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News Coverage about Direct-Democratic Campaigns in a Period of Structural Crisis
Abstract
This article examines whether money talks in political campaign coverage. Analyzing news coverage about twenty-nine recent direct-democratic campaigns in Switzerland, it shows that votes involving expensive campaigns and populist proposals—and ideally both—correlate with high media attention. This favors especially Switzerland's largest party with the most resources, the right-wing populist Swiss People's Party (SVP). A case study of one vote on media policy confirms these patterns and shows that news coverage is also shaped by the vested (self-)interests of media organizations. The results imply that news media, affected by the crisis in journalism, fail to cover a truly wide diversity of actors and topics.
... It should be noted that we prefer the notion of public debate to that of campaigns since the latter is basically limited to mobilization and communication efforts by partisan actors who aim to convince citizens of their respective issue-specific positions (Bernhard, 2012). In contrast, media actors are usually much more neutral and also typically let both sides have their say in the reporting (Udris et al., 2016). ...
... In addition to interpersonal communication, citizens have been found to rather routinely make up their minds based on elite communication from political actors and journalists (Kriesi, 2011). While traditional mass media (especially newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasts) still play a central role, social media have steadily grown in importance over recent years (e.g., Arlt et al., 2019;Udris et al., 2016). ...
... For the intensity of the public debates, which we will interact with gender for testing H2, we incorporated external data on media coverage into the VOTO dataset. Thanks to the courtesy of the Research Center for the Public Sphere and Society at the University of Zurich (fög), we employ an indicator that includes the number of articles produced by 19 important Swiss media outlets from the two biggest language regions i.e., the Germanand French-speaking parts (for similar measures, see e.g., Udris et al., 2016). We added the number of articles these media outlets produced about the proposition(s) submitted to a given ballot during the hot phase of the campaigns (i.e., in the period between 12 weeks and one week before the ballot date). ...
Despite the growing importance of new technologies, research on individual opinion formation in the digital domain is still in its infancy. This article empirically examines citizens’ use of social media in the context of direct democracy. Based on previous work, we expect men to form their opinions on social media more frequently than women (gender gap hypothesis). In the second step, we focus on the contextual level by examining the role campaigns play in reducing this discrepancy. More specifically, we hypothesize that the presumed gender gap narrows in accordance with the increasing intensity of public debates that precede ballots (interaction hypothesis). The empirical analysis draws on 13 post-ballot surveys held at Switzerland’s federal level from 2016 to 2020 and supports both the gender gap and the interaction hypotheses.
Direktdemokratische Verfahren geben Anlass zu Ängsten und Hoffnungen. Einerseits wird von ihnen erwartet, dass sie dem Ideal der Demokratie zum Durchbruch verhelfen. So ist die Ausweitung der demokratischen Verfahren über die repräsentative Demokratie hinaus für Vertreter einer „starken“ bzw. einer „partizipativen“ Demokratie (etwa Barber 1984) entscheidend, weil sie davon ausgehen, dass die aktive Beteiligung an kollektiven Entscheidungsprozessen eine emanzipatorische Wirkung auf die Bürgerinnen und Bürger hat. Andererseits wird befürchtet, Letztere würden durch derartige Verfahren überfordert. So meint etwa Giovanni Sartori (1987, S. 120), einer ihrer bekanntesten Kritiker, direktdemokratische Verfahren würden „schnell und auf desaströse Weise an den Klippen kognitiver Inkompetenz zerschellen“. In seiner Abhandlung zur Republik hatte schon Plato die damalige direkte Demokratie Athens kritisiert und vorgeschlagen, nur eine Gruppe von intellektuellen Wächtern solle regieren, d. h. eine kompetente politische Elite.
