Cultures of Political Discourse in Europe: Explaining Multiple Segmentation in the European Public Sphere (2015)

Abstract

The possible development of a European public sphere is a special challenge for research on transformations of the state in Europe. Undoubtedly, the supranational regime of the European Union (EU) is a major expression of the transformations of the state and the transnationalization of politics in Europe. Current political theory argues that supranational institutions are faced with various legitimation problems (Habermas 2009a; Scharpf 2009). In addition to elections, a functioning ‘public sphere’ is often seen as a prerequisite of political legitimacy. The EU must, then, be underpinned by a ‘European public sphere’ to be legitimate. However, any attempt to capture this phenomenon solely with concepts gleaned from analyses of national public spheres is bound to fail: There is no Europe-wide system of political media and no shared language, but rather a plethora of divergent media regulations and languages, and there are only a couple of transnational European media (Gerhards 2001; Hallin and Mancini 2004; Hardy 2008; Brüggemann et al. 2009). Measured against the benchmark of national public spheres, the European public sphere is therefore automatically found wanting, or even deemed inexistent (Baisnée 2007). We develop a more balanced view. Our starting point is a European public sphere that differs from national public spheres precisely because it contains various languages, media systems and media organizations. With other researchers (Eilders and Voltmer 2003; Kantner 2004; Trenz 2004; AIM Research Consortium 2006; de Vreese 2007; Preston and Metykova 2009; Koopmans and Statham 2010), we share the fundamental position that the European public sphere needs to be analysed as a process of transnationalizing national public spheres and cannot be described and understood as an independent unit. However, transnationalization is not a linear and directed process, but in various ways a contradictory one.

Hepp, Andreas; Kleinen-v. Königslöw, Katharina; Lingenberg, Swantje; Möller, Johanna; Brüggemann, Michael; Offerhaus, Anke (2015): Cultures of Political Discourse in Europe. Explaining Multiple Segmentation in the European Public Sphere. In Heinz Rothgang, Steffen Schneider (Eds.): State Transformations in OECD Countries. Dimensions, Driving Forces and Trajectories. Basingstoke / New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 145–166. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012425_8.

Download

Skeptiker müssen draußen bleiben: Weblogs und Klimajournalismus (2015)

Abstract

Digitale Öffentlichkeiten sind durch ein Nebeneinander von professionellen und partizipativen Plattformen geprägt (Neuberger 2009). Informationsleistungen im Web können von professionellen Akteuren, Amateuren oder technischen Diensten erbracht werden und alle drei können dabei in Konkurrenz zueinander treten, sich ergänzen oder ineinandergreifen. Gerade die Vernetzung verschiedener Foren durch wechselseitige Verweise und gegenseitigen Austausch ermöglicht die Entstehung einer integrierten Öffentlichkeit (ebd.). Die technischen Möglichkeiten dafür sind in digitalen Öffentlichkeiten durchaus gegeben, denn hier ist es leicht, Angebote zu verlinken und so einer Fragmentierung öffentlicher Debatten entgegen zu wirken. Journalisten können mit geringem Aufwand einer Vielzahl an anderen Akteuren beispielsweise auf Twitter folgen und deren Beiträge zur Debatte mit den eigenen vernetzen. Die Frage ist jedoch, ob dies in der Praxis auch tatsächlich passiert. Das wird in diesem Kapitel exemplarisch am Beispiel der Rolle von Bloggern und Weblogs im Klimajournalismus untersucht.

Brüggemann, Michael; Engesser, Sven (2015): Skeptiker müssen draußen bleiben: Weblogs und Klimajournalismus. In Oliver Hahn, Ralf Hohlfeld, Thomas Knieper (Eds.): Digitale Öffentlichkeit(en). Konstanz: UVK, pp. 165–182.

