Datenjournalismus in Deutschland

Data journalism is increasingly practiced and taught in journalism schools. The present study attempts to describe empirical data journalism in Germany for the first time in its fundamentals. The question is whether a new type of journalism is emerging. The study here is concerned in particular with the role models of data journalists. The investigation is based on the structural functionalist role theory. Structured interviews with 35 data journalists served as an empirical data base. We found that their role and activity profile differs in various dimensions compared to the average journalist in Germany. While the information function of journalists scored relatively low, the criticism and control function was particularly pronounced. The self perception was also strongly marked by allowing readers and users new opinions and to communicate new trends and ideas.     

1987: AIDS erreicht Deutschland

When, and how, was the issue of AIDS first established in the broad population in (West-)Germany? Our case study shows that 〉Bild〈 (the leading national tabloid newspaper) may have played an important part in establishing the issue. The people’s concern about AIDS runs astonishingly parallel with the intensity of coverage in 〉Bild〈. Even priming effects, such as the number of HIV-Tests performed, appear to be inspired by 〉Bild〈. At the same time, it becomes clear that coverage in 〉Bild〈 did not necessarily follow topical events.     

Kulturradio in Deutschland 2010: Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme

Cultural radio in Germany has undergone a radical change since the turn of the millennium. The public debate on cultural radio programmes is characterized by the voices of different agents and stakeholders. In this essay I try to reconstruct and connect the different perspectives and levels of change. The inspection focuses firstly on the public service cultural radio’s dilemma of legitimation between audience rating and educational mandate. Secondly the paper describes the symbolic fight for the power of definition of legitimate culture between the economy and cultural authorities. The analysis also addresses radio’s position in the contemporary media repertoire, cultural radio programmes in Germany in general, and the differentiation between public services and private cultural radio programmes. Finally the following factors of change will be identified: (a) the change of radio’s social function in the media repertoire, (b) the media system as general framework, (c) the power of legitimation, (d) the understanding of culture, (e) technological progress, and at last (f) the cultural radio programmes themselves.     

Das Fach Kommunikationswissenschaft

Communication Science appears to become more and more professionalized and seems to increase its research activities and publications. Yet there are no far empirical data to support what seems to be evident. In a survey among DGPuK members in 2010, Altmeppen et al. (2011) found a status quo that shows two interesting aspects: German Communication Science has extended its research activity and, at the same time, differentiated itself substantively and methodically. The data also show that the survey instrument used in the past does not grasp the discipline’s thematic, theoretic, and methodical diversity any more. This finding is a challenge to the field: Communication Science must find a way to systematize and structure itself in order to gather all thematic and methodic directions under one umbrella, considering both the broad avenues and the side roads. Based on the 2010 data and the existing survey categories, this paper develops an empirical instrument that can be used to examine, in a long term design, the research activities in Communication Science and demonstrate, to the discipline itself and to outside observers, its multifarious facets and its dynamic.     

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.     

Das Paradox der Medienwirkungsforschung

Results of empirical studies on media effects differ considerably, depending on whether they are derived from individual or aggregate analyses. All in all, the more precise analyses on the individual level lead to weaker evidence of media effects than analyses on the aggregate level. This can be called the paradox of media effects research. It can be explained by ecological fallacies or by the fact that analyses on the individual level are too complex and exclude the effects of interpersonal communication occurring after people were exposed to media messages. In the first step, this article argues that individual and aggregate analyses are implicitly based on different definitions of media effects. Combining a content analysis of television news and a six wave panel survey, it then shows that aggregate analyses are more fruitful when media content is consonant, and individual analyses are more fruitful when media content is dissonant. The causes of these results and their consequences for media effects research are discussed.     

Die Emigration der Zeitungswissenschaft nach 1933 und der Verlust sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektiven in Deutschland

The emigration of newspaper scientists (a literal rendering of the then-used German term Zeitungswissenschaftler) is a largely unstudied subject. The author argues that emigration contributed immensely to a loss of social science perspectives in newspaper science. Simultaneously after 1933, the politicization of the academic field of newspaper science and its widespread adaption to the propaganda teachings of the national socialists impeded the handing down of approaches with a social science perspective. This fading out of social science perspectives also spread into the period after 1945; for now the disgraced academic field looked at the United States rather than at the approaches of the times of the Weimar republic. This article summarizes important approaches of Weimar period newspaper science and sociology, for instance by Gerhard Münzner or Karl Mannheim. The latter taught the sociology of the press and of public opinion in Heidelberg after 1928. It becomes clear that the academic milieu that combined newspaper science and sociology gradually abandoned stimulus-response perspectives from the late twenties on.     

Das Paradox der Medienwirkung auf Nichtnutzer

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

Das Zusammenspiel von gesellschaftlicher Umwelt- und Selbstbeobachtung in der Medienberichterstattung

Mass media communication makes societal changes visible and opens the platform for discussion and public debate. Observation of societal changes and public debate are intrinsically linked. Using the example of media coverage on war and questions of defense and security policies, we researched the relationship between societal changes and public debate in a longitudinal study. We performed a content analysis of the daily newspapers FAZ and Süddeutsche Zeitung for the time period of 1989?C2000. The results showed interesting frame relationships between the coverage of single wars and the coverage of defense policies. Specific aspects of war coverage lead to more coverage of security and defense policy issues, and the framing of the one is interrelated to the framing of the other in complex ways.     

Das Geschäft mit der Prognose

All prognoses face a predicament of falsification. It is not whether a forecast development will really occur, but whether a forecast can be applied and used for decisions that finally decides its success. Good prognoses possess a reliable starting point, clearly defined conditions and empirically supported hypotheses of the relations between dependent and independent variables. Prognoses in the media usually serve as points for orientation in strategic planning and the formation of knowledge relevant for decisions. Even high-quality prognoses cannot completely do away with a remainder of insecurity, which cannot be totally eliminated with the most expensive research design. According to the degree of specialization and expenditure, various forms of prognostic advice can be classified, reaching from simple previews into the future to complex simulation models and scenarios. The examples of a »bygone future« presented in the article show that the opportunity for prognoses is substantially dependent on conditions of stability, and also finds its limits there.