussed in relation to various theories of media effects. The study highlights the strong influence of the media in the decades around 1900. People in pubs quickly and extensively picked up topics covered in the press and used them in political conversations. All of the selected scandals were also debated in pubs. Newspaper readers had an astonishingly detailed knowledge even of events unrelated to their everyday life. Workers in particular often adopted the arguments presented in the Social Democratic press. However, they appropriated news quite often in a self-willed and unconventional way. News reports were connected with personal experiences, twisted in a playful and humorous way, or loaded with emotional exaggerations.     

Der Fall G��nter Grass: Eine Inhaltsanalyse ausgew?hlter Qualit?tsmedien nach dem Waffen-SS-Gest?ndnis

When Günter Grass revealed in an interview published in the FAZ in August 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS, this triggered an intense and emotional discourse in (the cultural sections of) German newspapers and magazines. This discourse can be described as a relatively balanced media conflict between the pro-Grass and the anti-Grass camps that gradually became more negative and in which tendencies of scandalization can be observed in the coverage of the Spiegel and the taz. It is noticeable that Grass??s apologists were often not the journalists themselves but external authors who were invited by the newspapers and magazines to present their opinion even if it differed from their own. Four of the five newspapers and magazines analyzed in this study (FAZ, SZ, taz, Zeit, Spiegel) took a critical stance towards Günter Grass and his revelation, only the Zeit defended him. However, with the exception of the Spiegel that held a strongly negative view on Grass, none of them followed a consistent strategy. These results show that the debate around Grass also took place within the newspapers and magazines and not only between them.     

»In die Illegalität gedrängt«?

Press historians so far thought that the Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd), a Berlin news agency of the German protestants, was banned by the Nazi censorship authorities in 1937. Focko Luepsen, the chief editor of epd until 1940, officially even until 1941, put forward this assertion in 1950. To this day, many scholars and journalists have passed on Luepsen’s version of history without testing it. Actually epd could be published until May 1941, and was then not a victim of political censorship, but of the short supply of printing paper in the times of World War II (as were many other publications). The editorial content in these years was in line with official Nazi propaganda. There was no dissident deviation that could have given cause for prohibition. In post-war times, Focko Luepsen used the legend of a Nazi ban of epd to get a press licence from the British military government in north-western Germany. His aim was to relaunch the protestant news agency very quickly under the new political conditions.     

„Politische Kommunikation“: Kern und Rand des Begriffsverständnisses in der Fachgemeinschaft

Terms and concepts are both premises and results of research. Controversies about the basic concepts of a discipline prompt scientific advancement. The aim of this paper is not to put forward an authoritative definition of “political communication,” but—based on prototype semantics—rather to work out what the core of the understanding of this concept is within the scientific community, and what the margin. This is also a test for a method of analyzing the understanding of concepts in general. The basis is a dimensional analysis of the concept of “political communication,” in which a four-dimensional basic structure established by deduction was tested by means of a content analysis of textbook definitions. This leads to a tool for a factorial survey to empirically analyze students’ and lecturers’ understanding of this concept (n = 161). The findings were: At the heart of the understanding of the concept are communication participants deeply involved in the political system in a context of mass media communication. Differences in content and consequences of communication have no influence on the understanding of the concept, and the differences between students and lecturers are small. Comparisons between countries and longitudinal studies are possible on this basis.     

Synchronisation von Nachricht und Werbung

Advertiser pressure has always been seen as a potential source of bias in the coverage of ad-financed media. The effects of advertiser pressure, however, have seldom been subject to systematic empirical research. Content analyses on the subject are particularly rare. This study for the first time scrutinizes on how the representation of firms by the leading German political weeklies Der Spiegel und Focus correlates with the amount of advertising by those firms. For this purpose all ads and the full news coverage on selected firms during the year of 2011 were analyzed. Central findings show that firms will receive more coverage, friendlier coverage and a larger share of product coverage, the higher their volume of advertising both in Der Spiegel and in Focus.