Graduate School of Communication
Erasmus Mundus Master’s programme in Journalism, Media and Globalization
Master’s Thesis
Is this art or news?
A content analysis of visual arts coverage in the German feuilleton
Victoria Mrosek
Student ID: 11896795
Supervised by Andreas Schuck
Abstract
Arts and cultural journalism has traditionally been restricted to elite magazines, forming a marginalized discipline in the mass media landscape and in media research. However, as the lines between hard and soft news have begun to blur, arts and cultural coverage has moved toward the journalistic mainstream, marked by an increasing popularization and politicization of content. Building upon the pioneering body of research from Scandinavia, this study focuses on visual arts coverage as a traditional genre of cultural journalism in the German feuilleton to analyze when and how the visual arts are being reported as news. While previous studies have primarily investigated how cultural journalists are increasingly deviating from the former elitist self-perception, this study analyzes the extent to which they are turning to traditional news journalism. It does this by conducting a qualitative content analysis of visual arts coverage in two German newspapers. The deductive approach made it possible to
compare how visual arts coverage differs across outlets, revealing differences in the two newspapers’ online and offline strategies. The main finding of this study is that a traditional approach to cultural journalism is still dominating visual arts coverage, but art news reporting is increasingly accommodated in the German feuilleton. Thereby, the study sheds light on the media’s role as the mediator of visual arts for mainstream society as well as its role in
assigning significance to the arts in general. Thus, the study contributes to the academic and public debate about the value of art and culture in the media and in society.
Keywords: cultural journalism, visual arts, arts journalism, aesthetic paradigm, journalistic paradigm, newsworthiness, news factor analysis, quantitative content analysis
Introduction
In November 2017, when the German Centre for Political Beauty built a replica of the
Holocaust Memorial outside the house of far-right German politician Björn Höcke, the media response was overwhelming. The Berlin-based art collective was reacting to a statement by Höcke, a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, in which he described the original monument in Berlin as a “monument of shame” and criticized Germany’s culture of remembering its World War II crimes (Taylor, 2017). Following those events, cultural journalist Mounia Meiborg wrote a piece on “artivismus” (English: artivism), in which she presented selected political art projects. Meiborg emphasized that the exceptional
accomplishment of the replica of the Holocaust Memorial was its large-scale production of public and media space by which an art project was able to become the focal point of public discourse.
From the perspective of media research, however, cultural journalists traditionally have the primary responsibility “for the journalistic representation of arts and culture for the general public” (Jaakkola, 2013, p. 242). In other words, cultural artifacts are not inherently
legitimized (i.e., visible and relevant) in public discourse but instead rely on journalists to construct their value (Janssen, 1999; Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011) and to decide if they are newsworthy. The concrete example of the Holocaust Memorial replica shows how an arts event framed in its relation to politics, can be presented to the public as newsworthy. That is why research on media coverage of the arts can provide important knowledge about the newsworthiness, and thus the importance, of culture in society. Nevertheless, within media research, comparatively little scholarly attention has been devoted to cultural journalism and news reporting of a specific genre, such as the visual arts. This reflects a historic prioritization within journalism, with political journalism and news media traditionally being considered
superior to softer issues, such as art, culture and lifestyle (Nørgaard Kristensen & From, 2015). This prioritization is rather paradoxical considering that the imagery, models and narratives into which audiences for political news translate that news find their roots in the art world, making art “an essential and fundamental element in the shaping of political ideas and political action” (Edelmann Murray, 1995, p. 6). Cultural journalists themselves perceive their role within journalism as exceptional, rather than inferior, to political or news journalists (Harries & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007). While much of existing research on cultural journalism adheres to this narrative of exceptionalism, some studies indicate that the discipline is adopting many characteristics of general news journalism (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011; Jaakkola, 2013, 2015). In fact, surprisingly little research has assessed the extent to which mainstream journalistic values, as established patterns of news reporting, are represented in newspaper coverage of the arts. This study addresses this gap in research by answering the following research question:
RQ: When and how is visual art being reported as news by mainstream German newspapers?
By analyzing the specificities of arts coverage in the German feuilleton, this study takes a focused approach to examine a comparatively uncharted field of research: examining and assigning news value to the visual arts. The study can thus contribute to the greater discussion regarding how the media contributes to the definition and recognition of the arts in society.
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework of this study is structured as follows: First, the current state of research on arts and cultural journalism is summarized to portray the distinctive
characteristics of the discipline and the genre of visual arts in particular. Second, this
defined below. In this context, commercialization, journalistification and politicization (Jaakkola, 2015) are introduced as potential driving forces in the shift toward the journalistic paradigm. Third, the paper introduces the concept of newsworthiness and research on news factors, arguing that established news factor research and the comparatively new research on cultural journalism can be combined to analyze the current state of visual arts coverage and to evaluate its role in assigning news value to the arts in general.
Cultural journalism and visual arts coverage
As mentioned in the introduction, cultural journalism has traditionally been almost
disregarded as a subject of media research. However, with the lines between hard and soft news beginning to blur, research on cultural journalism has begun to flourish (Nørgaard Kristensen & From, 2015). In particular, research from Scandinavia has provided valuable insights into the coverage of different art forms over time (Janssen, 1999), the balance between news reporting and reviewing (Verboord & Janssen, 2015) and conceptions of the roles of cultural journalists (Harries & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007; Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011). Among Scandinavian researchers, Nørgaard Kristensen and From’s broad understanding of cultural journalism “as an umbrella term for the media’s reporting and debating on culture, including the arts, value politics, popular culture, the culture industries, and entertainment” (2015, p. 763) has become a shared and often-cited definition of the concept. In the Anglo-American context, cultural journalism is often referred to as “arts journalism,” whereas in Germany and France, it is known as “feuilleton(ism)” (Jaakkola, 2015). The terms cultural journalism, arts journalism and feuilletonism can thus be used interchangeably. The present study employs Jaakkola’s more narrow definition of cultural journalism “as a distinct subfield of journalism on arts or, wider defined, on culture, pertinent to the journalistic ideology and its practices but differentiated from them through specialization” (2015, p. 541).
and aesthetic issues without narrowing down the content to any specific form of art or culture” (Jaakkola, 2015, p. 19), this conceptualization makes it possible to focus on the visual arts as a distinct genre within the cultural journalism. While many previous content analyses have examined cultural or arts coverage over time, across countries or according to genres (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017; Jaakkola, 2013; Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011), this paper takes a more targeted approach by focusing on the actual content of coverage of visual arts in the German feuilleton. Compared to other genres, visual arts have maintained a comparatively consolidated position within cultural journalism in terms of the proportion of space they receive (Janssen, 1999), making it the most generalizable genre within the discipline. Hence, an explanation of the term of visual arts by differentiating it from other artistic genres is in order.