This paper addresses the contemporary issue of newspaper paywalls. The paper aims to analyse different paywall models and how they impact on media corporations’ revenues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Slovenia and Poland (Piano Media), Australia, New Zealand and Finland. The paper finds that newspaper paywalls provide roughly 10 per cent of media companies’ publishing/circulation revenues. The paper also finds that paywalls are softening and prices in some cases are decreasing as news corporations fight for new digital subscribers and revenues. The argument here is that the revenue generated by paid online news content is not substantial enough to make paywalls a viable business model in the short term. Media corporations do not disclose information about their digital subscription revenues and this lack of transparency might impact on research findings.
Der Mediensektor durchläuft einen fundamentalen Wandlungsprozess: Aufgrund von Finanzierungsproblemen stehen bei traditionellen Medien für Journalismus nur noch in beschränkterem Umfang Ressourcen zur Verfügung. Als potenzielle Lösung für diese sogenannte Medienkrise wird vermehrt eine Medien- oder Journalismusförderung ins Spiel gebracht.
Die vorliegende Studie hat sich als Ziel gesetzt, die Arbeitsbedingungen von Journalistinnen und Journalisten sowie Einschränkungen deren professioneller Freiheit bei Schweizer Medienhäusern zu untersuchen (siehe Abschnitt 2). Der Fokus liegt erstens darauf, wie es um die journalistischen Arbeitsbedingungen in Schweizer Redaktionen aus Sicht der Journalistinnen und Journalisten bestellt ist und wie sich die Situation in den letzten Jahren verändert hat. Zweitens wird untersucht, inwiefern die Berichterstattungsfreiheit über das eigene Unternehmen, Werbekunden und Medien-politik aus Sicht der Journalistinnen und Journalisten eingeschränkt ist. Hier wird ebenfalls beleuchtet, wie sich die Situation in den letzten Jahren verändert hat. Die Erhellung dieser Aspekte, an denen sich die Fähigkeit eines Mediums zu kritischer und unbeeinflusster Berichterstattung ablesen lässt, bietet eine wichtige Grundlage für die Debatten um Medienförderung.
Methodisch arbeitete die Studie in einem ersten Schritt mit einer Sekundärauswertung vorliegender Interviewdaten sowie mit qualitativen Vorstudien (Gruppendiskussion, Interview) mit Medienschaffenden. Auf Basis dieser Ergebnisse wurde in einem zweiten Schritt eine quantitative Onlinebefragung der Mitglieder des Journalistenverbandes impressum durchgeführt (siehe Abschnitt 3).
Die Resultate der Analyse (siehe Abschnitt 4) zeigen deutlich, dass die Mehrheit der Schweizer Journalistinnen und Journalisten eine Verschärfung des ökonomischen Drucks im Medienbereich wahrnimmt, was besonders für Tageszeitungen gilt. In der Romandie und im Tessin ist dies in etwas geringerem Masse der Fall als in der Deutschschweiz.
Verschlechterte Arbeitsbedingungen: Zeit für vertiefende Recherchen und die Pflege von Netzwerken bleibt kaum. Die qualitativen Studien deuten klar auf einen Zusammenhang dieser Situation mit dem Rückgang journalistischer Sorgfalt und einer oberflächlicheren Bearbeitung von Themen hin. Bezüglich der Frage nach der Veränderung der Arbeitsbedingungen kann eine leichte Tendenz zu einer Verschlechterung festgestellt werden.
Eingeschränkte Berichterstattungsfreiheit: Insgesamt werden eher selten Berichte über Anzeigenkunden veröffentlicht, die für deren Image schädlich sein könnten. Über medienpolitische Themen wird generell wenig berichtet, und wenn, dann meist unter Einfluss der Interessen des eige-nen Unternehmens. Auch ist es üblich, über positive Entwicklungen des eigenen Unternehmens zu berichten, negative Entwicklungen hingegen eher auszuklammern.
Die Ergebnisse der Analyse bieten Denkanstösse für die Medienpraxis und die medienpolitische Diskussion in der Schweiz (siehe Abschnitt 5).
