Motivations,Consumption Emotions,and Temporal Orientations in Social Media Use: A Strategic Approach to Engaging Stakeholders Across Platforms

How to engage stakeholders effectively with different social media platforms is an important topic in strategic communication research. Grounded in uses and gratifications theory, consumption emotion theory, and temporal orientation framework, this study conducted an online survey among social media users in the United States (N = 940) to examine how individuals’ motivations, emotions, and temporal orientations in social media use might differ by multi-platform usage groups (i.e., Facebook+Instagram users vs. Facebook+Pinterset users). Our findings indicate that Facebook+Instagram users focus more on self-status seeking and entertainment, while Facebook+Pinterest users are more information-seeking driven and future-oriented. In addition, more optimism is detected among Facebook+Pinterest users. Implications for strategic communication theory development as well as insights for organization-stakeholder engagement on social media are discussed.     

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various subdisciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic “lessons” are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media’s potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing precrisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally, (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.     

Strategic Social Media Use in Public Relations: Professionals’ Perceived Social Media Impact,Leadership Behaviors,and Work-Life Conflict

Using the E-leadership theory as the conceptual framework, the study examined strategic communicators’ perceptions of the impact of social media use on their work, leadership behaviors, and work-life conflict. Through a national sample of communication professionals (N = 458), this study revealed the following key findings. The use of YouTube in professionals’ work, social media use in media relations, employee communications, and cause-related marketing/social marketing were significantly, positively associated with participants’ perceptions of the enhancing impact of social media use. Social media use in crisis management and employee communications significantly, positively predicted professionals’ perceptions of social media’s aggravating impact (e.g., extended work hours, increased workload) on their work. The use of Facebook and YouTube in strategic communication, the use of social media in environmental scanning, as well as the positive and negative impact of social media use all significantly and positively predicted communication professionals’ leadership behaviors. When the unintended negative effects of social media use happened, professionals perceived a low control over their work and thereby experienced a high level of time-based and strain-based work-life conflict. Finally, public affairs/governmental relations professionals who were frequent users of social media for their work reported a high level of strain-based work-life conflict.     

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.     

Segmenting and Understanding Publics in a Social Media Information Sharing Network: An Interactional and Dynamic Approach

This study segments social media publics and analyzes their informational behaviors during organizational crises. With a public-centric perspective, our study highlights how social media publics interact with each other (i.e., interdependence) and share different information through crisis stages (i.e., dynamics). Following the situational approach to segmentation, we identify different types of social media publics (i.e., influentials, broadcasters, and followers) based on their informational behaviors and their positions in an information sharing network. Crisis managers are recommended to pay more attention to publics with higher influence, namely key influentials and broadcasters. In addition, we try to understand social media publics’ changing concerns by analyzing whether and how publics share messages of different themes and forms in different stages of a crisis. Crisis managers are recommended to customize crisis communication content to fit publics’ needs, prioritize organizational resources, and maximize positive communication effect. With big data from Chipotle’s E. coli crisis, we analyzed the Twitter activities surrounding this crisis over a 6-month period. Our segmentation receives initial support from the network analysis and content analysis on the Twitter data, which lays the foundation for effective social media crisis management.     

Die Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie der Medien/Kommunikation: ein hochaktueller Ansatz