Because defining visual arts from a theoretical perspective would exceed the scope of this paper, it employs a functional definition based on previous studies on cultural journalism. In her analysis of different art forms in the news, Janssen differentiated visual art “including both contemporary and older art, poster art, and photography” (1999, p. 334) from other genres, such as literature, classical and popular music, film, theatre, cabaret, musical and show, dance and applied art. Janssen, Verboord and Kuipers (2011) divided visual arts into high arts (e.g., painting and sculpture) and popular arts (e.g., photography). In 1991, Frank, Maletzke and Müller-Sachse found that the high visual arts received 11% of the cultural coverage in German daily papers. However, due to significant changes in the past two decades, this narrow conceptualization of cultural journalism appears to be outdated. For a better understanding of this development, a brief look into cultural journalism in Germany follows.
Since the end of World War II, Germany’s highly decentralized cultural policy system, in which local authorities are the most important sponsors and carriers of culture and the arts, strengthened the traditional genres and institutions of high culture (Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011, p. 145). While the traditional genres maintained their status within German cultural politics, their journalistic coverage changed drastically beginning in the 1980s (Reus & Harden, 2005). A content analysis of the coverage devoted to arts and culture in four elite newspapers was conducted by Janssen et al. (2011), showing that German newspapers are still more focused on high culture than their European equivalents but have also increased the space for coverage of the arts in general and popular culture in particular. According to Knapskog, Iversen and Larsen (2016), newspapers have devoted more space to their arts and culture sections to cater to the increasingly fragmented audience’s desires for soft and interpretative journalism. As a result, a more inclusive understanding of culture and cultural journalism replaced the traditional high cultural canon and the exclusive categorization of artistic products in European journalistic practice and media research (Hellman, Larsen, Riegert, Widholm, & Nygaard, 2017; Jaakkola, 2015). By conceptualizing visual arts as a genre within cultural journalism, including high and popular forms (such as photography and graffiti) of visual art, the present study takes into account the new inclusiveness of cultural journalism. Unlike performance artists, visual artists create visible works of art which outlast their performative creation. Products of visual art thus can include drawings, graphics, paintings, sculptures, installation art, architecture, photography and printmaking (Esaak, 2017; Jaakkola, 2015).
Despite visual art’s comparatively stable position within the arts pages (Janssen, 1999) and the increased cultural coverage in absolute numbers in German newspapers, the established genres (i.e. high art genres) have lost relative space at the expense of a completely different subject: politics (Reus & Harden, 2005). This politicization of the media is characterized “by
the increasing coverage of political issues and the tendency to find hard news in the field of culture” (Hellman et al., 2017, p. 119). Politicization is another symptom of the broadening of cultural journalism. Jaakkola (2015) refers to this phenomenon as journalistification, which is discussed in the next section.
Aesthetic versus journalistic paradigm
Jaakkola used the culture section from five Finnish dailies and interviews with culture editors to show that the profession of cultural journalism is a hybrid construct: Cultural departments balance between “information-oriented reporting within the journalistic paradigm and classification-oriented reviewing within the aesthetic paradigm” (2015, p. 4). These professional paradigms of cultural journalism differ in their understanding of culture (ontological dimension) and their production of knowledge (epistemological dimension).
While the aesthetic paradigm defines culture in a narrow sense, focusing on professional productions of aesthetic creations and high culture, the journalistic paradigm employs a broader understanding of popular, everyday culture, including amateur productions and shedding light on the contexts in which such artwork was produced (Jaakkola, 2015). Situated in journalism and the arts, cultural journalists naturally borrow from the both the aesthetic and the journalistic paradigm (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011). While Jaakkola’s research provided standard definitions of terms, other studies have confirmed that the journalistic paradigm has become increasingly dominant in cultural journalism. For example, Janssen (1999) found that the cultural sections of newspapers had adopted a popularized understanding of culture. Following studies confirmed that the culture sections employ an increasingly inclusive
understanding of culture (Hellman et al., 2017; Nørgaard Kristensen & From, 2015)—a focus which corresponds to the popular, everyday culture promoted by the journalistic paradigm. The increasing influence of the journalistic paradigm is also reflected in the epistemological
dimension. The aesthetic paradigm requires journalists to be an authority who evaluates cultural objects in an artistic-aesthetic field, whereas the journalistic paradigm requires journalists to take position in the media field through reproduction of meaning, using sources and visual or multimedia presentations instead of mere text (Jaakkola, 2015). Hence, the journalistic paradigm “has its ideology closer to mainstream journalism than the autonomous pole of the aesthetic paradigm, which […] stresses the autonomy of art” (Jaakkola, 2013, p. 244). While interview-based research indicates that arts journalists themselves still perceive their role and work practices to be exceptional within the journalistic landscape (Harries & Wahl-Jorgensen, 2007), this study intends to reassess that perception through an independent analysis of coverage.
The recent shift toward the journalistic paradigm is referred to as journalistification, an “increase in media’s dominance over the aesthetic, ‘internal’ mediatization of journalistic culture of arts journalism” (Jaakkola, 2014, p. 545). Journalistification further describes the increasing influence of economically driven journalism on the specialized branch of cultural journalism. It is therefore unsurprising that, aside from the change in the traditional division between hard and soft news (Nørgaard Kristensen & From, 2015) and the increasing
politicization of the cultural sections (Knapskog & Larsen, 2008; Reus and Harden, 2005), journalistification is accompanied by increasing commercialization. In this context, Jaakkola defines commercialization as “succumbing to market forces, strengthening of economic bonds, expansion of consumerist orientation” (Jaakkola, 2014, p. 545). Following up on these trends, the present study intends to investigate the extent to which recent coverage of the visual arts reflects this political and commercial dimension.
Adherents of the aesthetic paradigm often criticize commercialization, disregarding the fact that together with professionalization, digitalization, and globalization, commercialization has
actually revitalized the role of cultural journalism (Nørgaard Kristensen & From, 2015). Compared to their European counterparts, German newspapers are the most focused on high culture because German arts journalists “remain relatively free of the commercial pressures that generally lead to more attention to popular culture” (Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011, p. 160). Yet, Reus and Harden (2005) found that commercial rivalry with other competitors has forced the German feuilleton to draw attention to itself through increasingly negative critiques and polemics. Together with announcements, reviews still form the most common type of article in the German feuilleton (Reus & Harden, 2005). However, since the 1980s, news pieces have increasingly replaced event reporting, background stories and commentaries in the arts pages (Reus and Harden, 2005). Taking up this aspect of article classification, this study assesses the extent to which types of articles indicate a continuation of the findings by Reus and Harden. While the increased number of news stories reflects a shift toward the journalistic paradigm with its traditional journalistic values of objectivity and immediacy, the continuous dominance of negative reviews rather fits the aesthetic paradigm, which relies on subjectivity and the authority of art experts (Jaakkola, 2013, p. 244). Rather than being
defined according to one paradigm, cultural journalists are allocated along the spectrum of the aesthetic and the cultural paradigm. As a result, cultural journalists work in the institutional context of cultural evaluation, reputation making, cultural consecration and legitimation as well as consumer behavior and commercial success (Janssen and Verboord, 2015).