- Ausbildung: Recherchepraktika könnten unverzichtbare Kompetenzen vermitteln, die im journalistischen Alltag kaum noch erworben werden können.
- Direkte Medienförderung: Eine zukunftsgerichtete Anschubfinanzierung neuer journalistischer Projekte und die dauerhafte Unterstützung kleiner Print- und Onlinepublikationen ist zu prüfen.
- Strukturelle Diversität: Zur Abfederung der Konsequenzen kommerzieller Abhängigkeiten braucht es unterschiedlich institutionalisierte Medienorganisationen (Service public; Community-Medien).
- Medienkritik: Eigenberichterstattung ist eine Überforderung für Medienorganisationen. Der Service public sollte verstärkt medienjournalistische Aufgaben übernehmen.
Zusammenfassung Die Konzentrationsentwicklung im deutschen Mediensystem Die Befunde zur Medienkonzentration in Deutschland zeigen in den etablierten Medien Fern-sehen, Hörfunk und Print deutliche Konzentrationstendenzen auf. Technologische Entwick-lungen, Deregulierungen und veränderte Nutzerpräferenzen haben in den vergangenen Jah-ren die Etablierung des vierten Mediums "Online" begünstigt. In der Folge sind neben den bestehenden Konzentrationsformen neue Konzentrationspotenziale auf den konvergierenden Medien-und Kommunikationsmärkten entstanden. Zum einen expandieren etablierte Me-dienunternehmen zunehmend in vor-und nachgelagerte Märkte oder dehnen ihre Ge-schäftsaktivitäten auf die Online-Medien aus. Zum anderen drängen zunehmend auch euro-päische und transnationale Unternehmen auf den deutschen Medienmarkt. Die Ausweitung auf cross-mediale Medienangebote führt nicht zuletzt zu einer erhöhten Intransparenz im Hinblick auf die Bewertung von Medieninhalten sowie deren originären Quellen. Die bisherigen Untersuchungen zur Medienkonzentration in Deutschland sind durch eine relativ eindimensionale Betrachtung von Medienkonzentration im Sinne der ökonomisch her-vorgebrachten Artefakte geprägt. Die gesellschaftlichen Wirkungszusammenhänge und Handlungsspielräume bleiben weitgehend unberücksichtigt.
This study offers a five-item based measurement of popularization of news (combining sensationalization, scandalization, emotionalization, common people narrative and privatization of public figures) to examine a core assumption in the comparative literature, namely the convergence in Western journalism toward the Liberal Model. A content analysis of more than 6000 stories from 18 news outlets (regional, national and weekly papers) in six press systems (United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy) stretching across five decades (1960s to 2010s) finds an increase but no convergence in the popularization of political news. Factors located at the national and the organizational levels correspond in characteristic ways with differences in the use of popularization-related strategies. With the growing need to offer additional attractions to oversaturated consumers, further increases in popularized political news are to be expected in the future but only according to specific conditions.
Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.
This article proposes a theoretical framework for analyzing both mass media logic as a driving force for social change and, probably more importantly, that change itself as caused by the mass media. Mass media logic as a highly complex construct of interacting structures has changed society fundamentally, as actors in different social functional systems believe in first-order mass media effects and, therefore, adapt to the mass media logic. In the case of the mediatization of politics, this refers both to the adaptation of mass media logic by political actors and media-induced changes in the public representation of politics. Those adaptation processes have one pre-condition (the existence of a more or less autonomous mass media system) and are three-fold: political actors modify their individual strategies (micro-level), rearrange resources of political organizations such as parties, lobbying groups, or non-governemtal organizations (meso-level), and rewrite the programs of the political system (macro-level). Here, those second-order long-term mass media effects are called mediatization.