Download

Rezension: Cornelia Mothes: Objektivität als professionelles Abgrenzungskriterium im Journalismus. Eine dissonanztheoretische Studie zum Informationsverhalten von Journalisten und Nicht-Journalisten (2014)

Abstract

Professionelle Journalisten sind in der digitalen Kommunikationswelt einer vielfältigen Konkurrenz anderer Anbieter von aktuellen Informationen und Meinungen ausgesetzt. Damit werden Abgrenzungskriterien wichtiger denn je, will der Berufsstand seine Alleinstellungsmerkmale gegenüber anderen Kommunikatoren herausarbeiten. Ein wichtiger Kandidat für die Abgrenzung des professionellen Journalismus von Public Relations und privaten Blogs sind professionelle Berufsnormen wie die Norm der Objektivität — die Idee einer unparteilichen und ausgewogenen, an Fakten orientierten Berichterstattung. Aber sind die Journalisten die unparteilichen Wahrheitssucher, die sie gerne wären? Dieser Frage geht Cornelia Mothes in ihrer 2014 erschienenen Dissertation nach. Sie untersucht, ob sich professionelle Journalisten in Deutschland von anderen Befragten unterscheiden, wenn es um die Geltung der Objektivitätsnorm geht.

Brüggemann, Michael (2014): Rezension: Cornelia Mothes: Objektivität als professionelles Abgrenzungskriterium im Journalismus. Eine dissonanztheoretische Studie zum Informationsverhalten von Journalisten und Nicht-Journalisten. In Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft 62 (4). Available online at https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/1615-634x-2014-4-678.pdf?download_full_pdf=1&page=0.

Download

A Farewell to Balance: How Journalism Shapes the Public Debate on Climate Change in the U.S (2014)

Abstract

The typical media debate tends to ignore or confuse both the broad knowledge accumulated and the limits of scientific models, instead either arguing the quality of the science to support conclusions or raising expectations of science that models cannot deliver. This is happening in a media sphere of ever-greater polarization around extreme political ideologies in which climate change has joined gun control, abortion, and same-sex marriage as ideologically-driven flashpoint issues. Yet, it might not be too late to reverse this process and uphold the vision of a public sphere as developing understanding through communication and thus establishing a common ground for political action. For the issue of climate change, seeking such common ground seems particularly pressing. This essay focuses on the climate debate in the U.S. as this is not only a domestic debate, but has global repercussions. As Thomas Friedman stated, rather boldly, in a recent New York Times editorial: “When it comes to dealing with the world’s climate and energy challenges I have a simple rule: change America, change the world.”

Brüggemann, Michael (2014): A Farewell to Balance: How Journalism Shapes the Public Debate on Climate Change in the U.S. In Transatlantic Perspectives. American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Available online at http://www.aicgs.org/publication/a-farewell-to-balance-how-journalism-shapes-the-public-debate-on-climate-change-in-the-u-s/.

Download

Von analog nach digital – Journalismus und Technik (2014)

Abstract

Am 25. Oktober 1994 hat das Hamburger Nachrichtenmagazin „Der Spiegel“ sein Angebot im World Wide Web freigeschaltet – es gilt als eine der ersten Nachrichten-Websites weltweit (Quick, 2010). Zwanzig Jahre später haben das Internet und andere digitale Techniken den Journalismus grundlegend verändert – einen Journalismus, der sich zuvor durch den Einzug des Computers in die Redaktion bereits nachhaltig verändert hatte (Weischenberg, 1982). Ein nur auf Gegenwart und Zukunft fixierter Blick übersieht also leicht, dass das Verhältnis zwischen Journalismus und Technik eine lange Vorgeschichte besitzt, denn Technik ist von je her prägend für die Strukturen und Prozesse des Journalismus: Medientechniken zur periodischen Produktion und massenhaften Verbreitung aktueller Mitteilungen waren notwendige Voraussetzung für die Genese des Journalismus (Birkner, 2012). Und auch später gingen vom Wandel der Technik immer wieder wesentliche Impulse für den Journalismus aus (Schreiber & Zimmermann, 2014). Der Übergang von der analogen zur digitalen Technik, den wir derzeit erleben, ist nur die vorläufig letzte Etappe.

Brüggemann, Michael; Loosen, Wiebke; Neuberger, Christoph (2015): Von analog nach digital – Journalismus und Technik. In Studies in Communcation and Media 3 (2), pp. 145–152. Available online at https://www.scm.nomos.de/fileadmin/scm/doc/SCM_14_02_00.pdf.