Overall, German feuilletonism is experiencing the same shift toward the journalistic
paradigm—even though the change appears to be less radical—as their European equivalents. In sum, past research of the cultural departments of newspapers confirms the widening of the concept of culture (popularization), the advance of political topics in the cultural section at the expense of traditional art critique (politicization), an increasing influence of commercial forces (commercialization), and thus an overall shift toward the journalistic paradigm
(journalistification). These developments provide a suitable framework to structure the analysis of cultural coverage for this study. Despite these changes, arts journalism in elite newspapers still maintains its status as a key channel for the attribution of symbolic value to cultural products (Janssen, 1999), but the increased dominance of the journalistic paradigm has “converged arts-reporting journalists towards the general newsroom values and general occupational ideology of journalism” (Hellman and Jaakkola, 2011, p. 785). While previous studies have elaborated on general changes within cultural journalism by shedding light on the deviation from the aesthetic paradigm, this study’s focus is on the evident shift toward the journalistic paradigm, marked by general journalistic values (Jaakkola 2015). Hence, the next section introduces the theory of news factors as a theoretical framework for researching the journalistification of cultural journalism.
Newsworthiness
As opposed to arts and cultural journalism, research on newsworthiness and news factors has a long tradition in communication research (see Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Schulz, 1982; Staab 1990). In 1965, Galtung and Ruge carried out a content analysis of selected international crises covered in Norwegian newspapers and suggested a list of 12 news factors to explain how events become news. While the news factors of that original study have been the subject of scholarly revision, their methodological approach became the preferred method for many studies to follow. Within the German tradition of news factor research, Winfried Schulz (1982) performed a content analysis of newspapers to study news structure and people’s awareness of political events. Schulz argued that journalists assign news value to certain events that carry news factors which correspond to the journalists’ selection criteria. His approach was further developed by Staab into a functional approach, which suggested that newsworthiness is constructed by journalists are in a position to ascribe certain news factors to an event (Staab, 1990). This is opposed to a causal approach, which suggests that
newsworthiness is due to the inherent characteristics of an event (Staab, 1990). The present study follows the functional approach, defining newsworthiness as “the worth of a happening or issue to be reported as news, as established via a set of news values” (Caple & Bednarek, 2016, p. 436). This requires distinguishing between news values and factors as these terms have been used interchangeably in the literature. For this study, news factors are defined as “the qualities of a news story (e.g., the presence of personification, controversy, or
negativity), whereas news values are the journalistic assessment of how important these factors are” (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017, p. 4).
Overall, research on newsworthiness has been the subject of continuous scholarly revision, resulting in considerable overlap in most news factor research (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Eiders, 2006; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016). While the influence of the often-cited studies by Galtung and Ruge (1965), Schulz (1982) and Staab (1990) is undeniable, more recent studies on news factors have adapted to the conditions of the modern media landscape. For this reason, the present study combines the work of Christiane Eilders (1997, 2006), which is rooted in the German media landscape, with other recent studies on news factors (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017; Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016). In spite of their differing focus, the sets of news factors proposed in these studies can be suitably synthesized into a set of eight common (i.e., shared) news factors, which can be operationalized within the context of visual art coverage across different newspaper outlets. Table 1 below provides an overview of these news factors and their conceptualization.
Table 1
Selected news factors and their conceptualization
Personification The personal or human face of an event or issue, including eyewitness reports (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Eilders, 1997)
Negativity Particularly negative overtones and emphasis on the negative aspects of an event or issue (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016) Eliteness The powerful, renowned status of individuals, organizations, institutions
or nations involved in an event or issue (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001)
Proximity The geographical and cultural nearness of an event or issue (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Staab, 1990)1
Influence and relevance
Issues or events perceived to be relevant/significant to the audience in terms of their effects or consequences (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016)
Continuity References to issues or events in the concrete past or future (Harcup & O'Neill, 2016)2
Controversy A form of conflict, such as dispute, clashing debate, protest,
demonstration or strike (Eilders, 1997; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016; Schulz, 1982)
Visuality Use of visual material other than text (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O'Neill, 2001)
1 In the context of (visual) arts, this allows to differentiate between the cultural provenance of an artist/ artwork
and the geographic location of an event.
2 Particularly in the context of cultural coverage, previews (reference to future events) highlight that the aspect of
In addition to the seven common news factors, the present study also includes visuality as a news factor. Not only did previous studies on newsworthiness find that visuality is a
neglected but important news factor (Caple & Bednarek, 2016; Harcup & O'Neill, 2001), studies on cultural journalism have included newspaper layout and placement of visuals to determine whether the use of visual elements has increased over time (Heikkilä, Lauronen & Purhonen, 2017; Hellman et al., 2017; Verboord and Janssen, 2015). Increased photo usage, the rationalization of work practices, the simplification of language and the shortening of texts are characteristics of the journalistic approach (Jaakkola, 2014), thus providing evidence of the increasing journalistification of the journalistic profession.
By combining the perspectives of studies on cultural journalism and on newsworthiness, this study is the first to shed light on the effects of the increasingly influential journalistic
paradigm in German cultural journalism and to provide a better understanding of the
definition and evaluation of visual art in society overall. This literature synthesis reveals that research on the newsworthiness of visual arts in mainstream media is a scarcely researched subject in media studies. In particular, the analysis of news factors in visual arts coverage represents an untouched research topic, which is why no hypothesis can be posed.
Method
To analyze when and how visual art is reported in the news, a quantitative content analysis (Neuendorf, 2002; Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 2014) of visual arts coverage in two German newspapers was conducted. The two newspapers analyzed were Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which, at the time of this study, ranked second and third in the list of daily national newspapers with the highest circulation (Schröder, 2017). Furthermore, despite decreasing circulation numbers, Reus and Harden (2005) considered these two newspapers to guide the cultural discourse and public opinion within Germany’s
media landscape. As noted by Skilbeck (2008), research on cultural journalism has been divided between art magazines and mainstream media. This study bridges this research gap by investigating differences in how art news was reported in two mainstream newspapers, whose cultural sections are known for their elite content.