This debate article discusses how topical the approach of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication is today. The paper analyses the status of this field. At the international level, there is a longer tradition in the Critical Political Economy of Media/Communication, especially in the United Kingdom and North America. Since the start of the new crisis of capitalism in 2008, the interest in Marx’s works has generally increased. At the same time communicative and ideological features of societal changes’ unpredictable turbulences have become evident. This contribution introduces some specific approaches. It also discusses 14 aspects of why the complex, multidimensional, open and dynamic research approach of the critique of capitalism and society that goes back Marx’s theory remains relevant today.After an introduction (sect. 1), the article’s second section provides a brief introduction to the critique of the political economy of media/communication by presenting the understandings of this field advanced by Peter Golding/Graham Murdock and Vincent Mosco. It also points out that there have been single representatives of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world, but that this approach is largely forgotten in German media and communication studies. The article provides a brief introduction to Horst Holzer’s version of the critique of the political economy of media/communication: Holzer combined critical social theory and empirical social research in order to critically theorise and understand communication(s). He was critical of both systems theories of communication (e.?g. Niklas Luhmann) and theories of communicative action (Jürgen Habermas) and worked out foundations of an alternative approach that are grounded in Marx’s theory.The third section argues that Karl Marx is not just a critic of capitalism, but that his approach can also help us to ground a critical theory of communication. It stresses that there are many elements in Marx’s works that can help us to critically understand communication: critical journalism, limits on the freedom of the press, the analysis of the commodity form, the analysis of labour, exploitation, class, surplus-value, globalisation, crisis, modern technology, the General Intellect, communication, the means of communication, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, dialectics, ideologies, social struggles, and democratic alternatives.Sect. 4 provides an example of how to use the approach of the Critique of Political Economy for analysing concrete communication phenomena. After the 2011 Arab Spring, there were many discussions about the role of digital and social media in protests. Some observers claimed that we had experienced Facebook and Twitter revolutions. Others argued that such claims are technologically deterministic and that protests would not be a matter of communications, but of crowds gathering in the streets and occupying squares. Using the critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication as framework, the OccupyMedia!-study analysed how activists used social media and how capitalist power and state power limited protest communication. It also explored the potential of alternative digital media in protest and the challenges that political economy posed for the establishment and use of such communications.The article concludes that the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication is a fruitful, praxis-oriented approach for the empirical and theoretical analysis of contemporary communication(s). In the German-speaking world and in German media and communication studies, there has been unjustified fear of Marx. In addition, examples from the 1970s until today show that representatives of the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world have had justified fears over being considered as Marxists.The future will show if new developments and attempts to advance the Critique of the Political Economy of Media/Communication in the German-speaking world will make a difference that makes a difference or not.     

Mass Media Orientation and External Communication Strategies: Exploring Organisational Differences

This study assesses relationships between mass media orientations of communication professionals in organisations and their external communication strategies. We assume that mass media orientations within an organisation may affect an organisation’s external communication strategies of bridging and buffering. A survey among 150 Dutch communication professionals working for both for-profit and public organisations as well as NPOs was conducted. Our study shows that preferences for specific communication strategies are related to different forms of media orientation. Having media attention as an organisational goal is more strongly associated with buffering, that is, one-way and symmetric communication, yet a more negative attitude toward the media also hinders an organisation from bridging activities. Overall, few differences between the three types of organisations regarding communication strategies and media orientations were found.     

Where Grass Has No Roots: The Concept of ‘Shared Strategic Communication’ as an Answer to Unethical Astroturf Lobbying

As researchers pursue connections between strategic communication and management, they need to critique practices to develop norms that increase strategic communication’s long-term contribution to society. Norms of strategic communication are shaped by socially constructed standards of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and guide how strategic communication fosters organization-public relationships (OPR). Such norms are particularly important regarding deliberative strategic communication, which uses political CSR to guide corporations’ political role. Although principles of OPR and political CSR should foster more ethical strategic communication, some practices weaken such standards. To make that case, this article (1) reviews the historical foundations of deliberative discourse, (2) examines principles of OPR and political CSR, and (3) applies normative principles of deliberative discourse (4) to critique three cases of strategic political communication, known as astroturf lobbying, a deceptive lobbying practice that undermines and fakes grassroots movements. We conclude by integrating the findings into theory building that shifts CSR outcomes from advantaging individual organizations adding value to society. This theme uses ‘creating shared value’ to advocate shared strategic communication. This notion includes the normative claims of political CSR (open discourse, participation, transparency, accountability) to arrive at shared strategic communication that supports the ‘good’ organization and society simultaneously.     

