Frankfurter Allgemeine Research Articles

Reporting Latin America in Germany: indicators of ethnocentrism expressed in news values

This paper combines a content analysis of 3 831 articles in the German press with eight qualitative interviews with correspondents in the region to assess aspects of ethnocentrism in the news. We considered events from 2000 to 2014 in the following publications: the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Tageszeitung, and Der Spiegel. One-quarter of the analysed events shows a German self-reference, although this involvement is sectorial. Apolitical areas of coverage tend to show a higher level of ethnocentrism. Besides, news items signed by correspondents are less ethnocentric.

Crises as catalysts of foreign reporting on Latin America: An evaluation of the German press over 15 years

This article investigates whether, in light of the political and economic changes that occurred in the region in the last decades, crises are still a catalyst for foreign reporting on Latin America. The study comprises 3,831 articles related to the 20 Latin American countries published from 2000 to 2014 in the German press: the dailies Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the political magazine Der Spiegel and the alternative newspaper tageszeitung. The author found that more than half of the coverage on the continent depicted some sort of crisis, especially non-violent ones and controversies (36.4%). However, the portrayal of crises is sectorial. The ‘invisible’ Central American states (Honduras, Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador) and the countries against the Washington Consensus (Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela) exhibit a higher coefficient of crisis intensity. Colombia, despite considerable press attention, has the most crisis-centred reporting due to the conflict with FARC.

The role of the ‘negativity’ factor in international news coverage: A case study of Latin America in the German press, 2000–2014

This paper analyses the predominance of the ‘negativity’ factor as the primary determinant of news coverage in the German press – Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Tageszeitung and Der Spiegel – of events in Latin America. Based on a sample of 3831 articles published between January 2000 and December 2014, this study finds a general concentration of negative events (43.05%) with regard to 20 Latin American countries. However, since this number does not exceed 50%, the research assumption of a conflict-oriented news reporting has to be relativised. The ‘negativity’ rate stands out as sectorial depending on specific countries and areas of news coverage. Considerable interest in cultural issues helps to provide a more balanced image. While Honduras, Haiti, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Paraguay exhibit a strong negative balance, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile and Cuba boast a dynamic, positive image. Brazil and Mexico account for two ambivalent cases.

The role of wire services in the new millennium: An examination of the foreign-reporting about Latin America in the German press

Given the substantial impact of the Internet and social media on the contemporary process of news selection, this article studies the current role of news agencies as agenda-setters in global news reporting. With a focus on the foreign-reporting of Latin America within the prestigious national press in Germany, we analysed the articles’ authorship from four sources: two market-leading German dailies – ‘ Süddeutsche Zeitung’ and ‘ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ – the weekly ‘ Der Spiegel’ and, the alternative newspaper ‘ tageszeitung’ (taz). The corpus comprises 3831 articles published between 2000 and 2014. In addition, eight (semi-structured) interviews with German correspondents in Latin America were conducted to comprehend their relationship with the editorial offices and the indirect use of wire services. We observe that not only is the agency-copy low (8.9%) when compared with other world regions, but direct agency use has also been declining. However, further indicators show that the thematic orientation remains powerful. Moreover, the interviewees confirm the agencies’ impact on their work.

Four facets of Latin America: A study of the German press coverage from 2000 to 2014

This paper reassesses the image of the twenty Latin American countries in the German press – the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the alternative newspaper taz and the political magazine Der Spiegel – almost forty years after the NWICO debates. The study comprises 3831 analysed articles published during 15 years (from 2000 to 2014), a period in which the continent has experienced substantially political transformations. We identified four main categories of foreign reporting related to the region; 1) Germany’s most important trading partners (Brazil, Argentina and Mexico); 2) the states against the Washington consensus (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador); 3) the invisible Central American countries and 4) the other Mercosur and Pacific Alliance’s nations (Colombia, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay). The main postulations of the “Foreign News Study” – negativity, focus on politics and dominance of elite – should be relativised, especially in the case of the first category.

