Erasmus Mundus Master’s Joint Degree Journalism, Media and Globalisation Joint degree
The image of India in German broadsheet and
tabloid media
by PiaYvonne Behme Student ID: 12367745 Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: dhr. dr. Rachid Azrout May 29th, 2019 Word count: 7492Abstract
Foreign news have a strong influence on the images that human hold about the world. The media coverage informs about issues and places of which most individuals cannot make their own direct experiences. For a German audience, India is one such place. Images about foreign countries are shaped by the selection of topics and the tone of the coverage. Using agenda-setting, framing and news value theory as the basis for a quantitative content analysis, this study investigated how German broadsheet and tabloid online media differ in framing India. The results show similarities in the affective coverage and differences in the
substantive coverage. Despite these differences, both media types presented an overall narrow image of India, dominated by stories with a social issues and human interest angle. The general tone of the coverage was slightly negative for broadsheet as well as tabloid media.
Keywords: agenda-setting, framing, images, broadsheet, tabloid, online media, foreign news,
Introduction
Humans hold images about the world in their heads. People form those images based on their social environment, direct experience, and indirect experience, e.g., the media (Hafez, 2002a). In an international context, indirect experience, particularly the media, dominate the influence on the image formation (Hafez, 2002a). Events happening outside one’s direct proximity are unobtrusive issues, i.e., issues of which most individuals cannot make their own, direct experiences (McCombs, 2014). In this case, their main source about world events is the press (Wanta, Golan & Lee, 2004). Unobtrusive issues are the ones most likely to become important to people if they are high on the media’s agenda (Coleman, McCombs, Shaw & Weaver, 2009, p. 153). Therefore, foreign news have a powerful influence on public opinion (De Vreese, 2003; Heimprecht, 2017) and political decisions (Soroka, 2003). This makes foreign news an interesting and relevant research field.
The media create images of foreign countries by selecting stories and presenting information in certain ways (McCombs, Llamas, Lopez-Escobar & Rey, 1997; Tewari & Pathak, 2010). The communication science concepts related to this are news values, agenda-setting, and framing. Scholars have used different approaches derived from these concepts to analyse how media portray foreign countries. These studies have shown that certain regions are covered only via certain topics (Beaudoin & Thorson, 2001; Brewer, Graf & Willnat, 2003) and that the coverage is mostly negative (Hafez, 2002a; Richter & Gebauer, 2010). This often leads to a media image of the respective country that is stereotypical, charged with orientalist views and not representative, i.e., only few parts of the reality in the respective country are depicted (Beaudoin & Thorson, 2001; Richter & Gebauer, 2010). Media effect studies have shown that those images are regularly adapted by the audience (Brewer et al., 2003; Wanta et al., 2004). “The more negative coverage a nation received, the
more likely respondents were to think negatively about the nation” (Wanta et al., 2004, p. 364).
The majority of studies that looked into the image of foreign countries in the media analysed broadsheet (or quality) print media (Busch, 2005; Cazzamatta, 2014; Hafez, 2002b; Mawugbe, 2002; Richter & Gebauer, 2010) and left out other media types and formats, such as tabloid (or popular) media and online news. However, there is reason to assume that tabloid media create different images of foreign countries since the underlying news production processes differ from broadsheet media (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017). Moreover, it is necessary to analyse online publications, considering that their audience is larger than the audience of print media (Newman, 2018). This is also true for German media (Pürer & Raabe, 2007), the focus of this study.
Scholars that have analysed the image formation of German news have looked at China (Richter & Gebauer, 2010), Brazil (Cazzamatta, 2014), Greece (Busch, 2005), Japan (Nafroth, 2002), the Middle East (Hafez, 2002b) and Africa (Mawugbe, 2002; Mükke, 2009). This paper will add to this body of literature by examining whether German broadsheet and tabloid online media create different images when reporting about India.
The bilateral relations between Germany and India have intensified in the past years, politically and culturally but especially economically. Germany is India’s largest trading partner within the EU and the sixth largest worldwide (Federal Foreign Office Germany, 2019; Ministry of External Affairs India, 2018). Indo‑German intergovernmental
consultations are held every two years to decide on partnership measures, such as their cooperation against cybercrime (Federal Foreign Office Germany, 2017). The cultural
relations are shaped by numerous educational exchange programmes and German institutions within India, such as the Goethe-Institutes and the Indo-German Society (Ministry of
External Affairs India, 2018). Despite those relations, most Germans cannot make their own experiences of India. The country, therefore, belongs to the unobtrusive issues mentioned above. Furthermore, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, India is a country of great cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity (Chhokar, 2007; The World Bank, 2017), which theoretically implies a variety of newsworthy issues.
