Benjamin Krämer

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich | LMU · Department of Media and Communication

This article develops a theoretical classification of functions of different Internet applications and plattforms in right-wing populism. Its aim is to understand how the Internet is seen and used by populists and how it contributes to populism. Online communication by both populist leaders or organizations and non-organized actors is discussed. Ma...

This volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on populism and the media, bringing together various disciplinary and theoretical approaches, authors and examples from different continents and a wide range of topical issues. The chapters discuss the contexts of populist communication, communication by populist actors, different types of populist...

This volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on populism and the media, bringing together various disciplinary and theoretical approaches, authors and examples from different continents and a wide range of topical issues. The chapters discuss the contexts of populist communication, communication by populist actors, different types of populist...

The problem of “fake news” has received considerable attention both in public discourse and in scholarship. However, many have argued that the term should be avoided for ideological reasons or because it lacks clarity. At the same time, a growing body of literature investigates “fake news” empirically. We complement this discussion by reflecting on...

Was bedeutet es, online zu handeln? Aufbauend auf dem theoretischen Rahmen der ›sozialen Ontologie‹ des Internets analysiert dieses Werk, wie Menschen im Internet, mithilfe des Internets und in Bezug auf das Internet handeln; ja, wie vielleicht auch technische Systeme online ›handeln‹, wenn sie Aktivitäten entfalten, die umgangssprachlich in Begrif...

It is often claimed that political disinformation is more abundant than ever, that populists are particularly prone to lying, and that we live in an era of post-truth or epistemic relativism. Contrary to these views, we interpret this historical trend as a shift from objective to authentic forms of political truth claims. We develop a diagnostic fr...

The concept of media populism originally assumes a relationship between the way journalistic media operate and populism, and in a more narrow sense, refers to the idea that media outlets and actors can convey a populist ideology or discourse. This contribution shortly reviews the history of the concept and reviews different understandings. It then...

Starting with an outline of Pierre Bourdieu’s reception in German-speaking communication research, this article identifies an important omission: his writings on politics and the corresponding symbolic struggles. In particular, the field of research on political communication could profit from the approaches outlined in these publications. This is...

Media users’ perception of the correspondence of media content to reality has significant consequences for media use and effects. At the same time, new media environments have been complicating the users’ task of judging the realism of media information. Against that background, our study addresses the cues and criteria on which media users base th...

Faced with the ongoing evolution of the media landscape, media and communication science is constant-ly asking itself new questions concerning the tension between stability and change in social communication. In this context, many relevant topics exist for which there are still no publications that would systematically evaluate what we know (empiri...

Faced with the ongoing evolution of the media landscape, media and communication science is constant-ly asking itself new questions concerning the tension between stability and change in social communication. In this context, many relevant topics exist for which there are still no publications that would systematically evaluate what we know (empiri...

While the so-called replication crisis is increasingly discussed and addres­sed through reformed research practices and institutional structures, this contribution diagnoses a theory or interpretation crisis and argues that the current emphasis on transparency, reproducibility, and reliability should be complemented by stronger efforts in terms of...

Populism research usually addresses politicians as part of the criticized elite, but neglects the media. This study explores populist attitudes against the media and their relation to political populism. The study validates the proposed antimedia populism scale and shows that antimedia populist attitudes apply to a specific and small group of Germa...

A certain anti-science sentiment seems to coincide with the rise of certain (seemingly) populist forces. An apparent affinity between anti-science attitudes (or ideologies) and populism has not escaped social scientists’ attention. To get at the core of the problem, Niels Mede and Mike Schäfer (2020) have recently proposed the concept of science-re...

Right-wing populist ideologies are expressed not only by politicians, party members or mass media actors but also by non-organised citizens on social media. On these platforms, political messages alternate with posts revealing personal lifestyles. We assume that an increasingly coherent political milieu and identity are emerging around right-wing p...

The rise of right-wing populism in various countries poses difficult challenges to journalism: While populists themselves often accuse journalists of being biased against them or even of lying, critics allege that the mainstream media cover populism too extensively and normalize it. We reconstruct an understudied perspective on this problem: how jo...

This volume considers strategies, modalities, and styles of media use and reception. Dynamic changes in media technology and infrastructure have spurred important changes in media use. Looking at these developments within the common conceptual framework of reception strategies, modes and styles of media use and reception, this volume is highly rele...

The concept of strategies of media use is introduced to describe how reception as a practice is related to social structure and individuals’ lives. Elements of strategies are outlined and hypotheses are proposed on their relationship to social structure. A quantitative survey demonstrates how strategies of media use can be measured. Using televisio...

The question of how the media are being used by individuals has not really entered the canon of traditional research interests and is not commonly used to characterize an established field of research in the discipline. We think this is worth changing. This volume therefore brings together a number of contributions that represent different perspect...

Research into strategies, modes, and modalities of media use and reception is characterized by a remarkable methodological diversity—in this volume but also in general. This chapter therefore aims at mapping and discussing some of the methodological approaches in this book but also in relevant research to date. These approaches are discussed in the...

