Suchergebnisse

"German industrial expansion in the period 1880-1913 was significantly more rapid than that of the United Kingdom, and substantially less volatile than that of the United States. A partial explanation for the relatively stable growth path of the German economy during these years may be found in the greater relative importance and volatility of the railroad construction component of net investment in the United States. By 1880 only a little over one-third of the U.S. final rail net was in place, compared with over half in the case of Germany. Compared to Germany, railroad investment in the United States between 1880 and World War I was, on average, much larger absolutely. It was also much larger in comparison to total population, total industrial output, and in comparison to expenditures on residential construction. In addition, it was more volatile. The lesser importance and volatility of this component of autonomous expenditure in the German case partially accounts for the relative nonvolatility of the German industrial Output series." (author's abstract)

"The author presents a model of factors influencing the content of mass media-transmitted political communication. The basic idea behind the model is that the content of political communication is generally influenced by the political and the economic system, as well as by the actual situation in which the interaction between the mass media and political actors takes place. A set of hypotheses about journalistic behaviour is derived from the model. Content analysis data from three Danish general elections, as well as from the first direct elections for the European Parliament are confronted with these hypotheses. The empirical results show a recognizable pattern of interaction between politicians and journalists. For instance, journalists are more interested in what can be labelled as 'the here and now'. Also, conflicts as a news criterion are found more often in journalistic behaviour, than in the speeches of party representatives. But at the same time we can see a clear tendency among party representatives to take over some of these criteria of news value for their own presentation. The author argues that the mass media constitute a serious threat against a free and participatory democracy if they are specifically used for conflict presentation or for personalisation." (author's abstract)

"The major early studies by Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in the 1940s were based upon a number of assumptions that are not very appropriate today. Subsequent research has largely consisted of variations on those early studies, rather than a full reconceptualization of the problem posed by the burgeoning role of mass media in politics. Using a panel design, Lazarsfeld and his colleagues found relatively few people switching from one candidate to another, and switching was particularly rare among those who followed politics closely in the media. This lack of evidence, coupled with the prevalent image of social science as searching for 'theories of middle range', yielded a conclusion that mass media have only 'limited effects' in politics. Election research shifted in the 1950s and 1960s to national surveys conducted at the University of Michigan. Synchronous correlational designs replaced panels as the dominant model, and the role of mass media was severly downgraded to a few items asking whether the person had read or heard about the election campaign on TV or radio, or in a newspaper or magazine. The 1970s brought a flowering of new conceptual topics, although the basic marketing model continued to structure most studies. Cognitive dependent variables, based on the assumption that the media are responsible for enlightenment of the electorate, began to overshadow attitudinal measures and the simple act of voting. But the basis model for election studies has never been abandoned. The research field today remains very much the product of its historical roots." (author's abstract)