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

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.

Linguistic Methods of Anti-Russian Propaganda ‒ a New Trend in the German Mass Media

The article reveals the specifics of constructing the image of Russia in the German mass media. Based on the study of media discourse, the positions of Russia in the context of the global information and psychological confrontation are determined. We identify markers that determine the information policy of Germany in relation to Russia, as well as linguistic means of forming the image of the country and methods of information aggression against Russian society. On the basis of headline complexes and article leads, priority topics (buzz-topics) in the media, informational reasons for referring to them, sentiment (expressive-evaluative vocabulary), directional vector were determined. The research object are German media, such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Die Welt, Bild, Der Spiegel. The lexemes ″Russia″, ″Moscow″, ″Putin″, ″Kremlin″ (and synonyms) were used as the units of analysis. Relations with Syria, the United States and NATO, Ukraine, Belarus and Turkey were popular topics in the German media during the study period (2020). The analysis of the texts showed that the mostly negative media image of Russia is represented. In foreign policy, the country is presented as an invader, a military aggressor, a murderer, an enemy, and its leader, in the interpretation of the media, is an insidious, cunning schemer, a dishonest player on the geopolitical chessboard. The portrayal of leading German newspapers portrays Russia as a peripheral state, a third world country that claims to be a world power (with nuclear weapons) and a semi-dictatorial regime. In the course of the study, we used general scientific methods of cognitive and interpretive linguistic discourse analysis. In publications, even high-quality ones, metonymy, metaphors, comparisons, epithets, hyperboles are used as components of anti-Russian rhetoric. Conclusion: there is practically no positive news about Russia, the country itself is seen as the main threat to the security of the world. This requires an adequate response, a new information policy and a correction of the country’s reputation. Keywords: information attacks, media image, , enemy image, Russia, ogenda, stylistic means, semantic, discourse

The Great Secession: Ethno-National Rebirth and the Politics of Turkish–German Belonging

Germany is facing a contemporary mainstreaming of the far right, which has a long tradition of wanting “Turks out!” Turkish immigrants have been the main strangers in Germany following the guest-worker treaty signed in 1961, physically close as friends, yet culturally distant as foes. From September 2015 onwards, German–Turkish politics of belonging, the Turkish issue, underwent a contentious period resulting in secessions between German and Turkish authorities in September 2017. Against this background, this article asks: How did mainstream political actors in Germany emplot the Turkish issue while a far-right challenger party sought to establish a far-right narrative of ethno-national rebirth? The temporal unfolding of the Turkish issue is explored by drawing on media analysis (n = 1120), interpretive process-tracing and narrative genre analysis of claims raised by political actors in German and Turkish newspapers. In order to visualize how the Turkish issue evolved between 2000 and 2017 in media discourse, 546 articles in the mainstream quality newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were collected. The Great Secession period between 2015 and 2017 was selected for an in-depth case study. To conduct interpretive process-tracing and narrative genre analysis of this case, another 574 articles in the German Süddeutsche Zeitung and Turkish Hürriyet were analysed. In so doing, this article contributes to (1) the study of belonging and identity by adopting a novel approach to boundary studies, combining narrative genre analysis with Habermas’ communicative action theory, and (2) the study of political strategies of adapting, ignoring or demarcating far-right contenders by, again, introducing a narrative approach to political communication and mobilization processes. The analysis shows that, in the first stage of the Great Secession period, inclusionary and exclusionary boundaries competed, while in later stages inclusionary boundaries were cast aside by exclusionary boundaries after reputable mainstream party-political actors adopted and thus legitimized far-right story elements.