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication: A Conceptual Framework for Strategic Social Media Influencer Communication

ABSTRACT

Strategic social media influencer communication has become a major topic in strategic communication. However, despite the growing relevance of this new strategic communication instrument, research has paid only limited attention to elaborating its basic concepts. In this article, we adopt a strategic communication perspective to develop a conceptual framework for strategic social media influencer communication. Particularly, we draw on research findings that identify the external resources social media influencers contribute to organization-influencer cooperation. We use these findings to systematically develop functional definitions of social media influencers and of strategic social media influencer communication. We define social media influencers as third-party actors who have established a significant number of relevant relationships with a specific quality to and influence on organizational stakeholders through content production, content distribution, interaction, and personal appearance on the social web. Subsequently, we define strategic social media communication as the purposeful use of communication by organizations or social media influencers in which social media influencers are addressed or perform activities with strategic significance to organizational goals. We then situate these definitions within the broader framework of strategic communication by discussing related concepts and by describing the strategic action field that has emerged around strategic social media influencer communication.     

The Role of Leadership Development in Issues Management: An Online Survey of Communication Practitioners in the Greater China Area

By using an online survey, the study investigated how communication practitioners (N = 132) in the Greater China area can acquire effective leadership capabilities through appropriate leadership developmental approaches when managing critical professional issues and challenges. Results indicate that three critical professional issues (i.e., developing and retaining talented professionals, managing the rise of social media, and dealing with high volume of information flow) as the most urgent ones to deal with for communication practitioners in the Greater China area. Results of this study also provide leadership development solutions to improve effective issues management in a region of rapid growth.     

Examining the Impact of Public Engagement and Presidential Leadership Communication on Social Media in China: Implications for Government-Public Relationship Cultivation

This study examined how public positive and negative social media (i.e., WeChat) discussion about President Xi Jinping in China, along with Xi’s leadership communication styles of assertiveness, responsiveness, and authenticity on social media influence publics’ evaluation of his leadership effectiveness, which in turn, influences public trust and satisfaction with the government. Through a quantitative online survey of 396 WeChat users in China, randomly selected via an international sampling firm and a structural equation modeling analysis, the results show that publics’ political discussion about Xi on social media in China significantly influences the perceived leadership effectiveness of the president. Specifically, the more the publics engage in positive discussion about the president on social media, the more they perceive him to be a better political leader, and vice-versa. The president’s leadership communication attributes of responsiveness and authenticity strongly and positively influenced perceived leadership effectiveness and the quality of government-public relationships. Publics’ evaluation of the president’s leadership effectiveness directly contributed to public trust and satisfaction toward the government. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Empowering Engagement: Understanding Social Media User Sense of Influence

For all the hope and hype hailing the democratizing effect of social media, few studies have explained public influence as an element of social media engagement. Insight into how and why individuals attempt to exert influence over organizations online is particularly underdeveloped. This study takes the first step in understanding sense of influence online through in-depth interviews with social media users. Findings call into question assumptions in research about the motives and meanings underlying individual efforts to exert influence via social media. The data from 19 in-depth interviews with active social media users suggest that sense of influence is enacted for social relationships rather than to influence organizations or society, and information is the driving force of that effort. Findings also place the imperative on strategic communication to emphasize the value of the organization’s role on social interaction toward a fully functioning society.     