Download

Between frame setting and frame sending. How journalists contribute to news frames (2014)

Abstract

Framing has grown into a thriving approach to analyze media content and effects. Research on frame building is less well developed. Particularly journalists’ contributions to shaping the frames in the news deserve further analysis. This article conceptualizes these contributions to creating news frames: Journalistic framing practices are situated on a continuum between frame setting and frame sending. Journalists frame their articles more or less in line with their own interpretations. The challenge for research is to identify the conditions that determine the degree of journalistic frame setting. The article therefore identifies mechanisms and factors that play a role in determining to what degree journalistic frame enactment takes place.

Brüggemann, Michael (2014): Between Frame Setting and Frame Sending: How Journalists Contribute to News Frames. In Communication Theory 24 (1), pp. 61–82. Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/comt.12027.

Download

Between Consensus and Denial: Climate Journalists as Interpretive Community (2014)

Abstract

This study focuses on climate journalists as key mediators between science and the public sphere. It surveys journalists from five countries and from five types of leading news outlets. Despite their different contexts, journalists form an interpretive community sharing the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and agreeing on how to handle climate-change skeptics. This consensus is particularly strong among a core of prolific writers while climate-change skepticism persists among a periphery of occasional writers. The journalists’ attitudes towards climate change are connected to their usage of sources indicating that interpretive communities include journalists and scientists.

Brüggemann, Michael; Engesser, Sven (2014): Between Consensus and Denial: Climate Journalists as Interpretive Community. In Science Communication 36 (4), pp. 399–427. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1075547014533662.

Download

Transnational communication as deliberation, ritual and strategy (2014)

Abstract

Globalized communication flows transcend and transform national borders. Transnational media outlets targeting audiences around the globe, issues of global concern are subjected to border-crossing public debates, media events receive transnational attention, and public diplomacy efforts succeed – and fail – in characteristic patterns around the world. In response to these phenomena the article shows how the study of transnational communication can benefit from combining three theoretical perspectives that are rarely studied together: communication as deliberation, as ritual and as strategy. Particularly in explaining the failures of transnational communication, explanatory potential often seems to lie just outside the limited vision of each of the perspectives – and outside the scope of empirical analyses that are limited to Western contexts.

Brüggemann, Michael; Wessler, Hartmut (2014): Transnational Communication as Deliberation, Ritual, and Strategy. In Communication Theory 24 (4), pp. 394–414. Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/comt.12046.

Download

Hallin and Mancini Revisited: Four Empirical Types of Western Media Systems (2014)

Abstract

The analysis of media systems has become a corner stone in the field of comparative communication research. Ten years after its publication, we revisit the landmark study in the field, Hallin and Mancini’s “Comparing Media Systems” (2004), and operationalize its framework for standardized measurement. The study at hand is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to comprehensively validate the original dimensions and models using aggregated data from the same sample of Western countries. Three out of four dimensions of media systems show relatively high levels of internal consistency but “role of the state” should be disaggregated into three sub-dimensions. A cluster analysis reveals four empirical types of media systems that differentiate and extend the original typology.

Brüggemann, Michael; Engesser, Sven; Büchel, Florin; Humprecht, Edda; Castro, Laia (2014): Hallin and Mancini Revisited. Four Empirical Types of Western Media Systems. In Journal of Communication 64 (6), pp. 1037–1065. Available online at https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12127.

Download

Climate Journalists as Interpretive Community: Identifying Transnational Frames of Climate Change (2013)

Abstract

The framing of climate change in media coverage has been widely studied but the journalists’ role in frame building has not been sufficiently examined. This study identifies journalist frames on climate change: shared patterns of interpretation among journalists that may shape news content. The study surveyed climate journalists from 24 leading newspapers and online outlets in five countries (Germany, India, Switzerland, UK, and the USA). It follows an integrative approach to framing analysis, taking into account broader generic and issue specific frames. It finds that climate journalists form an interpretive community built around a common master frame and five (sub-)frames.

Brüggemann, Michael; Engesser, Sven (2013): Climate Journalists as Interpretive Community: Identifying Transnational Frames of Climate Change. NCCR Working Paper 59. Universität Zürich, Zürich. Available online at http://www.nccr-democracy.uzh.ch/publications/workingpaper/pdf/wp_59.pdf.

Download