Suchergebnisse

In the following survey, congruency within a sample of 150 rural social networks ascertained by comparing independently gathered data is used as an indicator of interpersonal influence concerning BSE-related current knowledge and consumption habits. Our findings suggest that friends, relatives and acquaintances mutually orientated each other about what was worth knowing about BSE. Concerning the behavioral dimension of risk judgments, our findings indicate that social networks obtained within the village explored have activated collective resistance against fear. This is explained by the character of the risk source. Positive attitudes towards conventional farming obviously contributed to the social identity of villagers. The devaluation of conventional farming as a source of societal threat by the mass media touched on an integral part of the self-definitions of villagers and activated resistance within their social networks. It is argued that a central point in explaining the role of interpersonal influence in risk judgments is not only the dimension of risk judgments but the character of the risk source. If attitudes concerning a risk source contribute positively to one's identity, the devaluation of the risk source by mass media coverage may enhance the probability of collective resistance against fear.

ZusammenfassungMit einer Inhaltsanalyse untersucht der Beitrag ressortvergleichend: 1. wie häufig dieselben nachrichtlichen Anlässe von mehreren Medientiteln zur Berichterstattung ausgewählt werden und 2. ob diesen (in-)kongruenten Auswahlentscheidungen eine Gesetzmäßigkeit zugrunde liegt. Das Interesse gilt dabei besonders der Kongruenz der Nachrichtenauswahl in Wissenschaftsressorts. Argumentiert wird, dass die Verteilung der Auswahlkongruenz Rückschlüsse auf ressortspezifisch unterschiedliche Bedingungen der Nachrichtengebung erlaubt. Diese wirken sich auf die Leistungsfähigkeit des Journalismus aus, die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf besonders relevante Ereignisse zu lenken.Analysiert wurden gut 4000 Artikel, die 2018 und 2019 in einem Zeitraum von einer bzw. zwei Wochen in fünf deutschsprachigen Zeitungen erschienen sind und 2521 verschiedene Anlässe hatten. Der Anteil der Anlässe, die kongruent von mehreren Zeitungen zugleich ausgewählt wurden, nimmt mit dem Grad der Kongruenz exponentiell ab, was frühere Ergebnisse bestätigt. Im Vergleich der verschiedenen Ressorts ist der Anteil exklusiver Anlässe im Wissenschaftsressort deutlich höher. Wissenschaftsredaktionen wählen wesentlich inkongruenter aus als beispielsweise Politikredaktionen. Diese Ergebnisse wecken Zweifel daran, ob es speziell dem Wissenschaftsjournalismus gelingt, das öffentliche Interesse an einem Kernbestand von wichtigen Ereignissen zu befördern.

Mit einer Inhaltsanalyse untersucht der Beitrag ressortvergleichend: 1. wie häufig dieselben nachrichtlichen Anlässe von mehreren Medientiteln zur Berichterstattung ausgewählt werden und 2. ob diesen (in-)kongruenten Auswahlentscheidungen eine Gesetzmäßigkeit zugrunde liegt. Das Interesse gilt dabei besonders der Kongruenz der Nachrichtenauswahl in Wissenschaftsressorts. Argumentiert wird, dass die Verteilung der Auswahlkongruenz Rückschlüsse auf ressortspezifisch unterschiedliche Bedingungen der Nachrichtengebung erlaubt. Diese wirken sich auf die Leistungsfähigkeit des Journalismus aus, die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf besonders relevante Ereignisse zu lenken. Analysiert wurden gut 4000 Artikel, die 2018 und 2019 in einem Zeitraum von einer bzw. zwei Wochen in fünf deutschsprachigen Zeitungen erschienen sind und 2521 verschiedene Anlässe hatten. Der Anteil der Anlässe, die kongruent von mehreren Zeitungen zugleich ausgewählt wurden, nimmt mit dem Grad der Kongruenz exponentiell ab, was frühere Ergebnisse bestätigt. Im Vergleich der verschiedenen Ressorts ist der Anteil exklusiver Anlässe im Wissenschaftsressort deutlich höher. Wissenschaftsredaktionen wählen wesentlich inkongruenter aus als beispielsweise Politikredaktionen. Diese Ergebnisse wecken Zweifel daran, ob es speziell dem Wissenschaftsjournalismus gelingt, das öffentliche Interesse an einem Kernbestand von wichtigen Ereignissen zu ...

At the time of the corona pandemic, the population has a great need for information. (Mass) Media try to provide the concerned citizens with answers to their pressing questions with the help of scientific actors and their expert knowledge. Scientific experts serve as an important source of information for journalists and for society. Therefore, it is of particular relevance to examine, which scientific actors are discussing scientific issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic publicly via media coverage. Of particular interest is a look at the scientific expertise of the so-called experts, because the quality of the available information stands and falls with it. Our study describes the journalistic selection of scientific experts in German news coverage on Covid-19 compared to other pandemics. We analyze, which experts get a chance to speak in media coverage, how diverse the spectrum of selected experts is and how their scientific expertise is to be assessed. Our findings show that the Covid-19 coverage is dominated by actors from the political executive and less than in previous pandemics by scientific experts. Further, the Corona debate is characterised by a greater diversity of expert voices than the previous pandemic debates and therefore less concentrated on a few individual scientists only. Further, the journalistic selection of scientific experts is biased in favour of those who have a high scientific expertise. On average, media coverage on the Covid-19 pandemic makes references to more reputable and acknowledged scientific experts compared to earlier ...

While science-in-the-media is a useful vehicle for understanding the media, few scholars have used it that way: instead, they look at science-in-the-media as a way of understanding science-in-the-media and often end up attributing characteristics to science-in-the-media that are simply characteristics of the media, rather than of the science they see there. This point of view was argued by Jane Gregory and Steve Miller in 1998 in Science in Public. Science, they concluded, is not a special case in the mass media, understanding science-in-the-media is mostly about understanding the media (Gregory and Miller, 1998: 105). More than a decade later, research that looks for patterns or even determinants of science-in-the-media, be it in press or electronic media, is still very rare. There is interest in explaining the media's selection of science content from a media perspective. Instead, the search for, and analysis of, several kinds of distortions in media representations of science have been leading topics of science-in-the-media research since its beginning in the USA at the end of the 1960s and remain influential today (see Lewenstein, 1994; Weigold, 2001; Kohring, 2005 for summaries). Only a relatively small amount of research has been conducted seeking to identify factors relevant to understanding how science is treated by the mass media in general and by television in particular. The current study addresses the lack of research in this area. Our research seeks to explore which constraints national media systems place on the volume and structure of science programming in television. In simpler terms, the main question this study is trying to address is why science-in-TV in Europe appears as it does. We seek to link research focussing on the detailed analysis of science representations on television (Silverstone, 1984; Collins, 1987; Hornig, 1990; Leon, 2008), and media research focussing on the historical genesis and current political regulation of national media systems (see for instance Hallin and Mancini, ...

At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific expertise was and is more in demand than perhaps ever before. Scientific "experts" serve as an important source of information for journalists and for society. Our study analyzes, which experts get a chance to speak in German news coverage of COVID-19 compared to other pandemics, how diverse the spectrum of selected experts is and how their scientific expertise is to be assessed. Our findings show that the COVID-19 coverage is dominated by actors from the political executive and less than in previous pandemics by scientific experts. In addition, the coronavirus debate is characterized by a greater diversity of expert voices and the journalistic selection of scientific experts is biased in favor of those who have a high scientific expertise. On average, COVID-19 coverage seems to be biased more pronouncedly in favor of reputable scientific experts compared to previous debates on pandemics.