Two concepts that have been used to describe the changes with regards to media and politics during the last fifty years are the concepts of mediation and mediatization . However, both these concepts are used more often than they are properly defined. Moreover, there is a lack of analysis of the process of mediatization, although the concept as such denotes a process.Thus the purpose of this article is to analyze the concepts of mediated and mediatized politics from a process-oriented perspective. The article argues that mediatization is a multidimensional and inherently process-oriented concept and that it is possible to make a distinction between four phases of mediatization. Each of these phases is analyzed.The conclusion is that as politics becomes increasingly mediatized, the important question no longer is related to the independence of the media from politics and society. The important question becomes the independence of politics and society from the media.
In times of increasing “mediatization” of politics, when voters and their elected representatives primarily communicate through the media, the question of who gets into the news and why becomes of the utmost importance. This article examines the determinants of Swiss legislators' presence and prominence in the print media by focusing on three competing approaches drawn from communication studies. The first approach regards the media as a “mirror” of political reality and argues that the media focus on the most active deputies in parliament. Second, news values theory predicts that “authoritative” politicians in leadership positions get the most media coverage. Third, theories of “news bias” hold that the media privilege legislators who are in line with their own editorial interests. Overall, the statistical analyses show an important leadership effect and provide strong support for the second explanation. While deputies in official functions get the most extensive news coverage, media access can also be won by parliamentary activity. The least support is shown for the news bias theory, although some newspapers try to localize parliamentary news coverage by focusing on deputies from their own media market.
The mass media are assigned an important role in political campaigns on popular votes. This article asks how the press communicates political issues to citizens during referendum campaigns, and whether some minimal criteria for successful public deliberation are met. The press coverage of all 24 ballot votes on welfare state issues from 1995 to 2004 in Switzerland is examined, distinguishing seven criteria to judge how news coverage compares to idealized notions of the media’s role in the democratic process: coverage intensity, time for public deliberation, balance in media coverage, source independence and inclusiveness, substantive coverage, and spatial homogeneity. The results of our quantitative analysis suggest that the press does fulfil these normative requirements to a reasonable extent and that fears about biased or deceitful media treatment of ballot issues are not well-founded. However, some potential for optimizing the coverage of referendum campaigns by the Swiss press does exist.
A framing analysis was performed on 22 local news reports identified in 90 newscasts carried by television stations covering the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) public hearings on media ownership held in Harrisburg, PA and Tampa, FL in 2007. It revealed two frames: one portraying the hearings as “unimportant” and another suggesting that “media consolidation is not a problem.” Taking into account that the stations are owned by non-local media conglomerates, the findings of this study imply that maintaining broadcasters independent of the networks serves the diversity of viewpoints in a market, especially regarding issues in which media conglomerates have a vested interest.
The media are becoming more and more media-referential. This thesis has become quite common among communication scholars. When reviewing the relevant literature, however, it becomes clear that terms such as self-referentiality or media-orientation are used to decribe a great variety of different phenomena. In addition, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support the notion of a growing frequency of media references in the media. Moreover, the discussion about media reliance and its changes is based on different theoretical approaches, some of which do not make any reference to other such approaches. Against that backdrop, this article first identifies different dimensions of self-or media-referentiality. Second, empirical evidence is presented that speaks for or against an increase of self-or media-referentiality. Third, the usual theoretical approaches used in explanations of self-or media-referentiality are discussed. Fourth, it is explained how an integrative social theory — the structural-individualistic approach — can be used as a basis for the explanation of changes in self-or media-referentiality. Finally, possible effects of such a development are discussed.
Direct Democratic Choice sets out to understand how the citizens actually decide in direct-democratic votes. Author Hanspeter Kriesi has analyzed nearly twenty years of post-election surveys in Switzerland (1981-1999), which he has contextualized according to the various political issues and the relevant arguments provided by the political elites. This book's core argument is that the citizens who participate in direct-democratic votes make competent choices. Kriesi's extensive empirical research shows that the majority of these voters arrive at their decisions on the basis of arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of the available options. The less competent and less interested citizens either do not vote or, if they do, employ heuristic shortcuts allowing them to make approximately reasonable decisions. Kriesi provides strong support for an optimistic view of direct-democratic decision-making but also indicates that this process, wherever it occurs, can be improved by proper institutional design and by appropriate strategies enacted by the political elite.