Indirection and the Rhetoric of Tyranny: Carl Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values 1960–1967

This article situates Carl Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values (1960/1967/1979) within the context of Schmitt's 1940s and 1950s op-ed campaign for full amnesty for Nazi war criminals as well as the context of the Veit Harlan trials and the 1958 Lüth judgment of the German Constitutional Court. The article further examines the revisions to Schmitt's 1967 version of the text in the light of Karl Löwith's criticisms of Schmitt in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1964. The article argues that The Tyranny of Values is a work of post-Second World War Nazi apologetics, in which Nazi racial theory can be seen being put to polemical ends in the 1960s and 1970s. The article concludes with broader reflections on the relation of Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values to Nazi discourse in the aftermath of the Second World War and the history of Nazism post-1945.

Farewell to a philosopher

ConstellationsVolume 26, Issue 3 p. 353-354 OBITUARY Farewell to a philosopher Jürgen Habermas, Jürgen HabermasSearch for more papers by this author Jürgen Habermas, Jürgen HabermasSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 October 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8675.12442 The obituary appeared first in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 22, 2019. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume26, Issue3Special Issue: Constellations 25th Anniversary Issue: Democracy in a World of CrisisSeptember 2019Pages 353-354 RelatedInformation

International adoption: thematic discourse in the German media

The problem of international adoption is analyzed. Special interest in international adoption is explained by less strict requirements to potential adoptive parents, which reflects the asymmetrical nature of interaction between donor and recipient countries on this issue, and the need to separate the child from biological parents in order for adoptive parents to insure themselves against possible claims from them. The existing system of international adoption is considered as a modern form of exploiting developing countries, which have excessive reproductive resources. The peculiarities of the international adoption discourse are considered on the example of German mass media as one of the acceptor countries that form a solvent demand for this service. On the basis of the qualitative content analysis of 205 publications in four leading German magazines and newspapers (Der Spiegel, Der Stern, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), published in the period from 2002 to 2018, the peculiarities of topical presentation of international adoption and the formation of attitudes towards it among the majority of German citizens are traced. Currently, the areas of discourse on international adoption are as follows: expansion of the adoption rights of same-sex families; promotion of adoption through the media; legislative changes to eliminate the black market of international adoption; surrogacy and the spread of IVF as a factor of reducing international adoption; success of adopted children in adulthood; criticism of racism and sexism in adoption; and adoption of children with disabilities. Based on the above, it is logical to forecast a further increase in demand for international adoption in the host countries despite the backdrop of tighter legislation in donor countries.

Phraseologismen als Textualisierungsmittel

The objective of the following article was to present the results of a study evaluating among others the function of idioms preceding and closing text blocks, as well as forming a text frame in feuilletons of the »Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung«. The conducted analysis was to discuss whether idioms serve solely pragmatic purposes or whether they are also a means of text structuring.

ВОЗДЕЙСТВУЮЩИЙ ПОТЕНЦИАЛ ИМПЛИКАТУР В ТЕКСТЕ НЕМЕЦКОЙ АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ СТАТЬИ

The author examines the influencing potential of conventional implicatures in the text type “analytical article” from the viewpoint of communicative-pragmatic linguistics. The articles of the German newspapers ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ and ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ served as the research material. The paper differentiates the notions “explicature” and “implicature”, analyses the basic types of implicatures: conventional and communicative ones. Special attention is paid to the factors affecting the influencing potential of implicatures in the analytical article as a genre of print journalism. The analysis of functioning of different types of conventional implicatures in the German articles is carried out on the basis of differentiated implicit components and it contributes to identifying the addresser’s communicative intention.

The determinants of Latin America’s news coverage in the German press

ABSTRACTThis article is based on a content analysis of 3.831 articles published between January 2000 and December 2014 in the market-leading national German press. Following papers and magazine were considered: ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ (SZ), ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’ (FAZ), ‘Der Spiegel’ and, additionally, the alternative newspaper ‘tageszeitung’ (taz). The research aims at analysing countries’ features as determinants of news selection towards Latin American. It concludes that ‘power status’, ‘economic proximity’ and ‘socioeconomic status’, respectively, have a positive correlation with press attention. These factors that played the most crucial role in the selection process were then used as a reference to identify the deviations, i.e., nations that received much more attention than expected according to their characteristics. In these cases, ideology or crisis and negativity can explain the deviations. Especially Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela show an overrepresentation due to their position against the Washington Consensus. Argentina is also overrepresented because of its substantial correspondents’ network and previous economic crisis with an international dimension. Except for the top four most reported nations – Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Cuba – there is, in general, a lack of interest in Latin America amidst German press.

