TTIP in den Medien

The global trade of goods and services is characterised by several disputes on policy, economic, and social issues. Especially the negotiations about the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US were highly discussed. In such controversies mass media plays a crucial role by shaping public discourses and democratic processes of opinion building. This study focuses on the deliberative media function and analyses the performance of German newspapers in the TTIP debate. Influenced by Habermas’ concept of deliberation, the public sphere is seen as an arena for rational debates and discursive interactions. According to this normative concept mass media should create a generally accessible, inclusive communication space where a diversity of political positions is argued and validated (input dimension of deliberation). Furthermore, public discourse should be based on a rational, responsive, and respectful way of communication (throughput dimension of deliberation). This leads to the empirical questions on how news reporting fulfills these normative demands of the deliberative theory.Although the concept of a deliberative public has been intensively discussed since the beginning of the 1990s, empirical studies on deliberative performance of mass media are relatively rare. Especially the conditions of a viable public deliberation need more investigation. To contribute to a deeper understanding of mediated deliberation, the present study examines different context factors which can be related to different degrees of deliberative media quality: (1) journalism type (quality vs. tabloid journalism), (2) partisan line (conservative vs. left-liberal papers), and (3) scandalisation, personalisation and emotionalisation as special characteristics of news construction. Particularly, the role played by these three patterns of journalistic news construction is unclear. On the one hand, it could be argued that substantial criticism and scandalisation of grievances is a fundamental element of public deliberation. On the other hand, scandalisation may reduce rational and respectful argumentation and create a hysterical public climate. In the same way it seems reasonable to assume that a strong emphasis on persons and their attributes rather than on issues and policy positions restricts the deliberative exchange of ideas. Otherwise, the focus on politicians and their positions could reduce the complexity of the discourse and report political concepts and abstract ideas within a personal story. Finally, emotions are ingredients of an empathic, responsive communication but also may harm the rationality of discourse at the same time. Considering these patterns of news construction, prospects for deliberative exchange are mixed and call for more empirical investigation.To investigate these contexts for a deliberative media performance, a quantitative content analysis of the debate on TTIP in German newspapers was conducted. The media sample included four quality newspapers (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, tageszeitung, Welt) and three tabloid newspapers (Bild, Hamburger Morgenpost, Abendzeitung München) which represent the left-right-wing spectrum of German print media. We analysed 531 articles about TTIP from June 2013 until January 2016. The coding scheme involved the deliberative criteria and the three discussed patterns of news construction. To measure deliberative media performance, two normative demands of the input dimension of public deliberation (inclusiveness of speakers and inclusiveness of opinions) and four demands of the throughput dimension were coded (justification, verifiable justification, responsiveness, and civility).Considering the input dimension of deliberation, it turns out that the discourse across all newspapers can be seen as inclusive. Speakers and opinions from different parts of the political system as well as actors from civil society and economic stakeholders are included in the news reporting on TTIP. However, for individual newspapers it can be shown that apart from this general conclusion partisan lines limit the diversity of the debate. Especially the left-wing newspaper tageszeitung rarely quotes and discusses positions pro TTIP while the most conservative paper of the sample Welt focuses more on pro opinions from industry actors. The moderate papers SZ and FAZ draw a balanced, inclusive portrait of the trade agreement. In sum, although the whole debate on TTIP is largely diverse, single papers give a biased picture of the conflict which limits the deliberative performance of these media outlets. On the throughput dimension of mediated deliberation, the study shows substantial differences between quality and tabloid journalism. The three tabloid newspapers of this sample show significantly lower performance. In particular, a comprehensive rational justification and responsive comparison of different opinions is mostly missing in this journalism type. For the three analysed patterns of news construction we find that personalisation, emotionalisation and scandalisation relate to low deliberative performance. In particular, the civility of communication is missing when media content reports on TTIP in a scandalised and emotionalised way. But also the rational and responsive exchange of ideas is limited in articles which show these characteristics. In sum, the study shows that the concept of public deliberation offers a fruitful benchmark to examine the performance of news coverage and evaluate different contexts of media content.     