Although Riegert, Roosvall and Widholm (2015) criticized cultural journalism research’s predominant focus on newspapers over other types of media, a content analysis of newspaper coverage is an appropriate method to study the newsworthiness of visual art (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O'Neill, 2016), especially for an otherwise uncharted field of research. Furthermore, including both the print and online versions of both newspapers is a step beyond the traditional approach, accounting for the increasing relevance of online reviews (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017). This study, therefore, takes up the small-scale study by Hellman et al. (2017), which found that the tested Scandinavian outlets differed in their online and offline coverage.
Sample selection
Units of data analysis used for this study were individual newspaper articles retrieved from the respective digital archives of the two newspapers, SZ and FAZ. A relatively general keyword search for art* and a more specific term related to visual art (e.g., painting,
photography, sculpture, drawing) was conducted, search the full articles. The data collection was not restricted to the arts and culture sections or lifestyle supplements but included the whole newspaper because relevant articles could also be found in other sections (Frank, Maletzke & Müller-Sachse, 1991). Since the coverage of the arts is subject to seasonal influences, the search considered a full year, from January 1 to December 31, 2017, to obtain a representative set of articles (n = 2,368), from which a periodic sample could be drawn. Throughout the process of periodic sampling, the few irrelevant articles, which were selected
based on the keyword search but did not actually report on a visual arts topic, were sorted out by determining whether the article explicitly referred to the visual arts as a genre or to a producer, product, consumer or event from the genre. This resulted in a final sample of 459 newspaper articles (SZ print: n = 132; SZ online: n = 88; FAZ print: n = 116; FAZ online: n = 123), which were further analyzed by coding them for formal, textual and visual aspects.3
Coding
For a general overview and to classify the articles as following either the aesthetic or journalistic paradigm, they were coded according to general variables, such as the type of article, newspaper section and topical focus. To test the presence of common news factors as enlisted in the theoretical framework, the codebook included two questions per news factor. If applicable, these were operationalized into an art-related dimension to reflect traditional coverage and a politics-related dimension to reflect a more inclusive and politicized style of arts reporting. The presence of news variables of a political nature would support the
argument of the alleged politicization of the German feuilleton (Reus & Harden, 2005). Additionally, the number of images was counted in order to consider the alleged increasing relevance of visuality as a news factor (Caple & Bednarek, 2016). To test for politicization and commercialization (Heikkilä, Lauronen & Purhonen, 2017; Jaakkola, 2014), the presence of political and commercial dimensions was also measured. An abbreviated operationalization of the relevant variables can be seen in Table 2 below.
Measurement: Reliability and variables
Much effort was invested to measure the inter- and intra-coder reliability of the current study: 44 randomly selected articles from the full sample (10% of the full sample) were coded by an
3
external coder, who had received a coding training, and were coded a second time by the primary coder. The results of the inter- and intra-coder reliability test for the double-measured news factors and other relevant content variables can be seen in Table 4 in Appendix A.
While the commonly used Krippendorff’s alpha yielded high (α >.7) to acceptable (α >.5) inter- and intra-reliability results for the variables unrelated to news factors,4 the measurement method fell short for nine of the dichotomous news factor variables5 in the inter-coder
reliability test. For the intra-coder reliability test, all variables reached a score of α >.5 or higher. Since Krippendorff’s alpha relies on pairwise comparisons (Krippendorff, 2004), it is not an ideal method for measuring variables that occur either predominantly or rarely.
Fretwurst’s Lotus, on the other hand, “compares individual coding decisions to the most coded value, and its standardized version (std λ) still corrects for chance” (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017, p. 9; see also De Vreese, Boukes, Schuck, Vliegenthart, Bos, & Lelkes, 2017; Vos & Van Aelst, 2017). Thus, this measurement method was found to be more suitable for these variables. Standardized Lotus values above .60 are considered acceptable, while values above .60 indicate good reliability (Fretwurst, 2015). Because the content analysis was conducted by only one coder, the results of the intra-coder reliability test can be given priority. Overall, the results of the inter- and intra-coder reliability tests were acceptable for the key variables of interest for the current study. Limitations related to the reliability of the coding are discussed below in the discussion.
4 These include: Type of article, topical hook, position of the author, political dimension, commercial dimension,
number of images in total and number of images related to visual art.
5 These were coded for coded for presence and absence in the text, resulting in a skewed distribution in some
Analysis
To measure the percentage of the presence of each news factor including visuality, a chi-square test was performed for each newspaper (SZ, FAZ) and medium (print, online), respectively6. Pearson’s test of correlation indicated that there was no significant correlation between either of the two variables, testing for one news factor7 or the political and
commercial dimension (r <.4), which is why variables were measured independently instead of being grouped.
Results
Regarding the full sample, reviews were the most common type of coded article (44.2%), followed by previews (14.8%) and news stories (12.4%).8 However, a chi-square test
comparing the four outlets and the types of articles indicated that this ranking was different if one looked at the four outlets individually.9 For FAZ print and online, the most common type of article, after reviews and previews, was interviews/profiles, whereas the SZ differed in its offline and online coverage. Accounting for 22.7% of the SZ online coverage, previews were more common than reviews. In fact, with only 20.5% reviews, SZ online had a significantly lower share of reviews compared to the other outlets, Χ2 (3, N = 459) = 28.35, p ≤.000,
followed by news announcements/lists (18.2%). For SZ print, previews made up only 4.5% of the total, ranking far behind reviews (46.2%), news stories (16.7%) and interviews/profiles (13.6%).
6 To conduct the statistical analysis, three variables (Negativity TON, Proximity CUL, Number of images VIS)
were changed into dichotomous variables.
7 This is unsurprising considering that the two questions were designed to cover different, sometimes even
opposing, aspects of a news factor.
8 For a complete overview, see Table 5 in Appendix A. 9
With regard to the full sample, news stories had the lowest average word count (M = 433.56,
SD = 318.79). Announcements had the highest average word count (M = 2,224.29, SD =
2099.43), followed by reports/features (M = 1,870.43, SD = 1845.57).10 The average length of the analyzed articles was 922 words (SD = 865.64), with FAZ online having the lowest average word count (M = 780.15, SD = 355.00) and SZ online having the highest (M = 1,223.45, SD = 1,585.09). Articles in the SZ were significantly longer (M = 1,019.49, SD = 1,114.55) on average than FAZ articles (M = 834.10, SD = 531.40), t(457) = 2.30, p =.022.11 As expected, most articles were published in the feuilleton section12 of the newspaper (59.7%), followed by the respective regional section (11.5%). Only 2% of the articles were published in the politics section.