Synthetic biology in the German press: how implications of metaphors shape representations of morality and responsibility

Synthetic biology (SynBio) represents a relatively young field of research which has developed into an important scientific endeavour. Characterised by a high degree of interdisciplinary work crossing disciplinary boundaries, such as biology, mathematics and engineering, SynBio has been, since its beginning, devoted to creating new biological functions, metabolic pathways or even minimal organisms. Although its often-articulated aim of developing new forms of life has so far not been archived, SynBio nowadays represents a well-established biotechnological approach and it has also attracted public concern, especially since Craig Venter’s work on Mycoplasma Mycoides JCVI-syn1.0. Taking these developments as a starting point, the paper empirically investigates the metaphorical representations of SynBio in two leading German media publications, the daily newspaper Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the weekly magazine Der Spiegel between 2000 and 2010. Using a novel combination of metaphor and co-occurrence analysis, the paper engages in a systematic examination of implicit moral implications inherent in linguistic images permeating this news coverage. It demonstrates a method of how media-metaphorical representations and their moral implications of SynBio could analytically be revealed and analysed. In doing so, it aims at contributing to empirical ethical analyses of the news coverage on SynBio in particular and offers an approach that methodologically adds to literature on responsible language use, which is emerging in science and technology studies and ethical analyses of new technologies.

АНАЛИЗ ЯЗЫКОВОГО ВЫРАЖЕНИЯ И ДИНАМИКИ КОНЦЕПТА «ЭМИГРАНТ» В ДИСКУРСЕ СМИ ГЕРМАНИИ

The article analyzes the concept “immigrant”, its components, inventoried in the discourse of the German media, as well as the ways of its language actualization. The research is conducted on the basis of the cognitive-discursive paradigm associated with the conceptual analysis. In addition, the methods of a semantic and derivational analysis are used. As a product of discourse, the information-analytical texts presented on the websites of the printed editions “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung”, “Welt”, “Bremer Sprachlog”, “SWR International” are considered.

Word Formation in German Linguistics: Theoretical and Methodological Analysis

The paper defines the ways and peculiarities of word formation in modern German language. The paper deals with one of the ways of enriching the verb vocabulary in the modern German language, in particular wordbuilding. In the result of the analysis of the language material, the most productive models and means of the word-building of the verbs are emphasized including word-building models borrowed from other languages. The vocabulary of the language, being a system, is in constant motion. The functioning of language is associated with the disappearance of certain words, with the emergence of new ones, with the change in the meaning or stylistic status of words. Each of the ways of developing the vocabulary of the German language has its own characteristics. The paper draws attention to these features. The paper describes verbal neoplasms not registered in dictionaries until the middle of the 20th century, selected from the texts of the German newspapers “Suddeutsche Zeitung”, “Frankfurter Allgemeine”, “Der Spiegel”, “Joe”, “Alles fur die Frau”, “GEO” and others. The study considers the linguistic material of some dictionaries published in the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, including dictionaries of colloquial youth vocabulary. So, the main idea of this article is to highlight the peculiarities of word formation in German linguistics through the history.