Digitale Perspektiven in der Kommunikations- und Mediengeschichte

In the discussion about the future of communication and media science in digital times, this article focuses on the position and perspective of communication and media history. The challenges, problems and potentials associated with digitization are illustrated using the example of historical press research. Within the media ensemble of classical mass communication, the periodic press in particular benefits from the retrospective digitization of historical media and their digital edition in databases and portals. For historical press research, digitized newspapers and digital newspaper portals represent an originally new, because increasingly digital research situation: Digital newspaper portals as a novel, originally digital world for newspapers not only facilitate the path to newspapers and their contents, they also open them up as digital resources machine-readable and thus open up completely new paths for research—not least supported by digital methods.The main objective of this article is to discuss the epistemological-methodological problems and the practical operationalization of digitally framed or supported research processes in historical press research and to present concrete perspectives of knowledge and research strategies for practice. With this aim in mind, the paper discusses three points:(1.) Methodological and practical consequences of historical press research in digital research environments. With the digitization of newspapers and their digital reproduction in newspaper portals, their source character shifts essentially in three dimensions: They are edited and indexed digitally and their complete content is made accessible through optical character recognition. This makes previously unimportant technical aspects such as data formats, portal interfaces, search algorithms and programming interfaces very relevant for the methodology of historical press research. A primary methodological effect of the digital reorganization of newspapers in data and portals is the reversal of the usual reading practice: from “top down” to “bottom up”. With the help of “keyword searching”, newspapers can now be searched comprehensively and transversely to the order of the newspaper original. Nevertheless, there is a warning against an all too naïve and uncritical usage of digitized newspapers and newspaper portals. In practice, some problems and risks are crucial for the conception of historical newspaper research in digital research environments: Besides a hardly standardized and in large parts “wild”, because often uncoordinated and selective digitization of newspapers, the newspaper portals are different in their conception as well as characterized by different content, technical, legal and entrepreneurial conditions.(2.) Historical newspapers as digital sources in practice. The methodological and technical framework are fundamental and far-reaching for the further practical use of newspapers as digital sources in research. In each research step, it must be considered that digitized newspapers are genuinely new and, depending on the quality and depth of digitization, very complex sources with information gains and losses compared to the originals. Newspapers are not simply digitized, they are digitally constructed and differ in this construction from each other. In this respect, historical press researchers are increasingly becoming “users”. However simple and uncomplicated newspaper portals may be in practice, one must incorporate the implicit functions (hidden in algorithms, data and code) and the limits of these knowledge engines and their “correct” use into the research process. Combining and mediating classical hermeneutic methods with search technologies is an essential moment in the practical handling of digitized newspapers.(3.) Historical press research and digital methods. In the light of the new research situation which is emerging with digitized newspapers and newspaper portals, it is obvious that historical press research should increasingly open up to the possibilities of digital methods. In the digital method discussion of historical press research, one concept in particular forms a central point of reference: Franco Moretti’s concept of “Distant Reading”. Basically, “Distant Reading”—and this is what makes this perspective so interesting for historical press research in dealing with the considerable metadata and full text volumes of digitized newspapers—is about the quantitative-automatic indexing of large text corpora using methods and techniques of “Text Mining”. Digital text methods are thus seriously changing the way we look at texts and the research practice with texts such as newspapers: In parts, they automate and accelerate reading processes, produce “new” text extracts by the computer, generate new interpretation contexts between individual text, corpus and condensate, and thus set new orientation points for “close reading”. Computers and digital text methods thus do not relieve researchers of interpretation. Rather, they constantly challenge them to interpret in a continuous interplay in order to give meaning to the text patterns discovered by machines.In spite of all these advantages, digital methods have so far only been used sporadically in historical press research. For this reason, finally a digital workflow for research processes in historical press research will be presented, which illustrates and summarizes essential challenges, problems, solutions and potentials of digitally framed or supported research in press history.     

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.     

Die Wirkung „guter“ Argumente

Starting from a discursive perspective on public communication, we ask whether the deliberative quality of journalistic articles on policy topics influences the amount of user participation on news websites. The theory of deliberative democracy often serves as a source of normatively desirable discursive requirements. Here, however, we present empirically verifiable assumptions that we combine with explanations about media content from the spiral of silence theory and explanations of user behavior from the civic voluntarism model and the construct of self-efficacy. The spiral of silence theory assumes that people do not express their opinions in public when they feel their opinions belong to the minority, because they fear to be socially isolated. The media play a crucial role in this process, as their depiction of public discourses influences the perception of public opinion. Furthermore, the theory assumes that mass media form a media tenor, presenting similar representations of opinion distributions. In online contexts, we argue, we can no longer expect to observe a single media tenor, but we must define more individually perceived, selection-based media tenors. Thus, users are only to be expected to fear isolation in cases where a majority opinion is presented in online contents they selected which stand against their opinions. Based on the civic voluntarism model and previous literature, we understand writing comments as a form of participation that is most likely to be carried out by persons who are interested in politics, have a high level of self-efficacy and feel stimulated to participate by the immediate environment, i.?e., the journalistic article and the comment section.We therefore assume that the more representatives of the opposition, civil society and ordinary citizens are presented in the media, the more users will participate in the comment section (H1). Furthermore, we also expect articles containing conflicting and counterarguing utterances to lead to more participants than articles without this kind of utterances (H2). Regarding the rationality of the discourse, we suppose that the presence of justifications of arguments also increases users’ participation (H3). Articles often report on current debates that aim to lead to a decision. Considering self-efficacy assumptions and the relatability of a debate for the users, we assume that participation rates will be higher when decisions are discussed that lie in the future (H4a), whereas decisions that have already been taken are expected to reduce participation rates (H4b). Furthermore, we also expect articles with a reference to German domestic politics to attract higher participation rates (H5).In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a content analysis of 400 online newspaper articles. We selected two national (WELT Online and ZEIT Online) and two regional (Rheinische Post Online and Tagesspiegel Online) online newspaper outlets, one of each belonging to the left-wing liberal and one to the conservative journalism spectrum. From the politics news feeds of the four online newspaper outlets between January 1, and March 31, 2016, we selected a systematic random sample of articles with enabled comment sections. The deliberative criteria were measured either on the level of a value-based utterance made by a representative of the government, the opposition, civil society or an ordinary citizen or on the level of the news article. Utterance-based criteria were then aggregated to the news article level. Furthermore, we measured the number of users that participated in the discussion in the comment section. We then estimated a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model in order to predict the number of participating users.Results show that the majority of deliberative criteria serve to increase the amount of user participation. The more opposition politicians are cited in a news article, the more users participate in the comment section which hints to the conclusion that discursive equality triggers participation. Regarding the reciprocity of discourses, conflicting and counterarguing utterances also increase the number of users who participate in a discussion. Another explanation of a higher number of commentators is the presence of justified arguments, i.?e., when the discourse can be classified as rational. While future decisions did not show any effect on user participation, past decisions in fact reduced the amount of participation. Furthermore, if the topic was related to domestic German politics, participation rates also increased, which represents relatability for people’s lives.All in all, we conclude that discourse-related criteria should be integrated more often into the analysis of the conditions of user participation, as they can add to explaining when people feel motivated to write comments. They are connected to considerations about opinion climates both as depicted by the journalistic article and as present in the comment section itself as discussed in the spiral of silence theory. The more opinions journalists present in an article and the better the underlying discourse, the more we can expect users to participate in the discussion. We have also seen that articles on decisions that have already been taken are not as frequently commented on, and that a relation to domestic topics leads to a more active participation. Taken together, we argue that user comments can be a meaningful addition to deliberation research, because they can serve as a measure of the effects of deliberative content, e.?g., in the news.This study focused on the contents of the journalistic articles, while the contents of user comments were not integrated into the analysis. In future studies, this gap should be closed with content analyses of user comments. Furthermore, the assumptions we made about users’ motivations and behavior also need to be confirmed in experimental designs and surveys.     