Overall presence of news variables
Overall, references to the art eliteness was found to be by far the most prominent news factor, occurring in 91% of the articles, followed by subject personification (69.1%) and visuality (65.9%). Political influence and relevance was the least present news factor (5%). Table 2 below provides a full overview of the presence of all news factors as well as the commercial and political dimension, summed up as news variables. Adding the commercial and political dimensions to the list of news factors for the statistical analyses, the results make it possible to compare the influence of the alleged journalistification, politicization and
commercialization.
10 This is unsurprising considering that announcement also included online slideshows with a high word count
(see footnote 8) and that reports/ features are operationalized as often longer articles.
11
The word count refers to the entire article, not just the sections that deal with visual arts. Therefore, the high amount of slideshows (“photos of the month”) with a high word count on SZ Online, from which only a small fraction actually deals with visual arts, distorts the result.
12 This includes the section „Kultur“ (culture) of SZ Online. Note that the section “Kunstmarkt” (art market)
Table 2
Presence of news variables
News variable Articles (n = 459)
Eliteness ART 91.9% (n = 422) Personification SUB 69.1% (n = 317) Visuality 65.9% (n =302) Continuity PAS 57.7% (n = 265) Proximity GEO 55.1% (n = 253) Continuity FUT 53.4% (n = 245) Negativity EXP 50.3% (n = 231) Commercial dimension 49.1% (n = 225) Political dimension 38.3% (n = 176) Eliteness POL 27.2% (n = 125) Negativity TON 25.9% (n = 119) Controversy ART 22.9% (n = 105)
Influence and relevance CUL 20.3% (n = 93)
Proximity CUL 18.5% (n = 85)
Personification TON 18.3% (n = 84)
Controversy POL 14.8% (n = 68)
Influence and relevance POL 5.0% (n = 23)
Presence of news variables across outlets
A chi-square test was performed to examine the relationship between the newspapers (SZ versus FAZ) and the presence of the tested news variables. As can be seen by the frequencies cross-tabulated in Table 7 in Appendix A, the relationship between newspaper as the
commercial dimension. Articles in the FAZ contained more negative expressions,13 Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 10.96, p =.001; personification of the subject, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 4.89, p =.02; and
references to the art elite, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 8.05, p =.005. Furthermore, FAZ coverage was
more likely to refer to cultural influence and relevance, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 3.97, p =.046, and
future continuity, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 17.65, p =.000. On the other hand, SZ articles were more
likely to include the news factors of geographic proximity, Χ2 (2, N = 459) = 13.40, p =.001,
and past continuity, Χ2 (2, N = 459) = 12.98, p =.002. Finally, FAZ articles were significantly
more likely to refer to a commercial dimension, Χ2 (2, N = 459) = 31.67, p ≤.000.
Presence of news variables across mediums
Another chi-square test was performed to examine whether news factors and the commercial and political dimensions were equally present in print and online articles.14 The relationship between these variables was significant in six cases. Print articles were more likely to contain personification of the subject, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 10.15, p =.001; negative expressions, Χ2 (1, N
= 459) = 4.39, p =.036; and references to the art elite, Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 4.25, p = 0.39. Print
articles also contained more references to the past, Χ2 (2, N = 459) = 9.16, p =.010; to a
political dimension Χ2 (1, N = 459) = 5.26, p =.022; and more visuals, Χ2 (1, N = 458) = 8.20, p =.004.
For a complete comparison across newspapers and mediums, a third round of chi-square tests was performed to examine the difference between online and print within the same
newspaper.15 There was a significant difference between FAZ print and online articles for two variables: The FAZ print articles were more likely to include images, Χ2 (1, N = 239), = 7.14,
13 As mentioned earlier, since the reliability results for this variable were low, the findings have to be treated
cautiously.
14 See Table 8 in Appendix A for the results. 15
p =.008, whereas the FAZ online articles contained more references to the commercial dimension, Χ2 (1, N = 239) = 9.66, p =.002. In contrast, the print version of SZ was much
more likely to use news factors than the SZ online version, since p ≤.05 in 10 out of the 17 tested news variables.
Preliminary results
In terms of the general trends emerging from these detailed results, reviews and previews comprised the majority of the feuilleton, but particularly the SZ also included news stories as a notable part of their coverage. Overall, references to the art elite proved to be the most common news factor, followed subject personification and visuality (with a different ranking for the individual outlets). As a summary of these results, Table 3 below shows how present certain news variables were in the four outlets, with a p-value ≤.05 indicating that the difference across the four outlets is significant. In general, the news variables were more present in FAZ articles than SZ articles and more present in print than in online articles.
