Hartmut Wessler

Investigating Deliberativeness Comparatively

This article develops a normative model of public deliberation and proposes ways to apply it in the comparative empirical analysis of political media content. In the first part of the article, a set of normative claims connected to deliberativeness is explicated that revises some of the familiar claims found in the literature. Deliberative media content, it is argued, can provide a repository of diverging justifications for political positions as well as model deliberative behavior in audiences. In conjunction with an attentive, deliberating public, deliberative media content can also serve to procure and withdraw legitimation with respect to political decisions and the polity as a whole. In the second part of the article, a new research design is proposed that operationalizes deliberativeness in print media by taking into account apparent differences in the cultures of journalism. The proposal involves measuring deliberativeness on four different levels of analysis—the idea, the utterance, the article, and the page/edition—as well as in three different political/cultural contexts—the liberal, democratic corporatist, and polarized pluralist models of media and politics as distinguished by Hallin and Mancini.

Transnationalization of public spheres

List of Figures - List of Tables - Preface& Acknowledgements - List of Authors The Transnationalization of Public Spheres: Theoretic Considerations Analysing Europeanization: The Research Framework Segmented Europeanization Differential Europeanization: Explaining Vertical and Horizontal Europeanization in the Quality Press Towards a Pan-European Public Spheres? A typology of Transnational Media in Europe M.Brugggemann& H.Schulz-Forberg Together We Fight? Europes Debate over the Legitimacy of Military Interventions United in Protest? The European Struggle over Genetically Modified Food S.Schneider Conclusion Appendix 1: Additional Tables for Chapter 4 Appendix 2: Methodological Appendix Notes - References - Index

Networks of Coproduction How Journalists and Environmental NGOs Create Common Interpretations of the UN Climate Change Conferences

This study examines the interrelations between journalists and communication practitioners from environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Taking the annual United Nations climate change conferences as a case in point, we show that the exceptional circumstances of these events foster a temporary blurring of the professional boundaries between both actor groups that partly results in a joint production of interpretations. Based on seventy-eight semi-standardized interviews with journalists and NGO representatives, we identify four distinct coproduction networks that pair particular types of journalists and NGO communicators. Our analysis shows that (1) the journalistic beat, (2) the type of media journalists work for, (3) journalists’ and NGOs’ perceived target audiences, and also (4) the NGOs’ strategic orientation toward either lobbying or popular mobilization are decisive for the formation of these networks. Our study helps to systematically explain message production in a transnational context and provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between journalism and public relations.

Frames, Stories, and Images: The Advantages of a Multimodal Approach in Comparative Media Content Research on Climate Change

This paper presents a multimodal research design for the standardized content analysis of climate change coverage in print media. The concepts of framing, narration, and visual representation are integrated into a single coding instrument that can be applied to large-scale media samples from different countries. The proposed research design combines existing measures and novel operationalization. Intercoder reliability scores are reported from a pretest covering newspaper material from Germany, India, South Africa, and the USA. Most variables can be reliably applied across these very different countries, with some exceptions in the more exploratory narrative segment of the analysis. The paper also shows how a multimodal approach to coding climate change coverage can help to avoid potentially one-sided interpretations based on single-mode approaches.

Global Multimodal News Frames on Climate Change A Comparison of Five Democracies around the World

This paper presents the first fully integrated analysis of multimodal news frames. A standardized content analysis of text and images in newspaper articles from Brazil, Germany, India, South Africa, and the United States covering the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conferences 2010–2013 was conducted using a subset of photo-illustrated articles (n = 432) as well as the entire conference coverage (n = 1,311). In the photo-illustrated articles, four overarching multimodal frames were identified: global warming victims, civil society demands, political negotiations, and sustainable energy frames. The distribution of these global frames across the five countries is relatively similar, and a comparison of frames emerging from the national subsets also reveals a strong element of cross-national frame convergence. This is explained by the news production context at global staged political events, which features uniform media access rules and similar information supplies, as well as strong interaction between journalists from different countries and between journalists and other actors. Event-related frame convergence across vastly different contexts is interpreted as one mechanism by which truly transnational media debate can be facilitated that can potentially serve to legitimize global political decisions. In conclusion, perspectives for future qualitative and quantitative multimodal framing research are discussed.