No industry exists without a product or service to offer to customers. For mass media organizations the product they offer is their content. The primary business of the mass media is to produce content – fill the broadcast hours, the print pages, the Internet site. Because of limits of time and space, selection of content is a necessary function. Mass media organizations have to make difficult decisions in evaluating their story options and determining which content to provide to an audience. Some stories never become “content” and are not exposed to a mass audience.
Although 'populism' has become something of a buzzword in discussions about politics, it tends to be studied by country or region. This is the first book to offer a genuine cross-regional perspective on populism and its impact on democracy. By analyzing current experiences of populism in Europe and the Americas, this edited volume convincingly demonstrates that populism can be both a threat and a corrective to democracy. The contributors also demonstrate the interesting similarities between right-wing and left-wing populism: both types of populism are prone to defend a political model that is not against democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Populism in Europe and the Americas offers new insights into the current state of democracy from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view.
Das Verhältnis zwischen Redaktion und kaufmännischer Abteilung eines Mediums wird in der kommunikationswissenschaftlichen Forschung häufig thematisiert. Gerade in Zeiten ökonomischer Krisen gewinnen die Widersprüchlichkeiten an Brisanz. Gelten in solchen Zeiten andere Regeln bezüglich der Trennung von redaktionellen Inhalten und Werbeinhalten? Legitimiert das Ziel der Erhaltung von journalistischer Substanz die gelegentliche oder regelmäßige Grenzüberschreitung in Krisenzeiten? Dieses Forschungsvorhaben beschäftigt sich mit dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen den publizistischen Anforderungen an Redaktionen einerseits und den ökonomischen Zwängen andererseits. Theoretisch nähern wir uns der Thematik mit den Ansätzen der politischen Ökonomie und der Idee der Medienfreiheit.
Autor:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Josef Trappel hat den Lehrstuhl für Medienpolitik und Medienökonomie an der Universität Salzburg inne. Stefan Gadringer, Sabrina Kweton und Teresa Vieth sind Masterstudierende der Kommunikationswissenschaft an der Universität Salzburg.
Varianten und Spielarten direkt-demokratischer Verfahren haben sich in vielen westlichen Staaten etabliert. Referenden und Volksinitiativen gewinnen weltweit an Bedeutung bei der Implementierung oder Verhinderung von Gesetzesvorhaben. Im Gegensatz zu Kampagnen bei allgemeinen (Parlaments-)Wahlen, in denen die Parteien der Wählerschaft vergleichsweise klare Politik- oder Regierungsprogramme anbieten, sind Informationen in Referendumskampagnen meist weniger handfest: So können Parteien intern über den Gegenstand des Referendums zerstritten sein, Pol-Parteien des Links-Rechts-Spektrums können ungewohnte Koalitionen eingehen, oder aber Referenden erweisen sich sogar als Nährboden für neue Parteien oder soziale Bewegungen und verändern damit mittelfristig die Gestalt des politischen Systems eines Landes (de Vreese und Semetko 2004; de Vreese 2007).
One of the most important political developments in established capitalist democracies during the past two decades has been the mobilisation of popular support for parties on the far right of the political spectrum. The electoral gains of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and Christoph Blocher’s Schweizer Volkspartei in national elections, together with the showing of the Vlaams Blok in the 1999 European elections, suggests that rise of radical right-wing politics is more than a political flash in the pan. The fortunes of right-wing radical parties have, however, been mixed insofar as parties in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and Canada have done relatively well at the polls, whereas those in Italy, Germany, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand have fared rather badly. The electoral performance of New Zealand First is a case in point. Established in summer 1993, it won 8.4 per cent in the national election later that year, and its level of support rose to 13.4 per cent three years later.’ However, this success was short-lived, and in the 1999 national elections, the party gained a mere 4.3 per cent of the vote and returned to parliament only because its leader, Winston Peters, narrowly managed to win his seat. In much the same way, the German Republikaner Sweden’s Ny Demokrati and the Swiss Freedom Party (formerly the Autopartei) have seen a drop in their support, although, as the electoral history of the Scandinavian Progress parties demonstrates, a dramatic decline in electoral support does not necessarily mean political extinction.
