Andreas Vogel

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Andreas Vogel

     

Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen

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Klaus-Dieter Altmeppen

     

Frank Esser

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Frank Esser

     

Editorial

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Editorial

     

Thomas Schuster

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Thomas Schuster

     

Nikodemus Herger

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Nikodemus Herger

     

Otto B. Roegele (6.8.1920-6.9.2005)

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Otto B. Roegele (6.8.1920-6.9.2005)

     

Peter Glotz (6.3.1939 – 25.8.2005)

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Peter Glotz (6.3.1939 – 25.8.2005)

     

Buchbesprechungen

Zusammenfassungen  Im Fach Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft liegen bislang kaum empirische Daten zur Situation des promovierten wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses vor. Diese Studie gibt Aufschluss über Besch?ftigungssituation, Berufszufriedenheit, Betreuung sowie Karrierevorstellungen und -strategien der Post-Doktorandinnen und-Doktoranden des Faches. Die Ergebnisse einer Befragung im deutschsprachigen Raum zeigen, dass die Postdocs mit ihrer beruflichen Situation, vor allem mit den Arbeitsinhalten und der Flexibilit?t der Arbeitszeiten zufrieden sind und eine akademische Karriere anstreben. Die Konkurrenz und die Hürden auf dem Karriereweg werden allerdings als gro? wahrgenommen. Zudem scheinen die als vielversprechend eingesch?tzten Karrierestrategien wie das Publizieren in internationalen Fachzeitschriften nur schwer umsetzbar zu sein. Einzig jene Postdocs, die von ihrer/m vorgesetzten Professor/in beim Publizieren und beim Aufbau eines Netzwerks unterstützt und betreut werden, schaffen es, viel zu publizieren und international in Erscheinung zu treten. Hingegen sind zwei andere Gruppen weniger erfolgreich in der Umsetzung der eigenen Ziele bzw. verfolgen mit der Habilitation eher traditionelle Karrierestrategien.

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Are many paths leading to Rome? Professional situation and career strategies of post-doc scholars in communication and media studies

There are hardly any data on the situation of post-doc scholars in the field of communication and media studies. This study describes the employment, job satisfaction, mentoring, and career concepts and strategies of post-docs in the field. A survey among post-docs in the German-speaking countries shows that they are satisfied with their job situation, especially the kind of work they have to do and the flexibility of their working hours. They also aspire to a career in academia. Competition and obstacles on the career path are, however, perceived as considerable. Some strategies such as publishing in international journals are seen as promising, but hard to attain. Only those post-docs who are supported by the professor they work for succeed in publishing much and getting to be known internationally. Other groups are less successful in reaching their goals or pursue the traditional career path of habilitation.

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Dr. Werner Wirth ist ordentlicher Professor für empirische Kommunikations- und Medienforschung am Institut für Publizistikwissenschaft und Medienforschung (IPMZ) der Universit?t Zürich. Ilona St?mpfli (lic. rer. soc.) ist wissenschaftliche Assistentin am IPMZ. Saskia B?cking (Dr. des.) ist ebenfalls wissenschaftliche Assistentin und Dr. J?rg Matthes wissenschaftlicher Assistent am IPMZ.     

Konkrete Kommunikationsforschung

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Online-Journalismus braucht neue moralische Normen

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Auf dem Weg zur Normalwissenschaft

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

Wissenschaftsformate des deutschen Fernsehens im internationalen Vergleich

This article explores factors which influence volume and structure of science programming by German TV broadcasters, focusing on influences of the national channel pattern. Based on a comparison of the German market with ten others, it identifies three factors as relevant especially for the large volume of science programming in Germany:

1. The comparably large segmentation of the public TV market.
2. The comparably high number of mid-sized commercial channels with market shares between 5 and 10 %.
3. The comparably low dependency of public service channels on advertising income.

From a European perspective, Germany together with Finland and Sweden has market structures which sustain a large volume and high variety of science programme offers.     

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

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

Assessing Instrumentality of Mission Statements and Social-Financial Performance Links: Corporate Social Responsibility as Context

This study blends stakeholder theory’s instrumental component with contingency theory’s accommodation and advocacy variables for a new framework used to scrutinize corporate social responsibility (CSR) elements in mission statements with possible linkages to corporate financial performance. Although findings have been mixed among research on corporate mission statements’ connection to performance, we found that looking for links in a CSR context lends new significance to mission statement instrumentality. Specifically, we content-analyzed Fortune 500 corporations’ mission statements to compare/contrast language used regarding stakeholders and other specific characteristics central to CSR. Findings suggest that higher-performing corporations’ mission statements devoted greater attention to accommodation variable components – such as desired public image, concern for satisfying employees, and concern for relationships. Higher-performing corporations’ mission statements also attended more to advocacy variable components – addressing corporate concern for market/profit/product. Although findings do not definitively establish causality between mission statement and social/financial performance, discovering that higher-performing corporations attend more to stakeholders and to market/profit/product than lesser-performing corporations underscores mission statements’ instrumentality and represents a more nuanced means for investigating mission statement/ performance linkages.     

Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication

ABSTRACT

In this editorial, I (1) explain why social media influencers bear relevance for strategic communication, (2) provide a brief introduction to research on social media influencers, and (3) unroll the rationale behind this Special Issue of the International Journal of Strategic Communication.     

Parasoziale Meinungsführerschaft

In a democratic society, the media operate as a public space in which political and social topics are discussed. As media communicators influence and restrict both the topics of discussion and the amount of information available from in the media, they exert a substantial influence on the recipients’ formation of political opinion. The present study examines this impact by integrating the theoretical concepts of opinion leadership and parasocial relationship, resulting in a phenomenon referred to as parasocial opinion leadership. Based on the results of a qualitative survey of recipients, the concept was then substantiated. Parasocial opinion leadership is based on viewer’s perceptions and comes into existence, if (1) a recipient ascribes certain attributes to a media communicator based on a parasocial relationship; which (2) allows for a gradual influence of the media personality on the recipient’s opinions and attitudes by fulfilling at least one of the three functions information and reduction of complexity, orientation or arousal of interest.     

Synchronisation von Nachricht und Werbung

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

Predictors of H1N1 Influenza Pandemic News Coverage: Explicating the Relationships between Framing and News Release Selection

In health pandemic situations characterized by urgency, uncertainty and information scarcity, news media are highly reliant on information subsidies from public health agencies. This study, based on a content analysis, examines the relationships between the framing characteristics of news releases and subsequent publication to identify the predictors of news release selection for news coverage in the 2009 H1N1 A Influenza pandemic in Singapore. Through the news releases issued by the Singapore Ministry of Health and the resulting news stories in a Singapore newspaper, The Straits Times, this study found that six framing variables significantly predict a news release’s selection for news coverage: theme, episodic vs. thematic framing, emotion appeal, tone, gain vs. loss, and outbreak vs. nonoutbreak situation. News releases are more likely to be selected for news coverage when they focus on a preventive frame, rely on thematic framing, use emotion appeal, have a positive tone, are framed as gain, and are issued during an outbreak situation.     

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.