Taking all the considerations mentioned above into account, this study sets out to investigate the following research question: How do German broadsheet and tabloid online media differ in framing India?
First, I will discuss the boundaries between framing and agenda-setting, as well as the concept of news values, to lay out the theoretical framework this study is based on. Second, I will introduce the partly deductive and partly inductive methodological approach. In the third section, I will present the results of the data analysis, followed by a discussion of the findings in relation to the communication theories previously mentioned. Lastly, I will conclude this paper by elaborating on some limitations of this research and suggestions for future research.
Theoretical Framework
Almost a century ago, Walter Lippmann (1922) published his work Public Opinion, in which he introduced the idea that the media influences “the pictures in our heads” about “the world outside”. This thought made him the progenitor for agenda-setting as well as framing research (Coleman et al., 2009; De Vreese, 2003; Entman, Matthes & Pellicano, 2009). Both theoretical concepts engage with the question of image formation by the media, but there has been a debate among scholars about the boundaries between the two which I will discuss next.
Agenda-setting
Fifty years after Lippmann’s Public Opinion, McCombs and Shaw (1972) coined the term ‘agenda-setting’. Their well-known ‘Chapel Hill’ study investigated whether the mass media set the agenda in the 1968 presidential campaign in the U.S. and whether such an agenda influences the salience of attitudes towards the political issues (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). The authors found a strong relationship between the emphasis that the media placed on certain issues and the evaluations of the voters as to which issues are important.
The study set the stepping stone for research on agenda-setting. This original theory is today referred to as first-level agenda-setting (Coleman et al., 2009). It describes the
relationship between the amount of the coverage of a certain object and the importance of this issue perceived by the public. “Simply put, the more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people” (Coleman et al., 2009, p. 147).
Cohen (1963) described this media effect as follows: "The press may not be
successful in telling us what to think but is stunningly successful in telling us what to think about” (p. 13). While the first level of agenda-setting refers to what issues are on the media and consequently on the public agenda, the second level of agenda-setting refers to how those issues are presented. In contrast to Cohen (1963), some scholars have argued that the media also tell us what to think by “providing the public with an agenda of attributes—a list of characteristics of important newsmakers” (Wanta et al., 2004, p. 364). Second-level agenda-setting is therefore also referred to as attribute agenda-setting.
In one of the early attribute agenda-setting studies, McCombs, Lopez-Escobar and Llamas (2000) found that objects in the news are presented using certain attributes. Objects are newsmakers, e.g., issues, people, or countries, while the attributes can be distinguished as either substantive or affective (Coleman et al., 2009; McCombs et al., 2000). Substantive
attributes are characteristics of an object, affective attributes describe in what tone the object is presented, i.e., positive, negative or neutral (Coleman et al., 2009).
Overall, the selection and emphasis of objects and attributes by the media create an image of those objects that influences what and how the public thinks about the world (McCombs, 2014).
Framing
Another theory in communication science that analyses how the media presents issues and forms images is framing. A common starting point for framing research is the definition by Entman (1993):
Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation. (p. 52)
However, a variety of framing approaches fall under this definition which points to the problem that framing research encompasses today: the concept is very broad and scholars have applied it in many different ways using the same typology (Entman et al., 2009). According to Cacciatore, Scheufele and Iyengar (2016), the concept of framing is even “less clear now than at any point in its history” (p. 8). Likewise, De Vreese (2005) emphasised that it is necessary to become aware of different types of frames. He suggested distinguishing between issue-specific and generic frames. Issue-specific frames apply only to a certain issue, i.e., research looks at how a particular topic is presented by identifying its frames, while generic frames apply to several issues and contexts (De Vreese, 2005).
Cacciatore et al. (2016) argued that the disagreement of what constitutes framing can be observed on an operational and conceptual level. The authors distinguished between two
operationalisations: equivalence and emphasis framing. Equivalence framing is based on traditional psychological thinking and describes the logically equivalent presentation of information which is framed in different ways (Scheufele & Iyengar, 2017). E.g., the glass can be framed as half full or half empty but contains the equal amount of water in both situations.
On the other hand, emphasis framing is based on the sociologically oriented tradition and the outcome of the information presented is not logically identical (Entman et al., 2009). It increases or decreases the salience of an issue, i.e., an emphasis frame is the “selection of one set of facts or arguments over another” (Cacciatore et al., 2016, p. 10). By making such a subset more salient, it makes the audience focus on those emphasised facts or arguments when constructing their opinions (Druckman, 2001). “As a result, more leeway is granted to the framing definition in the sociological tradition, with studies often manipulating what an audience receives rather than how equivalent information is presented” (Cacciatore et al., 2016, p. 10).