Das Medienbild in der islamistischen Online-Propaganda

Islamic terror attacks can be regarded as an endpoint of radicalization defined as a process that takes place on a cognitive and a behavioral level (Neumann 2013b). The analysis of Islamic online propaganda seems to be important when it comes to explaining radicalization processes, as it can be defined as the “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (Jowett and O’Donnell 2012). The arguably most prominent Salafi propagandist in Germany is Pierre Vogel who has about 300,000 Facebook likes and who is said to be an extremely sucessfull missionary on the Internet (Wiedl and Becker 2014). Given Wiktorowicz’s (2006) differentiation of Salafi factions, Vogel belongs to the politicos who emphasize application of the Salafi creed to the political arena, but who do not call for violence. While previous research has analyzed several aspects of propaganda made by politicos and the violent jihadis (e.?g., Payne 2009), the media image Islamic propagandists hold has remained unexplored so far. This is an important deficit, as from the perspective of journalism ethics of responsibility, one can argue that journalists should know how their media coverage is perceived and instrumentalized by Islamists.Against this background, the present paper explores Vogel’s media image by analyzing Facebook posts that explicitly contain references to media. At first, the basic question of the Salafi’s understanding of the media arises, as a more technical view on the media can be distinguished from the perception of media as political actors bound by directives by the state (Neumann and Baugut 2017). Moreover, we were interested in the type of media and distinct media outlets Vogel refers to. Secondly, we wanted to find out in how far hostile media perceptions (Vallone et al. 1985), well-explored in other contexts, also occur among Islamists like Vogel that can be characterized by a considerable degree of cognitive and affective involvement that triggers hostile media perceptions (cf. Hansen and Kim 2011, S. 173–174; Matthes 2013, S. 375–376). Third, we were interested in the Salafi’s assumptions on media impact on third persons (Davison 1983), as previous research has pointed to cultural distance as one among several factors enforcing third person perceptions (Tsfati 2014). Fourth, as the perceptions mentioned above possibly foster radicalization, we were interested in whether Vogel consequently shows extremist tendencies in his statements on the media’s role. Methodologically, we conducted a qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015) of all of Vogel’s media-related Facebook posts in the years 2014–2016 (N?=?137). In those years, Islamic terrorism became a major issue in consequence of terrorist attacks in Germany and other European countries.At first, our analysis shows that Vogel mostly refers indiscriminately to the media in general, not at least because he perceives journalistic cooorientation. In cases in which distinct media outlets are named, all types of journalistic media ranging from local newspapers to public and private broadcasting stations are concerned. The broad media repertoire suggests that the Salafist scene comes into contact with content of established journalistic media—albeit not always directly, but rather through the Salafist opinion leader Pierre Vogel in the sense of a “two-step flow” (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944).Second, we found strong hostile media perceptions indicating that the media are perceived as political actors “spending millions to fight Islam”. Vogel especially complains about media coverage portraying him in the context of terrorism. He traces this kind of media coverage back to both economic editorial imperatives and the media’s alleged political goal to divide the Muslim community. The public complaints about hostile media on Facebook can be interpreted as a contribution to the victim-narrative that is characteristic of Islamic propaganda (Payne 2009).Third, while Vogel criticizes media coverage in many respects, not at least in terms of credibility, he assumes that the media influence on third parties is relatively strong. For example, discrimination against Muslims in everyday life is ascribed to the media. Journalists are even made responsible for supporting terrorism by portraying non-radicalized individuals in the context of terrorism.Fourth, the occurrence of both hostile media and third person perceptions did not result in extremist statements on the role of the media. For example, we found no crimes such as an explicit verbal threat to journalists. Being aware that his critics might encourage supporters to attack the media which in turn could have legal consequences, Vogel emphasizes that complaints about ostensible lies should be raised in a reasonable way.All in all, this study shows journalists that their media coverage is intensively monitored by Germany’s most prominent Salafi and that hostile media and third person perceptions may at the same time also occur among extremists who use exemplars of media coverage for propaganda purposes. Especially an undifferentiated portrayal of Salafists as terrorists appears as grist to the mills of those who want to mobilize and recruit scene members by means of the victim-narrative. Clearly, this study has limitations. Given the heterogeneity of the Salafi scene (Wiktorowicz 2006), findings from a leading German Salafi cannot be simply transferred to the whole scene. Besides the problem of generalizability, an interview with Vogel is needed to understand the motives behind his analyzed postings and to find out whether his media image explored by a scholarly interview is congruent with his media image presented on Facebook.     

A Comparative Study on Global Brands’ Micro Blogs between China and USA: Focusing on Communication Styles and Branding Strategies

This quantitative content analysis compares global brands’ use of communication styles and brand anthropomorphism between two leading culturally different micro blogging sites, Twitter in the United States and Sina Weibo in China. Results show that, despite some differences, communication styles on both sites are more task-oriented than socioemotional-oriented. However, global brands adopt more “give suggestions” style (task-oriented) on Twitter but apply more “tension reduction” communication style (socioemotional-oriented) on Weibo. As for brand anthropomorphism strategies, global brands use more “first and second personal pronouns” on Twitter but more “nonverbal cues and consumer nicknames” on Weibo. By applying Interaction Process Analysis (i.e., task- and socioemotional-oriented communication styles) and brand anthropomorphism frameworks to culturally different social media settings, this study extends our current understandings of how global brands use social media to communicate with their publics.     