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).     

Kommunikation und andere Weltbezüge

The essay presents a largely new theoretical perspective for communication science (and beyond that for the overall social sciences). Starting point of the development was the observation that communication science deals carelessly with issues on a theoretical and methodological level. Most content analyses show one-dimensional and never clear-cut lists of issues without any theoretical background. This ignorance regarding issues is astonishing because issues as the units of the subject matter of communication are of central importance for analyzing processes of communication.The reason can be found in the communication models developed by the discipline in the last century. In the beginning, the reality communicating actors refer to was still present: the “X” in the models of Newcomb und Westley/MacLean. Most of the later models present communication as symbolic interaction between actors where the world references of the symbols are no longer addressed.The new approach is centrally based on works of Sartre and Habermas and can in a nutshell be summarized as following:1. The human existence can completely be described by its cognitive, emotional, conative and communicative references to (more or less) real, virtual and fictitious worlds. This includes self-references where we become world for ourselves in a way.2. Content of human communication are the world references either of the communicator or of the actors presented by the medium. When we communicate, we communicate about what we or others perceive, know, think, feel, do or communicate. The last case marks the possible reflexivity of communication, up to communication about communication about communication (…) about X. The possible increase of such higher levels of reflexivity might be a useful indicator of mediatization.3. Effects of medial and interpersonal communication on human beings must be effects on their world references. This directly results from 1.: If we expect effects of communication on humans whose existence totally consists of world references, these effects must be recordable as world references.4. Insofar intentions of communicating actors target effects on the recipients, the intentions of actors participating in communication must be their own world references or those of their partners.The relevant units of analysis are a) the communicating actors (media and actors in the media), b) their world references, and c) the sections of real or fictitious worlds these references refer to. Here, reflexive structures are omnipresent when actors refer to other actors (and in doing so to their communication again).Effects of communication now can be found in the recipients’ references to these three units: to media and media persons (e.?g., their images), to the communicated world references (e.?g., learning), and to the particular world sections (e.?g., cultivation, agenda setting).The approach might be of a paradigmatic character because it integrates communicator, content and effects research in a systematic way and offers a homogeneous instrument for empirical analysis of all steps of the communication process. At the same time, it offers possibilities of differentiating existing approaches. Agenda setting for example can be reformulated as the question of the effect medially communicated references on an issue have on how important own and other references on the issue are from the recipient’s view. In some cases even negative effects are possible: if media report about problem solving actions in an extensive way, this may have the effect of recipients not thinking that own action is necessary (free riding problem).Finally, new areas of research can be identified in a systematic way, especially regarding the parallel carrying out of communicative and other world references. In times of nearly permanent references to media communication we have to face the question of how important the cognitive, emotional and conative processes are which are carried out parallel to media use. On the one hand regarding the importance for the quality of the communicative processes (classical communication science). On the other hand regarding the importance for a holistic understanding of human existence (on the way to a science of world references).     

Die Leistungen des Lokaljournalismus

Local news are still of rather high relevance for the audience, but in the last years few studies on local journalism in its two most important forms—print and online—were carried out in Germany. Considering that many empirical studies on local journalism were published in the 1960?s and 1970?s this is quite astonishing. At that time many deficits in quality were found: Local newspapers did not provide enough background information, they published articles with low news value and studies revealed a strong influence of public relations. Further studies pointed out that local journalism was rather uncritical, especially in reporting on local elites. In addition, the reporting was characterized by a limited diversity—regarding topics, viewpoints and journalism formats. Above all, recent studies on online journalism suggest that the percentage of exclusive content on newspaper websites is low.This study tries to fill in the gap in research on local journalism. In a first step, quality criteria for local journalism are derived from three theoretical perspectives. In (1) a functional and system-oriented perspective, journalism as a societal sub-system has a vital function for society. It was developed in the historic process by journalism itself. Journalism compensates consequences of functional differentiation in society. Journalism gathers and selects current, socially relevant and factual topics in various parts of society, edits them and returns them to society as media content. In doing so, it provides a self-observation of society with a broad social resonance. In this perspective, important criteria are, e.?g., diversity and relevance; journalism should also be entertaining and easy to understand.In (2) a normative-political perspective, criteria like, e.?g., impartiality and the respect for personal rights are located which are specified, e.?g., in media laws, codes of conduct and court decisions. Journalism is expected to support the democratic process and to offer information that enable citizens to make rational decisions. It should actively generate a common public sphere where relevant issues are freely debated by political actors and society.In (3) a spatial perspective, the local environment is regarded as the place to identify with (emotionally), as the place of everyday life (functionally), as the place of interaction and communication (socially), and as the place of participation (politically). So, local journalism should, e.?g., support political participation and connect the local and national level (quality criteria participation and glocality) and offer service news (quality criterion applicability).103 local newspaper editions and their corresponding websites were chosen by a complex two-step random sampling for the following empirical analysis. The editions were weighted by newspaper circulation and collected for one week (June 15th to 20th, 2015). 18 student assistants analyzed the newspapers and websites in a content analysis, e.?g., in terms of topics, sources, controversial debates, graphic design and service information. Data were aggregated on a weekly level for every newspaper and standardized with a theoretical or—if not possible—with an empirical maximum. The quality dimensions are mean values of the measured indicators.Data of the print analysis show that some deficits of local journalism seem to remain: Newspapers seldom provide a critical stance and neglect background information; the texts are characterized by a low news value, and they are written and designed rather boringly. In addition, local journalism offers a limited diversity of journalism formats and a small proportion of participative elements—even on the local websites. They usually offer standard options like contact addresses of the desk, comment functions or a connection with a local Facebook profile. Many of the analyzed online articles were also published in the print edition the same or the next day—however, almost 20% were original online content.Despite the number of deficits, improvements in local journalism were found: Newspapers provide a wide variety of topics, they are rather credible, and they achieve good results in independence and neutrality.Comparisons between types of newspapers (published in a major city, in a town or in rural areas or classified as tabloids) illustrate that local journalism in major cities obtains rather good values, e.?g., in terms of diversity of topics, independence, or online orientation. In rural areas newspapers often reach lower values; however, they are in the best position in terms of service orientation. In tabloids local journalism is characterized, e.?g., by a lack of participation and background information; tabloids reach—compared to other newspapers—a lower level in neutrality; however, they are much better than the others in entertainment and graphic design.All in all, the study shows that local journalism became better in some dimensions. However, major problems still prevail, e.?g., the tendency to show a harmonious world in a rather uncritical way or low news value. The article discusses methodological implications (e.?g., the question if some maximum points should be modified) and proposes aspects for future research.     