Der Medienjournalismus, also die Berichterstattung der Medien über Medien und Journalismus, boomt — zumindest in den Printmedien. Nicht nur die Programm- und Fachzeitschriften haben sich vermehrt, auch in den großen Tageszeitungen, in den Wochenblättern und Nachrichtenmagazinen sprießen die Medienressorts und gewinnen an Bedeutung.
The clear financial benefits accrued to owners of television stations as a result of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) decision opens the door to an important question: Did the degree to which media corporations benefited from the changes in campaign finance law influence their news outlets’ coverage of the Citizens United decision? In other words, is it possible to identify variation in how media outlets covered the Supreme Court decision that correlates with the degree to which those outlets’ parent companies profited from the resulting increase in campaign spending? Answering this question will provide an important and much-too-uncommon opportunity to systematically test for bias in news coverage. Replicating the method used by Gilens and Hertzman (2000) in their own test of coverage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, this analysis reveals that newspapers belonging to media corporations that own more television stations covered the Citizens United ruling systematically differently—and more favorably—than those with few or no television stations. This has important implications for the degree to which the news produced by increasingly conglomerated and corporatized media companies may eschew neutral or balanced coverage in favor of news frames that promote their own financial interests.
The article presents a systematic and standardised content analysis of 4,559 newspaper articles; it covers nine popular votes in Switzerland between 1983 and 2004 and measures the deliberativeness of the mediated public debate. In the last decade, a growing number of studies employ a deliberative framework in analysing mass media contents. However, these studies followed a sceptical perspective and found evidence that mediated deliberation inevitably falls short of the demanding criteria provided by normative theory. Nevertheless, the article demonstrates that there are examples of deliberative journalism in Swiss direct democratic campaigns. We argue that a political system of a mature direct democracy, such as the Swiss democracy is, together with a journalistic culture which is “educated” by initiative and referendum, might provide an appropriate environment for mediated-public deliberation.
In view of the sinking level of consensus and the allegedly growing ‘presidentialization’ of politics in Switzerland, this paper asks whether this process can be explained by the ‘mediatization of politics’, enforced by the commercialization of the media. Taking a comparative approach in analyzing news coverage about executive and parliamentary elections from 1960 to 2011 in three different media types, it shows an increasing focus on executive elections, triggered not only by increasing political conflict but also by commercialized ‘media logic’. Attention to the executive is highest in the commercialized tabloid paper and lowest in the less commercialized quality paper, which only much later starts to focus on these elections. Contested executive elections have become attractive for commercialized media to focus on prominent figures and dramatize conflicts. This news reporting about politics arguably gives incentives for political actors to contest executive elections, thus intensifying the transformation of the political system.
Party system issue agendas are formed by the topics that individual parties decide to address, and these salience decisions are likely to be strategic. Two key strategies are commonly discussed in the literature: parties’ focus on (1) issues that they have ownership over and (2) issues that currently concern voters. Yet it is not known what explains the extent to which parties pursue each of these strategies. This paper argues that aspects of party organisation influence which salience strategy is pursued. Parties that have more resources will be able to ‘ride the wave’ of current concerns while parties with fewer resources are more likely to focus on their best issues. Furthermore, policy-seeking parties with strong activist influence will be less likely to ‘ride the wave’ and more likely to follow issue ownership strategies. An analysis of 105 election manifestos from 27 elections in 17 countries shows that aspects of party organisation are indeed strong and robust moderators of issue ownership strategies. Limited, albeit mixed, evidence is also found that party organisation affects the use of ‘riding the wave’ strategies. These results have important implications for our understanding of electoral campaigns, party competition and voter representation.