Table 3
Presence of news variable factors across outlets
News factor SZ FAZ p-value
Print (n = 132) Online (n = 88) Print (n = 116) Online (n = 123) Eliteness ART 93.2% 80.7% 95.7% 91.1% .000 Personification SUB 74.2% 48.9% 76.7% 70.7% .000 Visuality 69.7% 60.9% 74.1% 57.7% .030 Continuity PAS 56.1% 38.6% 71.6% 60.2% .000 Proximity GEO 50.8% 63.6% 53.4% 55.3% .007 Continuity FUT 41.7% 45.5% 62.1% 63.4% .000 Negativity EXP 50.0% 30.7% 60.3% 55.3% .000 Commercial dimension 45.5% 20.5% 51.7% 71.3% .000 Political dimension 41.7% 23.9% 44.8% 39.0% .015 Eliteness POL 30.3% 17.0% 29.3% 29.3% .125 Negativity TON 31.1% 11.4% 27.6% 29.3% .020 Controversy ART 31.8% 18.2% 18.1% 21.1% .045
Influence and relevance CUL 22.0% 8.0% 25.0% 22.8% .014
Proximity CUL 17.4% 13.6% 21.6% 20.3% .704
Personification TON 17.4% 18.2% 19.8% 17.9% .967
Controversy POL 17.4% 12.5% 13.8% 14.6% .757
Discussion and conclusion
This study investigated when and how visual art is being reported in mainstream German newspapers. By analyzing the presence of common news factors, as well as commercial and political references, the study reveals the extent to which the discipline of cultural journalism is undergoing changes toward popularization, politicization and commercialization of content. In so doing, it contributes to the discussion of the media’s role in defining arts and culture and assigning value to them. The main findings show that reviews and previews still form the “hard core of the arts pages” (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011, p.795). Therefore, SZ and FAZ resemble their equivalents in Finland, France, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017). This also explains the prominence (i.e., presence in more than 50% of the articles) of the news factors of art eliteness, past continuity and negative
expressions since these are inherent characteristics of reviews. Nonetheless, with news stories making up almost a quarter of the cultural coverage, elite German newspapers too have begun to accommodate art news reporting—as distinct from arts criticism—in their cultural
coverage (Verboord and Janssen, 2015), indicating a convergence with the journalistic paradigm (Jaakkola, 2013; 2015).16
Looking at the findings in greater detail, it becomes clear that there are striking differences between the four outlets. In particular, articles published by SZ online significantly deviated from the other outlets in that they contained fewer news factors. This contradicts the finding of Hellman et al. (2017, p. 129), who did not find “dramatic differences between offline and online platforms” for Scandinavian public service organizations. Instead, the present study indicates that the difference between online and offline sources cannot be generalized for the
16 Note that the cross-sectional design, i.e. non-longitudinal design, of this study does not allow to make
German feuilleton but instead differ across newspapers. With the exception of visuality and the commercial dimension, news values appear to be consistently present in the FAZ online and offline versions. In contrast, the results indicate greater disparity between the online and offline versions of the SZ. While the SZ print articles often resembled the FAZ coverage in their use of news factors, the SZ online stood out in many cases in that it used fewer news factors. This finding can be interpreted as a confirmation of the longitudinal analysis of German cultural pages by Reus and Harden (2005), which found that the FAZ tended to be more traditional than their counterpart in Munich. From a theoretical point of view, the differences within the SZ can be explained by the fact that the print version of a newspaper often follows a more traditional approach (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017). This also is related to the broader discussion of the internet creating “fears regarding the loss of traditional,
authoritative and evaluation-based reviewing” (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017, p. 625)—a reality that journalists at SZ and FAZ seem to address differently. With social media challenging the traditional role of the printing press as the mediator of information regarding venues and times of cultural events (Frank, Maletzke & Müller-Sachse, 1991), print outlets tend to emphasize traditional news values and ideas aligned with the aesthetic paradigm. Online outlets, on the other hand, enter the competition with social media in favor of a convergence with the journalistic paradigm. As far as identifying general patterns, the use of news factors can be interpreted as a traditional approach to cultural journalism, which is more visible in the FAZ than in the SZ. This is due to coverage resulting from the SZ’s divergent style of
reporting online. Hence, the use of news values in cultural journalism indicates an orientation toward the aesthetic paradigm. A few of the tested news factors are discussed in greater detail below.
On average, negativity turned out to be a relatively prominent news factor. That is
evaluative language and thus display a particularly high percentage of negative expressions and tones. This supports the argument by Reus and Harden (2005) that competitive pressures even force elite newspapers to emphasize negative critique and polemics. Likewise, the high number of reviews and previews results in the prominence of the news factors of past and future continuity. In particular, the FAZ took a more proactive approach in time orientation, confirming that a shift from reporting the past to forecasting the future (Jaakkola et al., 2015) is also characteristic of cultural coverage in Germany. Furthermore, the prominent use of subject personification can be seen as an indicator of “a possible relocation of attention from the artwork to its creator(s)” (Heikkilä & Gronow, 2017, p. 11) and a general turn toward human interest themes in cultural journalism (Kristensen & From, 2015). The German
identity of an artist or the German provenance of a piece of art played a subordinate role with geographic proximity (i.e., the venue/location of the news event) proving to be more
important than cultural proximity. This confirms the finding that domestic locale remains a key value in cultural coverage but also suggests that the German feuilleton is increasingly devoted to foreign actors (Janssen, Kuipers & Verboord, 2008).
The inclusion of the commercial and political dimensions resulted in mixed findings across outlets, but it became clear that these variables were more present in the outlets with a more traditional approach to journalism. Among the politics-related news factors, the political dimension proved to be the most prominent. That is rather unsurprising considering that the operationalization of this variable was comparatively broad. Nevertheless, the presence of politics in the coverage of visual arts reflects an opening of the feuilleton toward the political sphere, which was long avoided by cultural journalists (Reus & Harden, 2005), and an
attempt “to increase the professional legitimacy of cultural coverage” (Hellman et al., 2017, p. 120). At the same time, the small number of references to political controversies and
role of politics in the arts and vice versa in Germany may be an influential factor here: As a result of the Nazi- and later Stasi-experiences, freedom of expression is secured through the preservation of art and cultural policy from government influence (Oye, 2007, p. 125). Finally, with the inclusion of visuality as a news factor, this study advances previous research—particularly in the field of news factor analysis—and justifies the importance of this aspect in modern news coverage and thus in academic research on visual communication and newsworthiness.
This research asked when and how is visual art being reported as news by mainstream German newspapers. In response to the research question and to Hellman and Jaakkola (2012), who were doubtful whether integrating cultural issues into general newscasts would result in the application of generalized news criteria and a watered-down version of cultural journalism, this study shows that the traditional news factors are already a fixed component of cultural coverage by elite German newspapers. Rather than concluding that the German feuilleton has “approached the normative centre of the mainstream ideology of journalism” (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011, p. 796), this study suggests that news factors reveal a traditional approach to news journalism—and to cultural journalism.