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.     

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.     

„Der Pranger der Schande““The Pillory of Shame”

We investigated whether the publication of names and profile pictures of several Facebook users posting hate comments against refugees in the German tabloid Bild on 20th October 2015 caused a change in content and style of comments posted on Bild’s Facebook page. We used the spiral of silence and the theory of reactance as a theoretical framework. A quantitative content analysis of all Facebook comments concerning refugees on several days before and after the publishing of the Bild intervention was conducted. The dependent variables were the comment’s valence and rhetorical style. Although the number of hate comments against refugees decreased slightly after the Bild intervention, analyses indicated that valence became more negative. The observed effects diminished over time.     

Schaffen wir das?

In 2015, Germany sheltered about 900,000 refugees—more than ever before. This development led to political and public discussions in the country which changed between creating a culture of welcome for refugees and the danger of foreign infiltration through refugees. On the one hand, this article investigates, if patterns could be identified in the public debate about the so-called refugee crisis in the regional press in Germany in 2015. On the other hand, it concentrates on the solution orientation of the regional news coverage concerning this topic. The reporting pattern of solutions journalism supposes this kind of journalistic reporting and it is strongly discussed in communication sciences and journalism at the moment.The two aims of this study are based on four theoretical aspects: the responsibility of journalism, the reporting pattern of solutions journalism, the state of research concerning the image of migration and immigrants in the German media and the concept of framing. The responsibility of journalism roots in its function of information and its ethical foundation. In carrying out their work, journalists have to balance ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility: Providing full information about a topic and the (ethical) consequences of this full information is the field of conflict in which journalism lies. In the case of media coverage about the so-called refugee crisis, it is not easy to report and not proliferating prejudice and resentments against immigrants.Generally, negative reasons of reporting are often picked up by the media. In contrast to this trend, the reporting pattern of solutions journalism focusses solutions for negative reasons of reporting. Not only the problems are discussed in this reporting pattern, also solutions are presented which should encourage the recipients to act. The journalist is accredited with the role of a mediator in public debates in the pattern of solutions journalism. This role is discussed critically in journalism and communications science.Regarding the image of migration and immigrants in the German media, communication studies do not describe this coverage in a positive way. Media reports often connect immigrants to crime, foreign infiltration or describe them as an expense factor. Also, terror and Islamic faith are topics appearing since 2011 in the German media linked with immigration. Concerning the so-called refugee crisis, the few existing studies show that this situation is described as threat. In its coverage the regional press follows the argumentation of the national press and concentrates on politics when reporting about this topic.This state of research leads to the assumption that negative patterns will dominate in the regional press concerning the so-called refugee crisis, although this topic could be the chance to implement some characteristics of solutions journalism. This hypothesis was investigated in this study by a quantitative content analysis of the regional press in Germany concerning the topic of the refugee crisis. The concept of framing was used in the methodological design of this article. To frame means to extract several aspects of reality and to emphasize some of them more than others. A frame consists of a problem definition of a topic, a causal interpretation, a moral evaluation, and a treatment recommendation. Based on this definition, frames can be seen as clusters of about four elements. To identify frames, this study uses an approach considering frames as clusters of these elements. In a quantitative content analysis these single elements were operationalized and after data collection investigated by hierarchical cluster analyses to create groups of elements which often appear together. For the content analysis, a stratified sample of eight regional newspapers in seven federal states in Germany was drawn to analyze the coverage of the year 2015. Altogether, the final sample consisted of 1231 articles.The results of this analysis show that the biggest frame in the regional press is the one of “social challenge” of the so-called refugee crisis. It deals with the social and cultural problems the so-called refugee crisis causes and replaces the dominant topic of crime in the then current state of research. Further frames are the ones of “integration”, “capacity”, “demonstration” and “solution”. The frame “integration” concentrates in a positive way on the chance of integration and is astonishingly quite equally sized in comparison to the one of “social challenge”. The frame “capacity” is smaller. It deals with the problem of accommodation of refugees. The frames of “demonstration” and “solution” appear not very often and focus the problems of protest against refugees and their supporters or political solutions for the so-called refugee crisis.But not only the widely spread frame of integration in the regional press is surprising, also its significant dominance in the coverage of the regional newspapers in East Germany is noteworthy. As more hostility against refugees can be observed in the eastern parts of Germany in 2015, it is an astonishing fact, that the regional press accents the frame of integration. Maybe the newspapers wanted to be the public counterpart to the hostile atmosphere in this region.Solution orientation as it is focused by solutions journalism could be identified in this analysis by the frame element of treatment recommendation. In sum, only few treatment recommendations exist in the regional press coverage: The widely spread frames “social challenge” and “integration” are the ones which provide the fewest treatment recommendations. The small frames “capacity” and “demonstration” are those which show the largest solution orientation. The solution proposals are oriented towards politics. These findings show that the solution orientation in the regional press coverage is not very strong, but the widely spread frame of integration demonstrates that the regional press reports in a more positive way than expected—especially in Eastern Germany.     

