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.     

Aufmerksamkeit und Geld, schenken und zahlen

In recent years economic influences seem to have grown stronger in the media system. This general impression, however, is not supported by general systems theory. Analytically it is possible to distinguish a market trading attention from a market trading money. The interplay of both markets shows a different kind of interdependence between the media system and the economic system. The eminent importance of the market of attention and the far-reaching consequences for media economics are revealed. The latter is a promising area which should incorporate traditional mass media as well as new communication technologies such as the internet.     

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.     

Habilitation von Michael Krzeminski und Berufung zum Professor für Multimedia, elektronische Medien und Online-Publizistik

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Kai Hafez und Friedrich Krotz,Universität Erfurt

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Medientransformationen und Entwicklungsprozesse in Mittel- und Osteuropa

15 years after the beginning of the epochal changes in Central and Eastern Europe, it seems increasingly disputable to speak about »Eastern European media« and to regard them as a whole. In analogy to the general transformation, every country has its own typical transformation path, also with respect to the media, creating a broad variety of such paths in the region. Therefore, analyses of the media in this region not only require to assume a differentiated perspective, but it appears also to be important to identify relevant factors that flank and shape the general transformation, and to complement the media analyses by these external parameters. This approach led to the development of a multi-dimensional methodological instrument for media analyses in post-communist countries. It is suitable for mapping three dimensions of media transformation: first, the different transformational stages that document transformational progress; second, the specific historical and cultural as well as political and socio-economical conditions; and third, the diverse levels of the transformational process and the development in the media.     

Mediennutzung und Umweltbewusstsein: Dependenz- und Priming-Effekte

In a comparative perspective, the article is concerned with the contribution of media use to EU citizens’ levels of environmental knowledge and awareness. Mass media are the most important source for environmental information, and media use contributes considerably to the amount of information people hold on environmental issues. In addition, media use bears upon the perception of the burden to the environment, the worry about the state of the environment in one’s own country, and the worries about the environment in general. The explanatory power of media use is largest for those judgments that relate to the parts of the environment that cannot be directly experienced. Besides this result, which is in accordance to the dependency theory of media effects, the analysis corroborates a priming effect: The media affect judgments on the environmental burden one has to suffer and on the state of the environment even if these judgments can be based on one’s own perception. EU citizens, however, complain much less about the burden on their own environment than they worry about the state of the environment in general. This gap also, as is demonstrated, can be traced back, at least in part, to an influence of the media. Results for single EU countries partly differ from these general results, most likely due to differences in how much environmental issues are politicized in the media and how intensely they are covered.