This study comes with certain limitations. As remarked earlier, the interpretation of these results must be done carefully. The application of news factors analysis to cultural coverage of visual arts is an arguably unprecedented approach and thus requires further research. Nevertheless, with regard to transparency and the ongoing discussion in academia about the most suitable reliability measurement, the present study advances previous research by reporting both inter- and intra-reliability through Krippendorff’s alpha and Fretwurst’s Lotus. Furthermore, as with any deductive content analysis, the nuances of the findings in the present study are limited (Janssen, Verboord & Kuipers, 2011). Finally, less of a limitation and rather
an innovative attempt to fill an existing gap in research is the fact that the findings of this study are restricted to the German context. This limitation could be addressed by further research in two ways: In terms of national studies of domestic specificities, follow-up studies could compare cultural coverage across time (longitudinal design), across a greater variety of media types (e.g., newspaper versus television or private versus public outlets) and across other art genres (e.g., theatre, literature) to test the generalizability of the results and also to more fully highlight the aspect of popularization. On the other hand, considering the alleged cross-country differences in cultural journalism (Hellman et al., 2017), as well as the strong impact of national identity and media systems on arts and cultural journalism (Noregard Kristensen & From, 2015), future research could apply a similar approach to other countries. The above limitations notwithstanding, the present study makes an important contribution to the emerging research on cultural journalism and the wider discussion about the value of art and culture in the media and in society by revealing which factors account for the
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Appendices
Appendix A: Results Table 4
Inter- and intra-coder reliability tests
Variable Operationalization17 Inter-coder reliability
Intra-coder reliability
α std λ α std λ
Type of article Classification of the article based on length, tone, style, topic, and author
.6186 .70 .8595 .89
Topical hook The kind of news event/ issue which triggered this article
.5875 .70 .7687 .84
Author’s position Author’s position as
evaluating expert or neutral outsider .6780 .82 .5101 .70 Personification SUB Focus on individuals as subjects .0756 .69 .7323 .90 Personification TON
Use of personal tone .0290 .32 .5926 .76
Negativity TON Overall tone .3211 .43 .7870 .80
Negativity EXP18 Use of an explicitly negative expression
.0031 .25 .5421 .63
17 The complete operationalization of the individual variables can be found in the codebook in Appendix B. 18 Since the intra-coder reliability is low to moderate for this variable, its significance for the following analysis
Eliteness ART Reference to an actor from the art elite
.0000 .97 .6588 .97 Eliteness POL Reference to an actor from
the political elite
.5686 .69 .7603. .83
Influence and relevance CUL
Explicit reference to the cultural impact of visual art
.3000 .52 .6762 .80
Influence and relevance POL
Explicit reference to the political impact of visual art
.3882 .83 .6919 .90
Proximity GEO Geographical location of the visual art related news event
.8221 .88 .7715 .85
Proximity CUL Geographical origin of the art subject/ actor in focus
.5933 .63 .8116 .83 Controversy ART19 Reference to an art-related conflict .4821 .66 .5000 .66
Controversy POL Reference to a political conflict
.4000 .59 .5672 .76
Continuity PAS Explicit reference to a news event in the past month as of publication
.6027 .83 .6979 .86
Continuity FUT Explicit reference to a future news event in the upcoming year as of publication
.5926 .76 .7929 .86
Political dimension Explicit reference to politics or political affairs
.7281 .80 .7752 .83
19 Since the intra-coder reliability is low to moderate for this variable, its significance for the following analysis
Commercial dimension
Explicit reference to money or other clear economic indicators
.5851 .69 .8651 .90
Number of images TOT20
Number of all images .9311 .95 .9017 .92
Number of images VIS
Number of images relating to visual art
.8305 .87 .8467 .90
Table 5
Percentage and average word count per type of article
Type of article Percentage of the full sample
Average word count
News story 12.4% 433.56
Review 44.2% 908.99
Preview 14.8% 628.46
Other commentary text 5.7% 847.81
Interview/ profile/ personal portrait 11.5% 946.23
Report/ feature 3.1% 1,870.43
Announcement/ list 6.1% 2,224.29
Other 2.2% 1,100.60
Total 100.0% 922.96
20 For online sources, the number of images in the article might have been higher when the article was published
Table 6
Type of article per news outlet in percent
Type of article SZ FAZ
Print Online Print Online
News story 16,7% 15.9% 8.6% 8.9% Reviews 46,2% 20.5% 59.9% 47.2% Previews 4,5% 22.7% 11.2% 23.6% Commentary 8.3% 2.3% 6.9% 4.1% Interview/ profile 13.6% 10.2% 10.3% 11.4% Report/ feature 5.3% 2.3% 0.9% 3.3% Announcement/ list 3.8% 18.2% 6.1% 0.8% Other 1.5% 8.0% 0.0% 0.8% Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% Note. p ≤.000
Table 7
Crosstabulation of Newspaper and News variable
News variable Newspaper Χ2 df p-value
SZ FAZ Personification SUB Yes 141 (-10.9) 176 (10.9) 4.89* 1 .027 No 79 (10.9) 63 (-10.9) Personification TON Yes 39 (-1.3) 45 (1.3) 0.09 1 .761 No 181 (1.3) 194 (-1.3)