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.     

Legitimität in der Medienpolitik

This study develops a theoretical perspective on legitimacy in media policy that can be used to study debates taking place in the media. This perspective assumes that contentions about legitimacy are inscribed in media policy debates; in debates about which media content, business models and forms of media usage are legitimate. The aim of this perspective is to stimulate research questions and guide research. It contributes to understand why some regulation is successful and another is not. This article first discusses the state of research in communication studies. According to it, legitimacy can influence decisions in media policy. Legitimacy is a precondition for the effectiveness of regulation and regulatory procedures and for the stability of the media order. The media may operate as self-interested actors and deprive regulatory attempts of legitimacy. Most studies use a normative concept of legitimacy.Based on new institutionalism and the theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens, in the first step, an analytical (not normatively determined) and dynamic concept of legitimacy is developed. Legitimacy is with Suchman understood as a “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”. Drawing on both strategic and institutional approaches, legitimacy is conceptualized both as strategic reference to and as effect of normative structures. Media policy actors try to strategically employ legitimacy in order to assert or defy collectively binding rules. They cannot do this, however, without referring to expectation structures (normative structures) that at the same time constrain and enable them. Because legitimacy has these two sides, is part of action and structures, it can be defined as institution.New institutionalism differentiates between attributing, depriving of, repairing and maintaining legitimacy. The structuration theory is used to define these processes as a recursive interaction of actors and structures that takes place in public debates (structuration of legitimacy). The structuration theory provides a framework that integrates the strategic aspect of legitimacy related action and the institutional aspect of legitimacy. Furthermore, it includes the distribution of resources, political capabilities and authority in media policy and allows studying the influence of these factors on gaining, depriving of and repairing legitimacy. The following sections elaborate this framework and for this purpose, use the terms legitimacy episodes, structuration of legitimacy, grammar of legitimation, media communication.Due to legitimacy episodes, legitimacy becomes an issue in media policy. Arguing with Giddens, episodes are processes of social change that reorganize institutions. They occur with transgressions. Transgressions related to the media system can be expected when new media proliferate because new forms of media production, distribution and media usage develop, new actors enter media markets and public communication changes. Old issues of media regulations are raised from new perspectives, new regulatory problems emerge. Emerging debates and conflicts also concern legitimacy: the threats of certain new services, the acceptability of new business practices or the lawfulness of certain user behaviour.The structuration of legitimacy encompasses attributing, depriving of, repairing of and maintaining legitimacy and can be studied through the “grammar of legitimation”, resource distribution and the rules of the media. The abovementioned processes related to legitimacy take place in recursive interactions of actors and structures: within communication, sanction and power. These forms of interaction are closely related to each other. Language is a regulative force and reflects structures of domination. Three propositions can be derived from Giddens regarding the structuration of legitimacy: First, media policy conflicts can be understood through debates. Second, these debates are not only about exchanging arguments but about validity and influence. Third, public debates influence collectively binding decision-making processes because they construct legitimate definitions of an actor, a procedure, of existing rules or of other problems and discursively restrict available options. The structuration of legitimacy can be analysed by studying the grammar of legitimation, the resource distribution among actors and media related rules. The grammar of legitimation, resource distribution and media related rules are both enabling and constraining actors. The grammar of legitimation demands actors to include an interpretation of the legitimation object, a norm, an evaluation and arguments in their statements. It furthermore, demands actors to consider the structure of expectation and signification: prevailing norms, values, and patterns of interpretation. Resource distribution, more specifically the extent to which actors can invest allocative and authoritative resources structures debates about legitimacy. Legitimacy claims can be raised most effectively via mass media. The mass media are self-interested actors in media policy debates. They provide therefore not only a forum for but are actors in legitimacy debates. The rules of the media that affect legitimacy debates and their outcome are threefold: selection, interpretation and depiction of a media policy debate, the media’s own interests, and to what extent leading media cover a media policy issue. The present perspective allows identifying episodes of legitimacy, studying the structure of legitimacy statements, investigating the reasons of successful legitimacy strategies and media organizations’ self-interests.     