Exploring Big Data and Privacy in Strategic Communication Campaigns: A Cross-Cultural Study of Mobile Social Media Users’ Daily Experiences

Mobile communications have played an indispensable part in contemporary human experiences. The combination of social networking and mobile technologies presents an interesting phenomenon because the pervasive nature of mobile technologies significantly impacts on users’ privacy concerns about highly personal social media like Facebook. The massive amount of data collected from users’ mobile social media usage behaviors is beneficial to strategic communication professionals and practices. However, there are significant privacy concerns as a result of these big data applications. Because cultural context provides what is considered to be private and how individuals should respond to any infringement with their own privacy, Geert Hofstede’s 5-D cultural dimension framework was used as an interpretive framework to understand cross-cultural data collected from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The data were analyzed by examining country-specific differences in mobile social media users’ experiences, particularly, concerns over privacy among these cross-cultural mobile social media users. Individualism/Collectivism index was found to explain cross-cultural variations in our study. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.     

Strategic Communication Campaigns at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Managing Mediatization During the Papal Visit,the Royal Wedding,and the Queen’s Visit to Ireland

This article investigates strategic communication in the context of the wider adoption of “campaign” approaches to public diplomacy at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. The three case studies are the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom, the marriage of HRH Prince William to Kate Middleton, and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Ireland. The analytical framework seeks to situate strategic communication theory within a political–economic environment pervaded by a dependence on the media and its institutions for sociopolitical knowledge. Therefore, while affirming the growth and influence of strategic communication as a social phenomenon, this article questions how processes of mediatization impact strategic communication, its organization and practices. The case studies reveal characteristic techniques such as managing mediated spaces for meetings and discussion; shaping the salience of target groups, stakeholders, and participants; an emphasis on values and norms that may be tailored efficiently to different circumstances; and, a strong focus on achieving strategic consistency across diverse messages and messengers. The results will be of interest to researchers and students interested in better understanding how organizations utilize complementary communicative techniques to shape knowledge and steer experiences of political events in ways supportive of their overarching goals.     

Towards the final frontier: using strategic communication activities to engage the latent public as a key stakeholder in a corporate mission

Private corporations that do not normally interact with, nor regularly communicate with, the public often do not perceive the public as a relevant or active stakeholder. The public may not view themselves as a stakeholder, particularly when they are unaware of, have no direct dealings with, or do not have any problems associated with such a corporation. The current study, utilizing a national survey of the United States public (N = 424) found that through directed strategic communication activities of a private spaceflight corporation, utilizing social and new media tools, a latent public can perceive a corporation and its mission in a positive manner, and transition it towards a status of an aware public and possible active public. Positive perceptions were found regarding corporate credibility, brand awareness, public engagement, communicating a corporate mission, educating the public, and influencing public opinion.     

What you tweet is what we get?