Negativity TON Yes 51 (-6.0) 68 (6.0) 2.67 2 .263
No 168 (5.5) 171 (-5.5)
Unknown 1 (0.5) 0 (-0.5)
Negativity EXP Yes 93 (-17.7) 138 (17.7) 10.96*** 1 .001 No 127 (17.7) 101 (-17.7)
Eliteness ART Yes 194 (-8.3) 228 (8.3) 8.05** 1 .005
No 26 (8.3) 11 (-8.3)
Eliteness POL Yes 55 (-4.9) 70 (4.9) 1.06 1 .302
No 165 (4.9) 169 (-4.9) Influence and relevance CUL Yes 36 (-8.6) 57 (8.6) 3.97* 1 .046 No 184 (8.6) 182 (-8.6) Influence and relevance POL Yes 11 (0.0) 12 (0.0) 0.00 1 .992 No 209 (0.0) 227 (0.0)
Proximity GEO Yes 123 (1.7) 130 (-1.7) 13.40*** 2 .001
No 59 (-12.9) 91 (12.9)
Unknown 38 (11.2) 18 (-11.2)
No 66 (4.2) 63 (-4.2) Unknown 119 (1.6) 126 (-1.6) Controversy ART Yes 58 (7.7) 47 (-7.7) 4.10 2 .129 No 161 (-8.2) 192 (8.2) Unknown 1 (0.5) 0 (-0.5)
Controversy POL Yes 34 (1.4) 34 (-1.4) 0.14 1 .711
No 186 (-1.4) 205 (1.4)
Continuity PAS Yes 108 (-19.0) 157 (19.0) 12.98** 2 .002 No 111 (19.0) 81 (-19.0)
Unknown 1 (0) 1 (0)
Continuity FUT Yes 95 (-22.4) 150 (22.4) 17.65*** 1 .000 No 125 (22.4) 89 (-22.4) Political dimension Yes 76 (-8.4) 100 (8.4) 2.58 1 .108 No 144 (8.4) 139 (-8.4) Commercial dimension Yes 78 (-30.1) 147 (30.1) 31.67*** 1 .000 No 142 (30.1) 91 (-30.1) Visuality Yes 145 (0.6) 157 (-0.6) .01 1 .907 No 74 (-0.6) 82 (0.6)
Note. * = p<.05, ** = p<.01, ***p<.001. Adjusted standardized residuals appear in
Table 8
Crosstabulation of Medium and News variable
News variable Medium Χ2 df p-value
Print Online Personification SUB Yes 187 (15.7) 130 (-15.7) 10.15** 1 .001 No 61 (-15.7) 81 (15.7) Personification TON Yes 46 (0.6) 38 (-0.6) 0.02 1 .882 No 202 (-0.6) 173 (0.6)
Negativity TON Yes 73 (8.7) 64 (-8.7) 4.41 2 .110
No 174 (-9.2) 165 (9.2)
Unknown 1 (0.5) 0 (-0.5)
Negativity EXP Yes 136 (11.2) 95 (-11.2) 4.39* 1 .036 No 112 (-11.2) 116 (11.2)
Eliteness ART Yes 234 (6.0) 188 (-6.0) 4.25* 1 .039
No 14 (6.0) 23 (6.0)
Eliteness POL Yes 74 (6.5) 51 (-6.5) 1.85 1 .174
No 174 (-6.5) 160 (6.5) Influence and relevance CUL Yes 58 (7.8) 35 (-7.8) 3.26 1 .071 No 190 (-7.8) 176 (7.8) Influence and relevance POL Yes 13 (0.6) 10 (-0.6) 0.06 1 .806 No 235 (-0.6) 201 (0.6)
Proximity GEO Yes 129 (-7.7) 124 (7.7) 2.11 2 .348
No 87 (6.0) 63 (-6.0)
Unknown 32 (1.7) 24 (-1.7)
No 74 (4.3) 55 (-4.3) Unknown 126 (-6.4) 119 (6.4) Controversy ART Yes 63 (6.3) 42 (-6.3) 3.06 2 .217 No 185 (-5.7) 168 (5.7) Unknown 0 (-0.5) 1 (0.5)
Controversy POL Yes 39 (2.3) 29 (-2.3) 0.36 1 .551
No 209 (-2.3) 182 (2.3)
Continuity PAS Yes 157 (13.8) 108 (-13.8) 9.16* 2 .010 No 89 (-14.7) 103 (14.7)
Unknown 2 (0.9) 0 (-0.9)
Continuity FUT Yes 127 (-5.7) 118 (5.4) 1.02 1 .313
No 121 (5.4) 93 (-5.4) Political dimension Yes 107 (11.9) 69 (-11.9) 5.26* 1 .022 No 141 (-11.9) 142 (11.9) Commercial dimension Yes 120 (-1.8) 105 (1.8) 0.12 1 .731 No 128 (1.8) 105 (-1.8) Visuality Yes 178 (14.5) 124 (-14.5) 8.20** 1 .004 No 70 (-14.5) 86 (14.5)
Note. * = p<.05, ** = p<.01, ***p<.001. Adjusted standardized residuals appear in parentheses behind group frequencies.
Table 9
Crosstabulation of Medium and News variables for SZ only
News variable SZ (n = 220) Χ2 df p-value
Print Online Personification SUB Yes 98 (13.4) 43 (-13.4) 14.77*** 1 .000 No 34 (-13.4) 45 (13.4) Personification TON Yes 23 (-0.4) 16 (0.4) 0.02 1 .885 No 109 (0.4) 74 (-0.4)
Negativity TON Yes 41 (10.4) 10 (-10.4) 12.40** 2 .002
No 90 (-10.8) 78 (10.8)
Unknown 1 (0.4) 0 (-0.4)
Negativity EXP Yes 66 (10.2) 27 (-10.2) 8.08** 1 .004
No 66 (-10.2) 61 (10.2)
Eliteness ART Yes 123 (6.6) 71 (-6.6) 7.92** 1 .005
No 9 (-6.6) 17 (6.6)
Eliteness POL Yes 40 (7.0) 15 (-7.0) 4.95* 1 .026
No 92 (-7.0) 73 (7.0) Influence and relevance CUL Yes 29 (7.4) 7 (-7.4) 7.58** 1 .006 No 103 (-7.4) 81 (7.4) Influence and relevance POL Yes 9 (2.4) 2 (-2.4) 2.30 1 .130 No 123 (-2.4) 86 (2.4)
Proximity GEO Yes 67 (-6.8) 56 (6.8) 3.59 2 .166
No 40 (4.6) 19 (-4.6)
Unknown 25 (2.2) 13 (-2.2)
No 41 (1.4) 25 (-1.4) Unknown 68 (-3.4) 51 (3.4) Controversy ART Yes 42 (7.2) 16 (-7.2) 6.35* 2 .042 No 90 (-6.6) 71 (6.6) Unknown 0 (-0.6) 1 (0.6)
Controversy POL Yes 23 (2.6) 11 (-2.6) 0.98 1 .322
No 109 (-2.6) 77 (2.6)
Continuity PAS Yes 74 (9.2) 34 (-9.2) 7.39* 2 .025
No 57 (-9.6) 54 (9.6)
Unknown 1 (0.4) 0 (-0.4)
Continuity FUT Yes 55 (-2.0) 40 (2.0) 0.31 1 .578
No 77 (2.0) 48 (-2.0) Political dimension Yes 55 (9.4) 21 (-9.4) 7.40** 1 .007 No 77 (-9.4) 67 (9.4) Commercial dimension Yes 60 (13.2) 18 (-13.2) 14.42*** 1 .000 No 72 (-13.2) 70 (13.2) Visuality Yes 92 (4.6) 53 (-4.6) 1.81 1 .179 No 40 (-4.6) 34 (4.6)
Note. * = p<.05, ** = p<.01, ***p<.001. Adjusted standardized residuals appear in parentheses behind group frequencies.
Table 10
Crosstabulation of Medium and News variables for FAZ only
News variable FAZ (n = 239) Χ2 df p-value
Print Online Personification SUB Yes 89 (3.6) 87 (-3.6) 1.10 1 .293 No 27 (-3.6) 36 (3.6) Personification TON Yes 23 (1.2) 22 (-1.2) 0.15 1 .701 No 93 (-1.2) 101 (1.2)
Negativity TON Yes 32 (-1.0) 36 (1.0) 0.08 1 .773
No 84 (1.0) 87 (-1.0)
Negativity EXP Yes 70 (3.0) 68 (-3.0) 0.62 1 .429
No 46 (-3.0) 55 (3.0)
Eliteness ART Yes 111 (0.3) 117 (-0.3) 0.04 1 .834
No 5 (-0.3) 6 (0.3)
Eliteness POL Yes 34 (0.0) 36 (0.0) 0.00 1 .994
No 82 (0.0) 87 (0.0) Influence and relevance CUL Yes 29 (1.3) 28 (-1.3) 0.16 1 .685 No 87 (-1.3) 95 (1.3) Influence and relevance POL Yes 4 (-1.8) 8 (1.8) 1.17 1 .280 No 112 (1.8) 115 (-1.8)
Proximity GEO Yes 62 (-1.1) 68 (1.1) 1.06 2 .588
No 47 (2.8) 44 (-2.8)
Unknown 7 (-1.7) 11 (1.7)
Proximity CUL Yes 25 (0.7) 25 (-0.7) 0.73 2 .693