Der Begriff Lügenpresse in deutschen Tageszeitungen

In Germany, we currently see on-going changes in politics and society. More and more people seem to lose faith not only in politics, but also in the mainstream media. Since autumn 2014, the distrust in and suspicion of the news media has reached a new level: the group “Pegida” (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West) coined the term Lügenpresse (lying press) to illustrate their growing distrust in news media. The term lying press emerged for the first time in 1914 and was regularly used for war propaganda to defame foreign media. In general, the term is not only used by followers of a certain political direction, but in the context of different, especially antidemocratic, political movements (e.?g., during the National Socialist era or during the GDR era in Germany). Since the beginning of the 2000s, however, the concept has been increasingly referred to by right-wing groups (see Heine 2015; Klarmann 2013). Nevertheless, this is not only an issue in Germany, since Pegida has support in other European countries, such as Great Britain and the Netherlands.News media become part of their own coverage as soon as they refer to these developments. Self-discussion or self-coverage can be described as journalistic communication about journalism and means that the media themselves become the object of reporting. Hence, when media use the term lying press, they inevitably refer to themselves. The present study deals with how the media refer to the term lying press and how they reflect upon it. The main question we deal with in our study is how detailed the concept is reflected on and how the media deal with the associated reproach of deliberate misinformation.Drawing on the concept of framing, a content analysis is employed in order to analyze how newspapers report on the term, how they relate it to themselves and how they deal with its implications. The framing approach deals with the emergence, dissemination and alteration of interpretive frames, which are placed on an issue and determine the point of view on this topic. According to Matthes (2014), frames can be understood as a tool to highlight certain information or aspects of a topic while neglecting others. The framing approach deals with the genesis, alteration and effects of frames, which are located at various points in the communication process. In this study, we focus on media frames in the daily newspaper coverage. We rely upon the definition according to Entman (1993) which has been most frequently operationalized so far.We postulate several research questions that deal with the concept of self-coverage and framing. We are, for example, interested in verifying the sections of newspapers in which the term is referred to and if there are differences in how strongly the term is reflected upon. Furthermore, our research interest focuses on how the term is framed, which frames are dominant in the news media and if the frames change over time. We investigated the coverage of the five most widely circulated daily newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bild, die Welt, and die tageszeitung) in Germany from October 2014 to October 2015. We discovered 304 articles with 338 statements referring to the term lying press. With a cluster analysis, we extracted four frames.Overall, the term lying press is more strongly reflected on in media sections than in political reporting. In political sections the term is often only mentioned without further contextualization. The four extracted clusters, which can be interpreted as media frames, are termed as follows: demanding author frame, reserved expert frame, external accusation frame, and unreflected author frame.In political sections of newspapers, the two rather undifferentiated frames (external accusation frame with 35% and unreflected author frame with 36%) are dominant. The reserved expert frame (35%) and the unreflected author frame (43%) are the two dominant frames in media sections. Nevertheless, the two most common frames (external accusation frame and unreflected author frame) do not use the term lying press in a critical and reflective way (combined percentage of 60%). The selection of the term as “non-word” of the year did not significantly change the frequency with which the four frames are used within the media.Our results show that the term lying press is used in different ways – but in most cases, there is only little or no elaboration. Frequently, the term is only mentioned without a deeper discussion and classification of the term and its meaning. It sometimes even seems that newspapers use the term ironically as a synonym for themselves instead of the terms media or press. However, the associated trivialization of a term carrying such negative connotations is problematic and could help to establish lying press as an unreflected designation for the media. The media might miss the opportunity to both react decisively to the accusations and to illustrate how important they are in a democratic society. The term must be placed in its historical context and should not be permitted as a flat-rate defamation. Whether the underlying criticism is justified or not, the media should discuss the term and, if possible, invalidate it. In this context, the media must perform their function of practicing criticism – also against themselves. Limitations and future research are discussed at the end of the paper.     

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.     

Der Wert der Worte – Wie digitale Methoden helfen,Kommunikations- und Wirtschaftswissenschaft zu verknüpfen

The use of digital methods offers a chance to connect communication science with economics. In recent years, a growing body of research in economics has turned its attention to media content, assuming that journalistic coverage contains hitherto neglected information relevant for business cycles or financial market movements. Interestingly, these approaches largely ignore communication science’s established theories and empirical findings. This paper aims at building a bridge between the two disciplines. Its contribution is threefold: a) it provides an overview of the most important approaches in economics that incorporate media content; b) it operationalizes the concept of the “narrative”, as it is used in economics, and distinguishes it from the concept of the “frame”, essential in communication science; c) exemplifying our approach, we present a new Uncertainty Perception Indicator (UPI) based on the topic modeling method Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), that enables us to isolate different factors of economic policy uncertainty contained in media coverage.Economic studies treat journalistic media content as a proxy for sentiment prevalent in society. Typically, they rely on frequency analyses of certain keywords, like “recession” or “inflation”. Even more sophisticated approaches, such as Shiller (2017), who calls for establishing a new branch of “narrative economics”, or Baker et al. (2016), who construct a comprehensive set of media-based indicators, make no or little reference to communication science. This neglect could be discounted as pure ignorance, but this misses the point. Being a predominantly empirical discipline today, economics relies on long time-series of data, that have not been available for media content, a gap rendering the two disciplines largely incompatible.The gap is also reflected in terminology. “Frame” is a major analytical concept in communication science, while the term “narrative” has become in vogue in economics. Although both concepts are closely connected, they are rarely properly distinguished from each other. “Frame” can be considered as a rather static concept that applies during a limited period of time. “Narrative”, in contrast, implies dynamic properties, i.?e., the sorting of events, causes and effects over time, that explain how the current state of the world has come about, as stressed by Tenenboim-Weinblatt et al. (2016).In this paper, we propose a synergetic concept. Following Entman (1993), a media frame contains four elements: a) a problem definition, b) a problem diagnosis, c) a moral judgement, and d) possible remedies. We augment this approach by adding two more elements. According to our definition, a media narrative comprises a frame, or several ones, plus e) one or several protagonists—persons, institutions, or social groupings (nations, classes, etc.)—, whose relationships are (often) antagonistic and may change over time; and f) events, that are chronologically integrated and that are (often) assumed to constitute causal relationships. To put it metaphorically: a frame is to a narrative what a still photo is to a movie. Both are valuable concepts; the still photo shows more details, while the movie provides a contextualization over time.Topic models like LDA are valuable tools for the measurement of media narratives. The probabilistic approach enables researchers to conduct what may be called “macro-content analyses”, an exercise that focuses on average reporting patterns in large text corpora and can be translated into numerical time-series, thereby facilitating compatibility with empirical economics. Based on a topic’s frequency analysis, its top words and top articles, “mean media narratives” can be formulated, that integrate certain events, protagonists and frames.In our case study, we exemplify this concept by applying it to an indicator that is currently popular in economics, the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index (Baker et al. 2016). The EPU aims at capturing political developments that are exogenous to economic models and therefore unpredictable. Essentially, the indicator is based on the counts of articles containing a set of search words, such as “uncertain”, “economic” as well as institutions like the European Central Bank. Using identical search words as the EPU for Germany, we construct a similar corpus for the years 1994 to 2017. By conducting an LDA-based analysis, we are able to extract additional relevant information from the data. In particular, the evolution of different uncertainty factors and their development over time can be detected.Our Uncertainty Perception Indicator (UPI) contains six relevant news topics that are highly relevant for market developments: central banks, the national government, international politics, the business cycle, companies, and society. While the EPU merely shows how often uncertainty concerning economic policy is mentioned in the media, the UPI also indicates the origins of uncertainty. By grouping the six topics into three analytical categories—governments, markets, and society—we find a distinct break in the time-series. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the perception of uncertainty was rather balanced between the three factors. Since then, however, economic uncertainty has mainly been driven by political actors, most prominently by central banks. The corresponding narratives are a two-chapter story: in the first part, up to 2008, stable financial markets and smoothed business cycles prevailed, making central banking a rather straight-forward task. The second part is characterized by multiple crises, leaving central banks as dominant actors, that intervened with unconventional measures. Thereby, they became stabilizing forces, but at the same time sources of uncertainty with respect to the timing and the impact of these measures.     