Populism is a frequently used yet problematic concept; the term is often ill-defined and randomly applied. While these problems have been widely acknowledged, this article argues that there are still issues with the way populism tends to be used, even if a sound definition is provided. This relates to the fact that it is often not clear whether populism is used to refer to an ideological feature of an exclusive category of political parties or whether populism is seen as a type of discourse which can be expressed by any political actor. In order to illustrate the difficulties with regard to the application of the term populism, several ‘hard’ cases of populism across Europe are discussed. The article argues that in order to stimulate a more accurate use of the term, observers should be explicit not only about the meaning of populism, but also about the form in which it manifests itself.
The battle for media attention is an integral part of political conflicts. Because of structural bias in the news, government generally dominates this battle for media attention. This article argues, first, that the attention for government and parliament in the news reflects the power balance in the political system and, second, that this relation is moderated by cross-national differences in journalistic cultures, in particular the importance of conflict framing. Content analysis of newspaper and television coverage in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain (N = 1,306 stories) shows that because of the universal news value of political power, attention for government and parliament reinforces differences of political power of these institutions, both within countries and cross-nationally. However, in pragmatic journalistic cultures, the dominance of government is weakened by journalists’ search for conflict. In countries where the news value of conflict is more important (Denmark and the United Kingdom), stories about government more often include oppositional voices than in countries where conflict is a less important news value (Spain).
Auch unter ökonomischen Gesichtspunkten ist Glaubwürdigkeit bei der publizistischen Gestaltung von großer Bedeutung, da nur
über Glaubwürdigkeit Vertrauen beim Leser und Anzeigenkunden aufgebaut und auf diese Weise die wirtschaftliche Existenzgrundlage
gesichert werden kann. Um diese Glaubwürdigkeit zu erreichen, muss besonderer Wert auf Sachlichkeit und Objektivität gelegt
werden (Kunczik 1988, S. 189). Glaubwürdigkeit bei der Darstellung von Medienunternehmen orientiert sich an einer umfassenden,
transparenten und faktenreichen Darstellung der jeweiligen Unternehmen. Um zu erfassen, wie faktenreich berichtet wird, werden
die gewählte Darstellungsform und der Faktizitätsgrad analysiert.
This article suggests a conceptual framework for the mediatization of politics. It critically discusses the concepts of “media logic” and “political logic” emanating from the political communication literature and argues that “normative logic” and “market logic” are more appropriate concepts for the theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of the behavior of mass media and political actors. These two logics guide media and political actors' issue selection and presentation to different degrees. The mediatization of politics in this account takes place when both media and political actors adapt their behavior to the audience-oriented market logic. This process works in parallel with the economic integration and technological progress comprised by the term globalization, thereby challenging established institutional mechanisms in advanced democracies.
News value research has contributed a great deal to the understanding of news selection. For a long time scholars focused exclusively on news selection by the media. Yet, more recent approaches - inspired by cognitive psychology - have conceptionalized news factors as relevance indicators that not only serve as selection criteria in journalism, but also guide information processing by the audience. This article examines the theoretical and methodological developments in the German research tradition and discusses selected results for newspaper and television news. Its theoretical perspective focuses on the conceptionalization of news factors as either event characteristics or characteristics of the reality construction by journalists and recipients. This article explores how and why news factors affect media use and the retention of news items. Finally, this contribution's empirical perspective discusses various modifications of the assumed factors and presents methodological advancements in the measurement of news factors in selection processes.