Discursive Construction of territorial disputes: foreign newspaper reporting on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute

ABSTRACTMost studies of the news discourse surrounding territorial disputes focus on the domestic newspapers of the conflicting countries from the perspective of “us” and “them”. This study examines how the newspapers of foreign countries discursively construct a territorial dispute within the framework of an intergroup conflict schema. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of articles on the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute published online in five newspapers of record (the New York Times, the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald, Le Monde, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) reveals two main points: First, the articles published by these newspapers share a similar intergroup conflict schema that is based on competition and the pursuit of national interests as interpreted in conformance with the national interests of the respective countries (USA, UK, Australia, France, and Germany). Second, in terms of how news discourse is framed, there are noticeable differences between the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the other four which may reflect the influence of Germany’s socio-historical context on domestic public opinion.

Indispensable Partner or Significant Other? German and French Media Portrayals of Poland after 25 Years of Weimar Triangle

With the intention of the German, French and Polish foreign ministers to bring their countries closer together after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Weimar Triangle was founded in 1991. This setting has enabled an institutionalised regional cooperation on the governmental level as well as between the respective civil societies. However today, in a Europe of permanent crises and protracted uncertainty, a risky divergence between Germany, France and Poland seems to emerge. Since the Polish national elections in October 2015 has brought the right‑wing, nationalist Law‑and‑Justice‑party (PiS) into power, we are also witnessing a rising relevance of domestic political determinants for mutual contacts. Facing this new period of tension, where more closeness and trust would be required, discursive attitudes and strategies of ‘othering’ might gain ground and lead to increasing alienation. Based on the assumption that the portrayal of a country could be both the first step towards creating and obtaining a more inclusive or exclusive identity, this paper aims to find out the following: in how far are German and French media about to pre‑cook patterns of asymmetry and alienation? Or follow they rather an inclusive and comprehensible approach towards Poland? These questions are exemplified by the biggest centre‑left and centre‑right German and French daily newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Le Monde and Le Figaro, whereas the corpus of data is limited to the period of the year 2016. By making use of the critical discourse analysis, this paper provides information about to what extent Poland is considered to be a close and indispensable partner as well as to where we can identify mechanisms of putting the country aside as a significant other.

The Crimea Crisis from an International Law Perspective

In February and March 2014, Ukraine was literally overrun by a chain of events that eventually led to Crimea’s incorporation into Russian territory. Crimean and Russian authorities jointly used the internal conflict in Ukraine to deprive the Ukrainian government of its control over Crimea, to hold a so-called referendum, and to declare Crimea’s independence. On the day after independence was declared, Russia formally recognized Crimea as an independent state, [1] and the Crimean parliament requested Russia to admit Crimea to the Russian Federation. [2] Soon after that, the accession treaty was signed, and, within a few more days, all Russian constitutional requirements for Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation were fulfilled. [3] All parties to the conflict refer to international law to justify their positions. The Crimean authorities and Russia claim that Russia had a legal basis for intervening and that Crimea had the right to secede from Ukraine. Most states, however, reject these claims. Thus, three questions are presented: Was Crimea’s secession lawful under international law? To what extent has Russia violated international law? And what is Crimea’s status? This article addresses these questions. Part 1 briefly describes the relevant circumstances and events leading to Crimea’s secession. Part 2 reviews the legal obligations between Ukraine and Russia concerning territorial integrity and the prohibition against the use and threat of force. Parts 3 and 4 discuss the legality of Russia’s intervention in Crimea and the legality of Crimea’s secession from Ukraine, respectively. Part 5 concludes this article by answering the questions it raises. [1] See “Executive Order on Recognizing Republic of Crimea,” President’s web-site, March 17, 2014, accessed June 1, 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20596. [2] Luke Harding and Shaun Walker, “Crimea Applies to be Part of Russian Federation After Vote to Leave Ukraine,” The Guardian , March 17, 2014, accessed June 1, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/17/ukraine-crimea-russia-referendum-complain-result. [3] See in regard to the Russian constitutional process Otto Luchterhandt, who argues that during that process Russian constitutional law was violated (Otto Luchterhandt, “Annexion der Krim – Putin verstost gegen russische Verfassung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 18, 2014).