Liegt die Zukunft der Kommunikationswissenschaft in der Vergangenheit? Ein Plädoyer für Kontinuität statt Veränderung bei der Analyse von Digitalisierung

At present, social changes are summarized under the term digitalization. At first glance, this requires the development of new concepts, theories, and methods. This article takes a critical look at this assumption. Perceived changes can be understood as an opportunity to work out the constants of human communication. To clarify this argument, in the first part of the article we compare two perspectives: digitalization as changes in reality versus digitalization as a changed view of reality.Digitization is the conversion of continuous signals into discrete signals. While this technical process is more or less irrelevant for communication science, the related social process is of particular concern. However, to a large extent, what constitutes the social side of digitization is unclear. So far, digitalization can probably best be understood as a form of mediatization. Since mediatization is regarded as a social metaprocess, the concept of digitalization lacks empirical substance and the definition of the term remains vague.Due to the lack of meaning, we view digitalization as a change in the way we observe things. From this perspective, we explain the popularity of the concept of digitalization with the help of organizational theories. Following neo-institutionalist arguments, the digitalization discourse can be understood as an identity-forming communication flow. This is reflected in the positioning of the players in the texts that preceded this article. Representatives of standardized social research and interpretative social research present their conceptions of the discipline. Moreover, digitalization can be seen as a rationalized myth. Such myths reflect the expectations of the environment; they are adopted without considering their efficiency. The discipline adopts the attribute, digital, because it has a high positive connotation in the environment of communication science. Ultimately, digitalization appears to be a kind of heuristic for structuring the field with political implications, but not as a theoretically valid research category.Assuming that digitalization is a rationalized myth, consequences can be drawn for the development of theory and methods. We prove the benefit of this changed perspective by discussing the constitutive concepts of communication science. On the theoretical side, many studies have investigated on the topic of public communication. One topos of this research is the blurring of boundaries, e.?g. between public and private or public and interpersonal communication. Instead of highlighting the changes, we seek to determine what remains constant. Traditionally, the public has been associated with mass media and social outcomes. Upon closer inspection and when considering basic communication models, this connection has always been problematic. The blur is caused by definitions of the term and not by changes in the social world. To solve this problem, we propose a redefinition of publicness at the level of interpersonal communication.Methodologically, many approaches have been developed over the past years. For example, webometrics, digital methods and computational methods are promising fields of innovation. However, it is completely unclear how these methods relate to classical methods, such as surveys, content analyses, or observations. If web mining is about tracking user behaviors (digital traces) that were not created for scientific research (process-generated data), it can be seen as a kind of observation. For example, log file analysis is characterized as an observation method in classical methodological textbooks. But the same criterion also applies to websites. Websites are artifacts of human behavior that, for the most part, are not produced for scientific purposes. However, their analysis is usually seen as content analysis, not as observation.This comparison of methods demonstrates that even the distinction between classical methods is unclear. To solve this problem, we propose to better differentiate the different levels involved in the research process. Data collection can be understood as the transfer of empirical facts into data by observation. Data preparation would then be the transformation of data into datasets. Content analysis is a type of data preparation technique. Data analysis transforms data sets into substantial statements about the world. For example, statistics are used for this purpose. New methods can be better located in these known categories. Webometrics, digital methods and computational methods are examples of the automation of the research pipeline components, e.?g. as automated data collection or automated data preparation.We conclude that focusing on continuity offers an opportunity to improve proven concepts and methods instead of replacing them with vague terms. Therefore, we plead for observing continuity in the context of change and not using digitalization and its inherent metaphor of transformation as a lens for analyzing social change.     

