Showing papers by "Thomas Hanitzsch published in 2014"

Studying celebrity news

Abstract: There was a time when news coverage of celebrities was mostly confined to tabloids, distinctive magazines and special sections of newspapers. Today, celebrity news is an endemic phenomenon; it has found its place across the entire media spectrum where it proved its capacity to attract a wide range of publics and to drive consumption (Turner, 2010). Celebrity coverage has become omnipresent and pervasive even to the extent that it constitutes a new normality in the contemporary media world. The increasing presence of celebrity news has often been subjected to critical accounts of the media and cultural industries. Public consciousness tends to perceive celebrity coverage in terms of a dirty pleasure of sensationalist tabloid reporters who capitalize on exposing the private lives of the famous. It is considered by many to be the ‘dark planet’ of contemporary journalism. As a symptom of tabloidization it is seen as contributing to the dumbing down of news content and journalistic quality (Franklin, 1997). Celebrity news may well distract public attention from the important issues in public conversation, diverting public interest from the issues that really matter (Couldry et al., 2007; Postman, 1985). In this issue, Martin Conboy warns that such a cultural flattening may have a broad, if apolitical, democratic potential. The consequences of the ‘discursive bleeding of celebrity discourse’ (P. David Marshall, in this issue) into the political context might also be more direct. In his contribution to this special issue, Jason Wilson argues that the infiltration of the political sphere by the celebrity logic raises questions about reforming political leadership and modes of democracy in an environment where significant proportions of the population have tuned out from official politics. These questions bear enormous relevance across contemporary democracies.

Political Trust among Journalists: Comparative Evidence from 21 Countries

Abstract: Political scientists often argue that political trust is critical to democracy. Mishler and Rose (2001: 30), for instance, maintain that trust links ordinary citizens to the institutions that are supposed to represent them, ‘thereby enhancing both the legitimacy and the effectiveness of democratic govern- ment’. It comes as no surprise that this proposition has sparked a large array of research on political trust, from David Easton’s (1965) early study of polit- ical support to more recent endeavors to trace trust across various nations (e.g. the World Values Survey), and to attempts to identify the sources of trust (Campbell, 2004; Luhiste, 2006; Mishler and Rose, 2001). Empirical evidence suggests a rather pessimistic outlook for many of the established democracies, which show alarming signs of widespread public discontent with politics and cynicism about government (Norris, 1999a). Mair (2006: 6) notes that ‘[n]ever before in the history of postwar Europe have govern- ments and their political leaders...been held in such low regard.’

Journalismusforschung als Integrationsdisziplin

Abstract: Journalismusforschung als Integrationsdisziplin zu beschreiben, entbehrt in mancherlei Hinsicht nicht einer gewissen Ironie. Historisch betrachtet bildete die Journalismusforschung die Keimzelle einer Zeitungswissenschaft, aus der sich spater die Publizistik- und eine moderne Kommunikationswissenschaft entwickelt hat. Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Funktionen und Leistungen von Journalismus, den Charakteristika von Journalisten, den durch sie produzierten publizistischen Inhalten und – beginnend in den 1940er Jahren – die Wirkungen journalistischer Inhalte auf das Publikum standen im Kern einer Auseinandersetzung, die ihre Wurzeln in verschiedenen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen hatte: insbesondere in der Soziologie, Psychologie und Politikwissenschaft.