Offline time is quality time. Comparing within-group self-disclosure in mobile messaging applications and face-to-face interactions

In contrast to the prominent individualistic view on self-disclosure, this study focuses on self-disclosure in groups of prior acquaintances that both meet offline and communicate online. It compares within-group self-disclosure between offline face-to-face (FtF) interactions and online communication via mobile messaging applications (MMAs). An online-survey (N?=?357) was conducted to test for differences between within-group self-disclosure online and offline across four dimensions (amount, depth, breadth, valence). The results show that there is more amount, more breadth and more depth for offline within-group self-disclosure, but it is less positively valenced than online within-group self-disclosure. Interestingly, the mere frequency of communication is higher in an MMA environment. In spite of the permanent availability of the online communication sphere, group members do not permanently disclose personal information to each other online. Thus, for within-group self-disclosure, offline time seems quality time. We compare offline and online within-group self-disclosure among prior acquaintances.Groups communicate more often via mobile messaging applications.Face-to-face, there is a higher amount, more breadth, and more depth of within-group self-disclosure.In MMAs, there is more positively valenced within-group self-disclosure.For within-group self-disclosure, offline time is quality time.

Can the Mass Media Deliberate?: Insights from Print Media and Political Talk Shows

One of the most important values of a democratic public sphere lies in its capacity to facilitate public deliberation. Public deliberation, broadly speaking, transforms social and political conflicts into argumentative debates in which claims are not just made but can be problematized and discussed. Such debates are public to the extent that they are openly accessible to citizens. Public deliberation, then, is an open, collective process of argumentative exchange about issues of societal relevance. In modern societies such a process will necessarily rely mostly on the mass media (see Page 1996).

The Quest for a European Public Sphere: News Media and Democratic Legitimacy

Democratic legitimacy of political orders and political decisions depends on the consent of the governed. This almost common-sensical proposition suggests that legitimacy requires that people have beliefs about a political order that motivate them to support that order in some way, to accept obligations towards it and to act mainly according to its rules. These beliefs and attitudes should also correspond to public opinion and be articulated in public discourse.1

Who Prevails in the Visual Framing Contest about the United Nations Climate Change Conferences

The annual Climate Change Conferences (Conferences of the Parties, COPs) held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are global staged political media events that regularly provide occasions for contesting the framing of global warming in media coverage around the globe. This study assesses which professional group involved in communicating the COPs—journalists, government spokespeople, and representatives from non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—is most successful in seeing their visual framing conceptions represented in mainstream print media coverage. Our analysis combines data from 44 semi-structured interviews with actors from these groups conducted on-site at the COPs in Doha, Qatar (2012) and Warsaw, Poland (2013) with a content analysis of climate change news published in newspapers from five democratic countries around the world. Results show a relative prevalence of NGO-preferred visual framing in COP coverage. Through providing powerful pictures of symbolic actions, civil society actors can prevail in the visual framing contest under certain conditions, but it is much harder for them to circumvent the usually strong statist orientation of mainstream news media in sourcing textual messages.

Journalismus und Politik

Die Interrelation von Journalismus und Politik ist, in einem anspruchsvollen Sinn, zentral fur das Funktionieren von Demokratie. Das Kapitel gibt eine uberschau der wichtigsten normativ-theoretischen Anspruche an diese Interrelation sowie relevanter empirischer Befunde zu ihr. Es beschreibt zunachst drei zentrale normative Demokratiemodelle und prasentiert sodann Ergebnisse normativ angeleiteter und relevanter empirischer Forschung zu den Beziehungen von Journalismus und Politik. Wir betrachten dabei jeweils Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich und behandeln zunachst die Strukturen, dann die Inhalte und schlieslich die Wirkungen des politischen Journalismus.