In this article, the author focuses on the relationship between political actors and the mass media. The author uses media frames as dependent variables and investigates the factors that influence the presence and frequency of frames applied by journalists (the frames in “news media”). This has come to be known as frame building. The author argues that there are at least three important factors in frame building: power, the salience of the frames in the media input, and the multiplication effect of the minister. Using data from content analyses of campaign material and news media and from interviews with political actors, the author finds support that for frame presence, power is important. For frame frequency, the salience of the frames in the media input and the minister are crucial.
The case study regards the question whether economic self-interests of publishers have a significant influence on the reporting of their own newspapers with regard to crucial topics touching those interests. The conflict about the minimum wage in the mailing business is scrutinized. The newspapers engaged in the mailing business are compared with those of independent newspapers without these interests. Because the political inclination of a newspaper, even beyond the self-interests of its publisher, affects the reporting of a conflict, newspapers with different political views are chosen among economically involved and uninvolved media companies. The study is based on the “public task” of press and researches, using a quantifying analysis of contents, relevance and plurality of conflict reports. The results show that in this case the basic political orientation of a newspaper had a significant influence on the portrayal of the conflict. An additional influence with regard to the economic self-interests could not be proven significantly. Ideology seems to be more important than self-interest. However in this case political orientation and economic self-interests harmonized. Therefore it is still relevant to study the role of economic interests for the realization of the “public task”.
The article deals with the question of whether the economic interests of media companies have an effect on the quality of their media coverage. Such an effect would violate professional journalistic standards. As a case study, we analyze media coverage on the abortive acquisition of the ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG by the Axel Springer Verlag, comparing Springer-owned and competitor-owned newspapers. The professional journalistic standards of relevance, neutrality, balance and transparency are applied to measure the quality of the media coverage. Results show systematic differences in the presentation and evaluation of the acquisition between the two media groups, in line with their economic interests. Springer newspapers apply a two-level strategy: On the one hand, they publish fewer and more neutral articles than the competitors’ newspapers — they obviously do not want to draw attention to the topic. On the other hand, they try to influence public discussion covertly by using »opportune witnesses« and «volatile issues«. The media coverage of both newspaper groups — Springer and competitors — can be explained by their economic interests. This assertion is supported by both theoretical assumptions and empirical findings.
Over the past three decades the effects of globalization and denationalization have created a division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns. The authors argue that, as a result of structural transformations and the strategic repositioning of political parties, Europe has observed the emergence of a tripolar configuration of political power, comprising the left, the moderate right, and the new populist right. They suggest that, through an emphasis on cultural issues such as mass immigration and resistance to European integration, the traditional focus of political debate - the economy - has been downplayed or reinterpreted in terms of this new political cleavage. This new analysis of Western European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.
Sommaruga stellt Bigler in den Senkel
- Blick
Mediatization of Society
- Gianpietro Mazzoleni
Zum wachsenden Einfluss von Werbung auf redaktionelle Inhalte
- Colin Porlezza
- Gefährdete Journalistische Unabhängigkeit
Globalizing West European Politics: The Change of Cleavage Structures, Parties and Party Systems in Comparative Perspective
- Edgar Grande
Political Communication in Direct Democratic Campaigns. Enlightening or Manipulating?
- Hanspeter Kriesi
Eine Erweiterung der Nachrichtenwerttheorie um die Meso-Ebene journalistischer Organisationen” [News factors and organization-specific news selection
- Ines Engelmann
- Gesellschaft Fög-Forschungsinstitut Öffentlichkeit Und
Das politische Profil des Geldes
- Michael Hermann
- Mario Nowak
Funktion, Strukturen und Strategien der journalistischen Selbstthematisierung [Journalism about journalism. Function, structures, and strategies of journalistic self-coverage
- Maja Malik
- Journalismusjournalismus
Werkanalyse, Nutzerservice, Sales Promotion oder Kulturkritik? [New critique of media critique. Reviews, service, sales promotion or culture critique?
- Siegfried J Schmidt