Twitter has a high presence in our modern society, media and science. Numbers of studies with Twitter data – not only in communication research – show that tweets are a popular data source for science. This popularity can be explained by the mostly free data and its technically high availability, as well as the distinct and open communication structure. Even though much research is based on Twitter data, it is only suitable for research to a limited extent. For example, some studies have already revealed that Twitter data has a low explanatory power when predicting election outcomes. Furthermore, the rise of automated communication by bots is an urgent problem of Twitter data analysis. Although critical aspects of Twitter data have already been discussed to some extent (mostly in final remarks of studies), comprehensive evaluations of data quality are relatively rare.To contribute to a deeper understanding of problems regarding the scientific use of Twitter data leading to a more deliberate und critical handling of this data, the study examines different aspects of data quality, usability and explanatory power. Based on previous research on data quality, it takes a critical look with the following four dimensions: availability and completeness, quality (regarding authenticity, reliability and interpretability), language as well as representativeness. Based on a small case study, this paper evaluates the scientific use of Twitter data by elaborating problems in data collection, analysis and interpretation. For this illustrative purpose, the author typically gathered data via Twitter’s Streaming APIs: 73,194 tweets collected between 20–24/02/2017 (each 8pm) with the Streaming APIs (POST statuses/filter) containing the search term “#merkel”.Concerning data availability and completeness, several aspects diminish data usability. Twitter provides two types of data gateways: Streaming APIs (for real-time data) and REST APIs (for historical data). Streaming APIs only have a free available Spritzer bandwidth, that is limited to only one percent of the overall (global) tweet volume at any given time. This limit is a prevalent problem when collecting Twitter data to major events like elections and sports. The REST APIs do not usually provide data older than seven days. Furthermore, Twitter gives no information about the total or search term-related tweet volume at any time.In addition to incomplete data, several quality related aspects complicate data gathering and analysis, like the lack of user specific and verified information (age, gender, location), inconsistent hashtag usage, missing conversational context or poor data/user authenticity. Geo data on Twitter is – if available at all – rarely correct and not useful for filtering relevant tweets. Searching and filtering relevant tweets by search terms can be deceptive, because not every tweet concerning a topic contains corresponding hashtags. Furthermore, it is difficult to find a perfect search term for broader and dynamically changing topics. Besides, the missing conversational context of tweets impedes interpretation of statements (especially with regard to irony or sarcasm). In addition, the rise of social bots diminishes dataset quality enormously. In the dataset generated for this work, only three of the top 30 accounts (by tweet count) could be directly identified as genuine. One fourth of all accounts in this dataset generated about 60% of all tweets. If the high-performing accounts predominantly consist of bots, the negative impact on data quality is immense.Another problem of Twitter analysis is Internet language. While Emojis can be misinterpreted, abbreviations, neologisms, mixed languages and a lack of grammar impede text analysis. In addition to low data quality in general, the quality of tweet content and its representativeness is crucial. This work compares user statistics with research articles on SCOPUS as well as media coverage of two selected, German quality newspapers. Twitter is – compared to its user count – enormously overrepresented in media and science. Only 16% of German adults (over 18 years) are monthly active (MAUs) and merely four percent are daily active users.Considering all presented problems, Twitter can be a good data source for research, but only to a limited extent. Researchers must consider that Twitter does not guarantee complete, reliable and representative data. Ignoring those critical points can mislead data analysis. While Twitter data can be suitable for specific case studies, like the usage and spread of selected hashtags or the twitter usage of specific politicians, you cannot use it for broader, nation-based surveys like the prediction of elections or the public opinion on a specific topic. Twitter has a low representativeness and is mostly an “elite medium” with an uncertain future (concerning the stagnating number of users and financial problems).     

Political Myth as Strategic Communication: Analysis of Chinese Dream’s Rhetoric and English News Media’s Interpretation

Within a meaning-centered framework that integrates theories of strategic communication, political myth and the Encoding-Decoding model, this research examines the Chinese government’s rhetoric and English news media’s interpretations surrounding the Chinese Dream campaign. Findings show that English news media made largely oppositional readings, in contrast to the meanings encoded by the Chinese government. The research proposes that this was caused by the inherent tensions in China’s rhetoric, the top-down approach of propaganda, and the anticommunism ideology of the Western media, among others. This research provides an empirical case to illustrate Hallahan et al.’s (2007) proposition that meaning and influence are two fundamental emphases of strategic communication. It also provides an operational framework for analysis of political myth, which consists of four constructs, namely ways meaning is created, meaning created, meaning interpreted, and power relations manifested.     

Akteursbeziehungen in der Zeitungsberichterstattung über die Online-Aktivitäten des öffentlich-rechtlichen RundfunksActor relations in the newspaper coverage about the online activities of public service broadcasting in Germany

Focusing on the media policy debate about the Internet activities of public service broadcasting in Germany this paper investigates in how far strategic interests of newspaper publishers impact upon the news coverage of their newspapers. Using a combined content and network analytic approach the study examines what further actors from the media policy field were presented in the media debate and how they are related to each other. Empirically, the study relies on a content analysis examining the news coverage about the Internet activities of public service broadcasting in three national daily newspapers (die tageszeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt). 156 articles were coded using the principles of relational content analysis that allow studying actors‘ interactions as symbolized networks. Results found indication of the assumed influence of publisher’s interest on their news coverage. Additionally it was found that the newspaper’s editorial line seems to have a moderating effect on this process. Results from the network analysis point to a very polarized debate that is dominated by private media corporations and their associations.