Was ist die Funktion von Tod und Sterben in medialer Unterhaltung?

Why do death and dying occur so frequently in fictional media entertainment, although our rather hedonistic contemporary society seems to marginalize the subject otherwise? Searching for answers to this question, the paper first reflects possible explanations from entertainment theory. Displaying death is very reliable in terms of facilitating affective responses by the audience and thus serves as a safe technique to generate entertainment experiences. Subsequently, the paper discusses the perspective of terror management theory from social psychology to approach the subject of death in media entertainment, followed by an even more abstract reflection on religiosity, coping with death and secularized societies. The conclusion is that media entertainment has begun to take over parts of the coping support that was traditionally offered by the religions, thus contributing to the audience’s search for meaning in life and dealing with one’s own mortality.     

Lassen sich mit dem Internet Wählerstimmen gewinnen?

The internet is widely used by political parties and candidates as an instrument in election campaigns in Germany. Voters’ use of the internet for political information is, however, still at a low level. Studies yield mixed results regarding the impact of online campaigning on candidates’ electoral performance but there is some evidence for such an impact. However, the mechanism behind it remains unclear. Can positive effects be attributed to persuasion or mobilization? An analysis addressing this question is lacking for German election campaigns. Based on three candidate surveys during local, state and national election campaigns in Germany, this article presents new results regarding the question of whether the internet helps German politicians to win votes, and how these effects can be characterized. Multivariate analysis reveals that, on all three levels, structural characteristics such as party membership and political status are the most significant predictors of a candidate’s electoral performance. The use of online media as a campaign technique has an effect during the national elections only. This effect is only significant for Web 1.0 applications and not for the more interactive Web 2.0.     

Politik mal anders: Die Politikdarstellung in „Harald Schmidt“ im Kontrast zur „Tagesschau“

Politics on television is no longer reserved for the news media; it is rather increasingly expanding into formats with their main focus on entertainment, e.g. late night comedy. However, so far research in German-speaking countries has more or less neglected these programs and their potential for political discourse. This article focuses on the specific characteristics in the depiction of politics in the German late night comedy Harald Schmidt and compares the results with the news-show Tagesschau. The interest is on the share of political issues, on the political actors and their depiction and on the presentation of the political stories. The quantitative content analysis includes all weekly episodes of one season of Harald Schmidt (2009/10), and for each episode the three preceding episodes of the Tagesschau. As expected Harald Schmidt has a lower share of political issues than Tagesschau. With regard to the selection of political actors, the late night comedy favors individual and national actors and focuses more frequently on private aspects. The presentation of the political stories is characterized by a lower degree of information, a higher degree of personalization and less balanced comments.     

Journalistische Qualität – eine empirische Untersuchung des Konstrukts mithilfe der Concept Map Methode

Journalistic quality is one of the most important and at the same time most complex constructs in communication science. In particular, the dependencies between the diverse number of quality criteria has barely been investigated empirically. Based on the normative definition of journalistic quality according to democracy theory and employing the concept map method, this article attempts to determine the composition of the journalistic quality construct and contribute to a clearer understanding and a more reliable operationalization of the construct. The empirical data was collected from leading editors and journalistic quality scholars who displayed their understanding of the construct in the form of concept maps. Following the procedure suggested by Roedder John et al. (2006), the individual concept maps were then converted into one consensus map—a single map that represents all concept maps. The results show high levels of reliability and face validity. Central quality criteria are found to be credibility, relevancy, and professionalism. Further criteria that significantly determine the main criteria are impartiality, correctness/accuracy, objectivity, neutrality, and immediacy.     

Wer ist politisch aktiv im Social Web?

The Internet—so it has been hoped—makes political information of all kinds more accessible to citizens, facilitates participation in politics and thus promotes democracy. But who really consumes political information on the Internet, and who actively participates in online political discussions? Are people participating now who were not in the past? Or are they still the “usual suspects”—e.g., highly educated and politically interested citizens? This article uses data from a survey of almost 3,000 Austrians, 14 years and older, for a secondary analysis to examine the characteristics of those (a) who follow political online communication in Austria and (b) who actively contribute to it. Our results show that political content on the Internet (still) mostly attracts the politically interested.     

Versteckte Effekte

Effects of product placements on attitudes have rarely been the subject of scientific research so far. Furthermore, existing findings are partially contradictory??a fact that has been explained with the impact of intervening variables both on the side of the stimulus and of the recipient. Especially the design of the placement is said to have an influence on whether the intended effect shows up or not. In this context the prominence/salience of the placement is of importance. The following study is based on an experiment (n?=?221) testing how the prominence of placements affects the attitudes of recipients. For this, we measure attitudes not only by explicit questioning using a semantic differential, but also with the help of an implicit association test. In doing so we react to criticism of the methodological one-sidedness of past examinations of the effects of product placement, most of them solely relying on self-reports to measure attitudes. The experiment shows that the implicit measurement of attitudes uncovers effects that would have remained in the dark if only explicit questioning had occurred. The study also reveals that the presentation of subtle placements results in more positive brand attitudes; this relation is moderated by recipients?? programme assessment.     

Wirtschaft Online: Zweitverwertung oder publizistischer Mehrwert?

The present study analyzes the relevance and structure of business journalism in the internet aiming at a systematic analysis and evaluation of journalistic diversity in online business news coverage. Based on a multi-step procedure, 16 websites with high relevance for internet users were identified. In a subsequent communicator survey, the providers of these internet platforms were interviewed to derive insights into the structure and quality evaluation of online business journalism. Results indicate that internet-only business news coverage has not been able to establish itself yet. Further, the importance of traditional media brands for online communication could be confirmed. In spite of a judicial and organizational autonomy of the majority of the internet platforms, no provider generates his content independently of the umbrella brand. These facts may be attributed to limited personal manpower as well as differentiated and topic-oriented content recycling strategies aimed at the exclusivity of topics in general rather than content specific to certain channels.     

Grenzen der Wirksamkeit von Fallbeispielen?

It is a widely shared assumption in exemplification research that exemplars in the media strongly influence people’s judgements, in contrast to the rather ineffective base-rate information. The aim of this study is to reassess this assumption. Because there are hardly any studies that systematically vary the content of the base-rate information, it has been impossible so far to detect any influence of this type of information. Using an experiment with 214 subjects, the influence of both exemplars and base-rate information are investigated in the context of political communication. The influence of predispositions on the effects of both types of information is examined. The results show that the subjects formed their judgements on the basis of the base-rate information, and not on the basis of the exemplars. Predispositions seem to play but a subsidiary role in this effect.     

Das Erklärungsdilemma der Medienwirkungsforschung.

Starting from the deductive-nomological model, the partitioning of variance, several classifications of media effects a multi-level logic, the paper presents a variance-based model of media effects beyond the single recipient. However, when explaining media effects on meso- and macro-level units, media effects research faces a dilemma. The article discusses this dilemma both formally and by using selected examples (stock market, public opinion, right-wing violence). The dilemma of explaining media effects has to be taken seriously since it entails problems going far beyond the simple question of individual and aggregate data. Part of it are the problems of modeling the link between micro and macro-level as well as its dynamics – which raises further questions such as “where do media effects end?“.