Die Entwicklung der Gewalt- und Kriminalitätsberichterstattung im lokalen Raum

A long-term investigation of crime coverage in the local columns of two national newspapers (〉Süddeutsche Zeitung〈 and 〉Frankfurter Rundschau〈) from 1949 to 1999 (short news items only) examined whether the threshold of crime reporting was raised over the years. Theories about the gap between reality and media reality make up the theoretical background. So far, research has hardly tackled the question of whether distortions in media reality are stable over time or subject to change. The results show that local coverage draws a distorted picture of crime in general. Bias increased over the years, and it was not based on the over-representation of violent and heavy crime, but rather on the under-representation of light and nonviolent crime, particularly theft, forgery and finance-related crime. Starting in the 1970s, these cases have only rarely passed the selection threshold, which is likely so because of their nonviolent character.     

Die meistbeachteten Autoren und Werke der Kommunikationswissenschaft

The bibliometrical analysis of papers published in the German journals Publizistik and Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft between 1970 and 2010 reveals, for the first time, the most cited research and researchers in communication science. The authors present the 57 most cited scholars and the 45 most highly regarded academic works in the discipline. This canon reflects the different theoretical approaches (action theory and system theory) as well as the subsections in the field of communication studies (media effect studies and journalism research). The study also draws some general conclusions about citation traditions in the discipline. In total there has been a rise in the number of citations since the mid-1990s due to the digital turn—electronic databases and especially the internet have greatly improved the accessibility of sources. The citation rate shows a pattern typical for scientific publications: most studies are hardly ever cited—only very few studies are rewarded with numerous citations.     

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 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.