scholarly journals Satirizing international crises. The depiction of the Ukraine, Greek debt, and migration crises in political satire

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Cordula Nitsch ◽  
Dennis Lichtenstein
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
International Crises ◽  
The Public ◽  
Orientation Function ◽  
Media Logic ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Migration

In international crises, the media’s information and orientation function is particularly important in the public sphere. While the news media’s crisis coverage has been well researched and often criticized, very little is known about the depiction of crises in political satire. This study examines how German satirical shows (n = 154 episodes, 2014–2016) covered the Ukraine, Greek debt, and migration crises and whether or not these depictions corresponded to news media logic. In its attention to the crises, satire follows news media’s conflict orientation. Parallels with news media logic also relate to the information function because the predominant frame elements in satirical shows mirror governmental positions. This is different regarding the orientation function. In their evaluation of the frame elements, satirical shows’ criticism of governmental positions and their support for minority positions create a counter-narrative for the crises. Thus, satirical shows provide added value for public discourse.

Elite News Coverage of Climate Change

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell Boykoff ◽  
Gesa Luedecke
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

During the past three decades, elite news media have become influential translators of climate change linking science, policy, and the citizenry. Historical trends in public discourse—shaped in significant part by elite media—demonstrate news media’s critical role in shaping public perception and the level of concern towards climate change. Media representations of climate change and global warming are embedded in social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions that influence individual-level processes such as everyday journalistic practices. Media have a strong influence on policy decision-making, attitudes, perspectives, intentions, and behavioral change, but those connections can be challenging to pinpoint; consequently, examinations of elite news coverage of climate change, particularly in recent decades, have sought to gain a stronger understanding of these complex and dynamic webs of interactions. In so doing, research has more effectively traced how media have taken on varied roles in the climate change debate, from watch dogs to lap dogs to guard dogs in the public sphere. Within these areas of research, psychological aspects of media influence have been relatively underemphasized. However, interdisciplinary and problem-focused research investigations of elite media coverage stand to advance considerations of public awareness, discourse, and engagement. Elite news media critically contribute to public discourse and policy priorities through their “mediating” and interpretative influences. Therefore, a review of examinations of these dynamics illuminate the bridging role of elite news coverage of climate change between formal science and policy, and everyday citizens in the public sphere.

scholarly journals Solidarity in the Public Sphere: A Discourse Network Analysis of German Newspapers (2008–2017)

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Wallaschek ◽  
Christopher Starke ◽  
Carlotta Brüning
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Public ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
Institutional Actors ◽  
German Newspapers

Multiple crises in the EU have sparked a renaissance of the concept of solidarity. However, discursive approaches to solidarity and the public understanding of solidarity have hardly received scholarly attention. Empirical research on solidarity is rather centered on welfare institutions as well as on individual attitudes and behavior. To shed new light on solidarity in public discourse, we investigate in which policy fields the term is most often used, which actors refer to it and how different types of solidarity are covered in the German public discourse. We investigate the coverage of solidarity in four German newspapers (<em>Die Welt</em>, <em>Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung</em>, <em>Süddeutsche Zeitung</em>, <em>Die Tageszeitung</em>) from 2008 to 2017. By deploying the discourse network methodology with 306 claims in 230 news articles, we analyze the co-occurrence of actors and issues over time. Our results indicate a varying set of issues in which solidarity occurs, a rather stable actor visibility, across time and a context-dependent use of different types of solidarity. Government actors, civil society actors as well as citizens drive the solidarity discourse showing that institutional as well as non-institutional actors make use of solidarity in their public actions regarding political protest, financial issues and migration. The study provides novel insights into the interdependence of actor and issue visibility and sheds new light on solidarity in media discourses.

The Public Sphere and the Telangana Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Padmaja Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Television News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Television Coverage ◽  
Political Turmoil

The 60-year-old demand for a separate state for the Telangana region was an instance in India's recent history when political turmoil resolved itself primarily through the force of argumentation and public discourse. News media and other information forums played a complex role in this process. The multi-pronged debate on Telangana helped revitalise the public sphere, setting in motion what Habermas calls ‘a critical process of public communication through the very organisations that mediatize it’. Live coverage of events on television news channels triggered intense debates on other forums, where inclusive, independent argumentation could take place. The intense television coverage was part of a continuum of political discourse on various platforms, transforming and being transformed in the context of a history of oppositional politics. This article argues that it is the availability of spaces for critical rational debate that is crucial for democratic practice.