In our post-face, we discuss the intellectual traditions that have inspired communication researchers when conceptualizing and theorizing how we use the media. We reflect on the contribution of the articles in this volume to this particular approach to media use. We then try to contextualize the “how” of media use with regard to how we experience a...

This volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on populism and the media, bringing together various disciplinary and theoretical approaches, authors and examples from different continents and a wide range of topical issues. The chapters discuss the contexts of populist communication, communication by populist actors, different types of populist...

The presentation of single cases as examples for larger phenomena has a long-standing tradition in journalism. However, their usage has been viewed rather critically within the scientific community, because they are employed in a highly selective manner. Consequently, over the course of the last three decades, communication scholars from different...

Research on cooperative social structures and particular types of conflict behavior online is readily available. However, the field lacks a framework to analyze how antagonistic structures are represented on online platforms. Social structures can be represented formally (manifestly) or informally (in open verbal or visual forms) or remain latent -...

Parental mediation and modelling are important factors in the development of media-related behaviors. This study explores their role for media innovation adoption. Results of a representative CATI survey (n = 434) show that perceived parental media innovativeness and mediation are related to media innovativeness at later life stages. The amount of...

This volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on populism and the media, bringing together various disciplinary and theoretical approaches, authors and examples from different continents and a wide range of topical issues. The chapters discuss the contexts of populist communication, communication by populist actors, different types of populist...

Fotografien gelten als besonders authentisch, da sie es vermeintlich vermögen, eine präzise, wahrheitsgetreue und unvermittelte Repräsentation der Wirklichkeit zu erzeugen. Andererseits eignen sich Fotografien auch hervorragend dazu, trotz Inszenierung und Manipulation einen authentischen Eindruck zu erwecken. Um sich dem Thema „visuelle Authentizi...

Research on media use is mainly concerned with which media and content people use, to what extent, and why they do so. However, another strand of research has been examining the question of how people actually use the media. We discuss a number of fundamental methodological issues and decisions arising in the context of empirical research on how pe...

This study examines how media coverage of bystander intervention affects helping behavior in similar situations, taking into account the role of motivations for and against helping. In a 2x4 factorial online experiment, a newspaper report on a case of bystander intervention was varied in terms of a 1) good vs. bad outcome for the helper and 2) four...

The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet’s power as an instant source of mass information can be used...

The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet’s power as an instant source of mass information can be used...

Parental mediation and modelling are important factors in the development of media-related behaviors. This study explores their role for media innovation adoption. Results of a representative CATI survey (n = 434) show that perceived parental media innovativeness and mediation are related to media innovativeness at later life stages. The amount of...

How does populism understand society and the role of the media, and how can the relationship between populism and the media be interpreted from a perspective of social theory? This article compares an ideal-typical right-wing populist worldview to a social-theoretical perspective and populism is interpreted as a reaction to structures of modern soc...

Angesicht des Aufkommens des Rechtspopulismus wird den Medien nachgesagt, zu seinem Aufstieg beigetragen zu haben. Wir unterscheiden verschiedene Ebenen, auf denen sie ihn begünstigen können, denn ohne eine solche Differenzierung ist der Beitrag der Medien nicht klar zu ermessen. Außerdem zeigen wir auf, dass es für den Journalismus aufgrund seiner...

The framework of the ‘social ontology of the internet’ is applied to music recommendation platforms. Those websites provide individual suggestions of music to users, creating new dynamics of taste that are no longer based on human-to-human interaction and verbalized judgments. An exemplary analysis of three platforms shows that different conception...

Right-wing populists often criticise the established media for being untruthful or censoring what critics consider to be important information—for instance, the ethnic background of perpetrators—and for being biased against right-wing populist actors. That hostility towards journalism can be understood as a consequence of the right-wing populist wo...

All over Europe, we are currently witnessing populist political parties and figures enjoying success in elections and mobilising the electorate against the supposed elite. The most recent example of this political development is the Brexit campaign in the UK, which demonstrated that populists can exert considerable influence over political decision...

Fotografien gelten als besonders authentisch, da sie es vermeintlich vermögen, eine präzise, wahrheitsgetreue und unvermittelte Repräsentation der Wirklichkeit zu erzeugen. Andererseits eignen sich Fotografien auch hervorragend dazu, trotz Inszenierung und Manipulation einen authentischen Eindruck zu erwecken. Um sich dem Thema „visuelle Authentizi...

The perception of political messages may not only be shaped by textual information, but also by its visual appearance. An online experiment investigated how newspaper articles’ layout style and text slant affect the perception of a newspapers’ political orientation on the left-right axis. The layout versions were based on a prior analysis of correl...

It is commonly said that “there are” social structures on the Internet. But how can they exist there, how can we identify and classify them? A theoretical and methodological framework is presented that describes the relationship between data structures, algorithms, and different types of social structures. We suggest that the latter are “represente...