Die Auswirkung des Schlüsselereignisses „Silvesternacht in Köln“ auf die Kriminalitätsberichterstattung

Key events captivate the attention of the news and the public. Previous research has shown that key events even influence news coverage that is not directly related to the key event. In fact, key events may increase the amount of news coverage about similar events. We investigated whether the key event “New Year’s Eve in Cologne” elicited a substantial effect on crime coverage. We hypothesized that the mentioning of foreigner-related attributes (foreigner, migration background, North African, and asylum seeker) has increased due to the key event. A content analysis of German news coverage supports this assumption. Therefore, the key event influenced journalistic selection decisions (i.?e., selection of events or selection of event attributes) that ultimately altered actual news coverage. This finding has important societal implications: The German press council recommends to only report on the nationality of offenders if there is a “justified reason.” As revealed by the present study, the key event influenced journalistic decision making and thus actual news coverage. This is an important finding because previous research indicates that the mentioning of foreigner-related attributes in crime articles can contribute to negative beliefs and attitudes toward foreigners and asylum seekers. This may ultimately influence the public debate about this issue.     

Im Abseits oder aus der Tiefe des Raumes – Wie vielfältig berichtet das Fernsehen über regionales Sportgeschehen?

Sports shows are one of the most popular programs on television. Nevertheless, there are certain voices complaining about a lack of diversity of sports content on television. In this paper, it is argued why diversity of sports programs matters. Sports is not only a highly popular and entertaining media content. More than 23 million people are members of sports clubs and athletic clubs all over Germany. That makes sports an aspect of everyday life on a regional and local level. There it provides a lot of social functions, i.?e., social integration, promoting fairness, furthering health issues, and establishing social capital. These aspects should be considered when analyzing the diversity of sports on television programs.German legal rules for broadcasting services differentiate between commercial broadcasters and public service broadcasters (PSBs). The German Federal Constitutional Court has pointed out that commercial broadcasters cannot fulfill the same tasks as the PSBs in regard to the formation of public opinion. Therefore, the PSBs must provide a wide range of content regarding the diversity of social groups and the plurality of opinions. But there are no explicit regulations on the diversity of sports in television programs of PSBs. That is why this paper proposes a framework for analyzing the diversity of sports on television. This framework is based on the differentiation between sports broadcasting and sports journalism. Whilst monotony of sports broadcasting seems to be proven, little is known about the structures of sports journalism on television. It is argued that PSBs are obligated to public value. Therefore, they are obligated to cover sports and athletics comprehensively and it is up to sports journalism to bring to the fore the diversity of sports on television. There are three dimensions to be considered in analyzing the diversity of television sports journalism: diversification of sports content, social pluralism of sports, and regional diversity of sports news coverage. The aspect of diversification is met if sports journalism covers disciplines that are not regularly broadcasted on television. Social pluralism of sports considers how many people are organized in sports and athletic clubs dedicated to particular disciplines. E.?g., there should be more coverage of volleyball than of judo if there are more members in volleyball clubs than there are in judo clubs. Regional diversity of sports news coverage would be fulfilled by covering stories from a wide range of regions, districts, and cities from all over a designated television market area.These considerations lead to four research questions: (1) What are the subjects of regional sports journalism on television? (2) Do sports newsmagazine shows contribute to diversity and diversification of sports contents? (3) To what extent is sports journalism reflecting the diversity of sports and athletics in society? (4) How diverse is sports journalism content in regional aspects?In order to answer these questions a content analysis of sports newsmagazines from three German regional PBS television programs was conducted (“Sport im Osten”, MDR/“Sportclub”, NDR/“Sport im Westen”, “Sport inside”, WDR/“Sportschau Bundesliga am Sonntag”, all three programs). All issues of these sports newsmagazines aired in 2014 were sampled (sampling units). All news stories within the single issues were analyzed (coding units). The topic of the story was recorded for every coding unit. Additionally, the covered sports discipline, the region of the reported event, and the number of on-screen speaking persons were recorded.The data reveals the structure of sports journalism on German regional television channels. Television sports news shows are offering little diversification of sports content. There is a main focus on soccer on all three programs (nearly 80% of all stories presented on the programs of MDR and NDR). Other disciplines with a notable amount of reports are handball, hockey, and basketball. The sports news shows on the MDR program are covering a broad variety of 76 disciplines. The WDR sports news shows cover 62 different disciplines. The portfolio of the NDR sports news shows consists of 40 disciplines. The degree of diversity of the sports news shows is measured as relative entropy (Shannon’s Η’). Whilst sports newsmagazines of MDR and NDR offer little diversity of content (MDR: Η’?=?0.22, NDR: Η’?=?0.20), WDR’s sports newsmagazines present a much wider range of disciplines (Η’?=?0.43).Social pluralism of sports is not met in any of these programs. This is especially true for the representation of women in sports. Only 4.3% of over 111?h of sports news cover women competing in sports. 40% of sports and athletic club members in Germany are women but sports journalism is not reflecting this at all. Social pluralism is also lacking regarding members of different disciplines organized in sports and athletic clubs. E.?g., when ranking sports and athletic clubs by the number of their members, tennis clubs are ranked 3rd place amongst all sports and athletic clubs in North Rhine-Westphalia and Northern Germany. Yet, tennis is not one of the top 5 covered disciplines in the programs of neither the WDR nor the NDR.However, the programs offer a regional complementary sports news coverage. In all three television channels, the sports newsmagazines are reporting mostly from within their designated television market area.In summary, the current study reveals that sports newsmagazines are covering a relatively broad range of sports disciplines, but their focus is on the top-class sport. The public value of sports and athletics is not emphasized in sports journalism of regional television channels.