On Waxen Wings: Challenges to the Public Sphere in the Network Age

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Francoeur
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Internet ◽  
The Public ◽  
Digital Space ◽  
Multiple Viewpoints ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Economic Production ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Communicative Space

There is a tendency, particularly among Western pundits and technologists, to examine the Internet in almost universally positive terms; this is most evident in any discussion of the medium’s capacity for democratization. While the Internet has produced many great things for society in terms of cultural and economic production, some consideration must be given to the implications that such a revolutionary medium holds for the public sphere. By creating a communicative space that essentially grants everyone his or her own microphone, the Internet is fragmenting public discourse due to the proliferation of opinions and messages and the removal of traditional gatekeepers of information. More significantly, because of the structural qualities of the Internet, users no longer have to expose themselves to opinions and viewpoints that fall outside their own preconceived notions. This limits the robustness of the public sphere by limiting the healthy debate that can only occur when exposed to multiple viewpoints. Ultimately, the Internet is not going anywhere, so it is important to equip the public with the tools and knowledge to be able to navigate the digital space. 

scholarly journals Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura A. M. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Important Shift

AbstractThe deconstruction of what is termed “the public sphere” in recent decades has resulted in an important shift in scholarly attention towards networks and forms of association. This article explores how greater sensitivity to the unstable and ephemeral nature of “publics,” combined with a stronger awareness of the role of cultural exchange, has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of early modern politics. Some analytical precision has, nonetheless, been lost. A justifiable emphasis on the artificiality of the territorial borders that have defined units of enquiry has occurred at the expense of deeper consideration of the cultural boundaries that dictated the terms on which people could participate in and shape public discourse. Study of the British archipelago can offer new ways of thinking about these problems. Linguistic and ethnic differences, the search for religious concord as well as the reality of confessional division, institutional variation, and the consequences of London's increasing dominance of the archipelago, are key facets of the reassessments undertaken here. The article concludes by reflecting on how interactions between varieties of “public” and other forms of association can nuance our understanding of early modern state formation.

scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING LAW AND RELIGION AS CULTURE: MAKING ROOM FOR MEANING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (1, 2 & 3) ◽  
pp. 2006
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between law and religion in contemporary civil society has been a topic of increasing social interest and importance in Canada in the past many years. We have seen the practices and commitments of religious groups and individuals become highly salient on many issues of public policy, including the nature of the institution of marriage, the content of public education, and the uses of public space, to name just a few. As the vehicle for this discussion, I want to ask a straightforward question: When we listen to our public discourse, what is the story that we hear about the relationship between law and religion? How does this topic tend to be spoken about in law and politics – what is our idiom around this issue – and does this story serve us well? Though straightforward, this question has gone all but unanswered in our political and academic discussions. We take for granted our approach to speaking about – and, therefore, our way of thinking about – the relationship between law and religion. In my view, this is most unfortunate because this taken-for-grantedness is the source of our failure to properly understand the critically important relationship between law and religion.

scholarly journals Social engineers and myth-busters: A comparative research on Lithuanian, Norwegian and Serbian language experts

2020 ◽  
pp. 292-344
Author(s):  
Vuk Vukotić
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
Online News ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
The Public ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One

This article compares the language ideologies of language experts (both academic and non-academic) in online news media in Lithuania, Norway and Serbia. The results will reveal that language is understood in diametrically opposed ways amongst Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts on the one, and Norwegian academic experts on the other hand. Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts are influenced by modernist ideas of language as a single, homogenous entity, whose borders ideally match the borders of an ethnic group. Norwegian academic experts function in the public sphere as those who try to deconstruct the modernist notion of language by employing an understanding of language as a cognitive tool that performs communicative and other functions. On the other hand, non-academic experts in all the three countries exhibit a striking similarity in their language ideologies, as the great majority expresses modernist ideals of language.

scholarly journals The Digital Transformation of the Public Sphere, Its Features in the Context of Various Political Regimes, and Its Possible Influence on Political Processes