Wir möchten das Verhältnis von Politik und Medien durch eine Synthese von Sozialisationstheorie sowie Mediatisierungs- und Medialisierungstheorie fassen, indem wir uns den bisher vernachlässigten Medienbiografien von Spitzenpolitikern und -politikerinnen zuwenden. Wir sehen es hierzu als notwendig an, die genannten Ansätze zu erweitern und stärker...

An R script that automatically calculates reliability measures for all variables in a dataset. See the script for instructions on how to use it.

While there has been a broad debate on the use of theory in history in general, there are few contributions by historians of communication and the media discussing the role of theory in their particular field. We therefore review and discuss some of the main arguments pertaining to the use of theory in historiography and apply them to the field of...

After a brief history of the concept of the people, political popularity is discussed with regard to explanatory factors, the concept of charismatic leadership, and populism. This is followed by an overview of perspectives on popular culture, including theories of distinction among taste cultures; evaluative views by conservatives, critical theoris...

The relationship between the political strategy of the German chancellors after the Second World War toward the media and their media socialization as well as their media biography is analyzed using secondary sources, (auto)biographies, and other media sources. We interpret the influence of the chancellors' social background and early influences, t...

Media contain various cues to opinions of others and therefore serve as an important source of information about the climate of opinion. We distinguish explicit cues directly describing opinion distributions in society, from implicit cues lacking such a direct reference. In an experiment, we examined the relative impact of survey data (explicit cue...

Soziologische Theoriebildung besteht nicht nur in Begriffsbildung und der Aufstellung substanzieller Thesen, sondern auch in formalen Operationen, einer ‚Theorie-Praxis' der Problematisierung und Problemlösung, welche jenseits des Gehalts einer Theorie Vorbild für weitere Theoriebildung sein kann. Solche Operationen werden am Beispiel des Werkes vo...

Case examples are a common stylistic device in journalistic writing. This volume, now available in its second edition, provides an overview of research into the effects of such examples on the general public’s attitudes and their conceptions of reality. In particular, this line of research considers the stronger effects of case examples in comparis...

On the basis of a review of the literature on populism and a definition of populism in general, the concept of media populism is developed. The structural position of media organizations is analyzed regarding the opportunities and constraints when using a populist rhetoric and populist political claims. Two exemplary cases of media populism (typica...

Mediennutzung wird hier theoretisch als strategische Praxis (im Sinne Bourdieus) gefasst, die zu langfristigen Profiten führt oder von kurzfristigen taktischen Orientierungen geleitet ist. Mittels Strategien der Mediennutzung passen sich Rezipienten der Struktur von Situationen, Medieninhalten und Technologien an; ferner sind Strategien mit der Soz...

The question of emotion in music is addressed from a linguistic perspective, providing a typology of statements that can be made about that topic. In particular, it is analyzed how an interlocutor could react to such statements uttered by another person, and whether or how the content of the statements could be refuted by the listener, and possibly...

The mediatization of music (i.e., the social construction and structuration of music in the media) is theorized as the emergence and transformation of institutions by synthesizing existing research and complementing it with additional theoretical considerations. The focus is on institutions that link production and consumption: concepts of musical...

In der empirischen Journalismusforschung spielen zwei Größen eine besondere Rolle: Grundgesamtheit (auch Zielgesamtheit genannt) und Stichprobe. Diese stehen in einem wechselseitigen Zusammenhang (vgl. Abbildung 1). Einerseits sind Kenntnisse über Größe und Struktur der Grundgesamtheit die Voraussetzung für die Anwendung verteilungsangepasster Verf...

Although participatory press photography has existed for decades, its institutionalization by tabloid journalism is a relatively new phenomenon. The most popular example in Germany is constituted by the “reader reporters” of the tabloid newspaper Bild. Supporters of participatory press photography hope for an enrichment of news coverage while its c...

In einer Vollerhebung der Leserreporterfotografie in der Bild-Zeitung in den Jahren 2006 bis 2008 werden Inhalt, Bedeutung und Funktion der partizipativen Pressefotografie im Boulevardjournalismus untersucht. Die Vorgehensweise folgt dabei dem ikonografisch-ikonologischen Ansatz und der Methode der Bildtypenanalyse: Zunächst werden die Bilder nach...

In different countries, radio stations broadcast what is regularly categorized as classical music. The question arises, however, whether the various stations rely on the same concept of the genre and whether they apply the same programming strategies. In an analysis focusing on the composers of the works broadcast, programmes of four radio stations...

Conclusion • Capture-recapture analysis allows to estimate the size of journalistic populations; • Based on the results of the analysis the completeness of a register or the moment to stop snowball sampling can be determined more accurately; • Refining the analysis should also allow to estimate the structure of populations in order to improve propo...

Journalistic co-orientation is defined as journalists’ use of other media with the function of ensuring legitimate news decisions or enhancing journalistic prestige, as well as promoting economic success under conditions of uncertainty. Among the different forms of co-orientation, the effect of the routine use of quality media as a source of orient...

Assuming that an economic approach can contribute to the understanding of media events, this article analyzes the different types of strategies, investments and returns (financial as well as symbolic) related to this type of events that are both staged or covered by the media. Two aspects of institutional frameworks, property rights and ascriptions...