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexey Salikov
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Internet Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Relationship

The question of how the digital transformation of the public sphere affects political processes has been of interest to researchers since the spread of the Internet in the early 1990s. However, today there is no clear or unambiguous answer to this question; expert estimates differ radically, from extremely positive to extremely negative. This article attempts to take a comprehensive approach to this issue, conceptualizing the transformations taking place in the public sphere under the influence of Internet communication technologies, taking their political context into account, and identifying the relationship between these changes and possible transformations of political regimes. In order to achieve these goals, several tasks are tackled during this research. The first section examines the issue as to whether the concept of the public sphere can be used in a non-democratic context. It also delineates two main types of the public sphere, the “democratic public sphere” and the “authoritarian public sphere,” in order to take into account the features of public discourse in the context of various political regimes. The second section discusses the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a democratic context. The third section considers the special aspects of the digital transformation of the public sphere in a non-democratic context. The concluding section summarizes the results of the study, states the existing gaps and difficulties, outlines the ways for their possible extension, and raises questions requiring attention from other researchers.

scholarly journals Public Discourses on (Sectoral) Energy Policy in Switzerland

2021 ◽  
pp. 313-343
Author(s):  
Lena Maria Schaffer ◽  
Alessio Levis
Keyword(s):  
Energy Policy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
Transition Policy

AbstractEnergy transitions are based upon policy choices of sovereign nation states. Hence, politics plays a role in determining which policies governments implement and which sectors are targeted. Our chapter looks at the evolution of public discourse on energy policy as one important factor reflecting policy discussion and contestation within the political arena. Our descriptive and explorative analysis of the early public discourse in Swiss energy policy between 1997 and 2011 contributes to three main issues. First, it makes a case for the disaggregation of energy policy and its public perception to add to our understanding of energy transition pathways. We argue that looking at sectoral discourses as well as sectoral policy outputs allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the idiosyncrasies of Swiss energy policy regarding temporal as well as sectoral variation. Second, an increased politicization of energy policy may affect future policy choice, and thus any account on energy transition policy needs to scrutinize potential feedback effects from policies that manifest via policy discourse. Third, and on a more methodological stance, we argue that our approach to use news media as a representation of the public discourse via structural topic models can help to explore and explain the evolving national policy priorities regarding energy transition.

scholarly journals A National Public Sphere? Analyzing the Language, Location, and Form of Newspapers in Finland, 1771–1917

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-77
Author(s):  
Jani Marjanen ◽  
Ville Vaara ◽  
Antti Kanner ◽  
Hege Roivainen ◽  
Eetu Mäkelä ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mass Medium ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Newspaper History

This article uses metadata from serial publications as a means of modelling the historical development of the public sphere. Given that a great deal of historical knowledge is generated through narratives relying on anecdotal evidence, any attempt to rely on newspapers for modeling the past challenges customary approaches in political and cultural history. The focus in this article is on Finland, but our approach is also scalable to other regions. During the period 1771–1917 newspapers developed as a mass medium in the Grand Duchy of Finland within two imperial configurations (Sweden until 1809 and Russia in 1809–1917), and in the two main languages – Swedish and Finnish. Finland is an ideal starting point for conducting comparative studies in that its bilingual profile already includes two linguistically separated public spheres that nonetheless were heavily connected. Our particular interest here is in newspaper metadata, which we use to trace the expansion of public discourse in Finland by statistical means. We coordinate information on publication places, language, number of issues, number of words, newspaper size, and publishers, which we compare with existing scholarship on newspaper history and censorship, and thereby offer a more robust statistical analysis of newspaper publishing in Finland than has previously been possible. We specifically examine the interplay between the Swedish- and Finnish-language newspapers and show that, whereas the public discussions were inherently bilingual, the technological and journalistic developments advanced at different pace in the two language forums. This analysis challenges the perception of a uniform public sphere in the country. In addition, we assess the development of the press in comparison with the production of books and periodicals, which points toward the specialization of newspapers as a medium in the period after 1860. This confirms some earlier findings about Finnish print production. We then show how this specialization came about through the establishment of forums for local debates that other less localized print media such as magazines and books could not provide.

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