Agenda-setting and framing
Scheufele and Iyengar (2017), as well as Cacciatore, Scheufele and Iyengar (2016), demanded a paradigm shift in framing research which includes moving away from the emphasis framing approach since it overlaps conceptually with other communication science theories, such as attribute agenda-setting. In contrast to this school of thought, mainly
represented by Iyengar and Scheufele, other scholars have described the compatibility of agenda-setting with other communication theories as a strength (McCombs et al., 2000).
According to McCombs (2014), both framing and attribute agenda-setting “focus on how the objects of attention in messages—issues, political figures, or other topics—are presented [...], explore the extent to which an emphasis on certain aspects and details of these
objects influence our thoughts and feelings about them” (p. 59). Consequently, when focusing on the media content, second-level agenda-setting attributes and frames are used interchangeably (Coleman et al., 2007; Ghanem, 1997; McCombs, 2014) and framing is defined as part of agenda-setting: “to frame is to ascribe defining attributes to an object; in other words, to define an agenda of attributes that characterizes the principal defining features of an object" (McCombs et al., 2000, p. 79).
On the other hand, Scheufele and Iyengar (2017) saw crucial differences between the concepts on the effect side. Different psychological processes are at play when information are presented in one of the two ways mentioned above, resulting in different effects.
Agenda-setting leads to accessibility-based media effects that impact mass audiences independent of their prior knowledge about the topic. Framing effects depend on the prior knowledge of the audience. If the media frames information in such a way that applies to the existing cognitive schema, a media effect is more likely (Scheufele & Iyengar, 2017).
However, McCombs (2014) emphasised the lack of empirical support of this theory arguing that “a series of experiments found no support for accessibility as a component of the agenda-setting process” (p. 61).
Although it is important to discuss the boundaries of agenda-setting and framing, the disagreements of the two schools of thought are not crucial for this study. Following the arguments of both, there is equivalence framing on one side and emphasis framing or second-level agenda-setting on the other. Whether the latter is considered framing or second-level agenda-setting, is rather a question of typology and method. In agenda-setting research, studies are traditionally performed using a mix-methods approach of quantitative content analysis to examine the media agenda, and a survey to examine the public agenda and
then finally analyse the media effects (McCombs, 2014). Whereas framing research does not look at the media effects and focuses on the media agenda (McCombs, 2014).
Coverage of foreign countries
This study aims to analyse how India is presented in German broadsheet and tabloid news media and focuses therefore on the media agenda. I will use the approach associated with McCombs’ school of thought, i.e., agenda-setting theory where attributes of the second level are synonyms of emphasis, issue-specific frames. Although the approach was developed in a context of political candidates, scholars have used agenda-setting and emphasis framing to study the presentation of foreign countries in the media and how it influences the
audience’s perception of those countries (Besova & Cooley, 2009; Hafez, 2002b; Wanta et al., 2004; Wanta & Mikusova, 2010). The review of the literature shows that most scholars have examined the substantive coverage. E.g., Beaudoin and Thorson’s (2001) analysis of the
Los Angeles Times showed that certain regions are only covered via certain topics and that
therefore a “domain bias via story selection” (p. 484) exists. Besova and Cooley (2009) analysed the substantive coverage of nine countries in one U.S.-American and one British newspaper. The authors concluded that both media outlets present foreign countries
stereotypically by associating them with a limited scope of issues (Besova & Cooley, 2009). In a large-scale study about the image of China in German media, Richter and Gebauer (2010) examined the topics that were covered in relation to China in 2008. They found a focus on domestic politics and a media agenda mainly characterised by conflict and violence (Richter & Gebauer, 2010). Tewari and Pathak (2013) concluded that The New York Times focuses on certain themes when covering India.
Wanta et al. (2004) analysed the affective coverage of 26 countries in U.S.-American newspapers. They found that the more negative coverage a nation received, the more
negatively it would be viewed by the public while neutral and positive attributes had no influence on the public opinion (Wanta et al., 2004). Based on Wanta et al. (2004), Wanta and Mikusova (2010) proposed a theoretical framework for applying second-level
agenda-setting in an international news context by adding the substantive layer. Using quantitative content analysis, they examined the amount, themes and tone of coverage that countries received in two Slovakian newspapers. In the language of attribute agenda-setting, this means the country is the object of the coverage, the thematic context it appears in are the substantive attributes and the tone of the coverage are the affective attributes. This framework will be used in this study.
While Wanta et al. (2004) measured valence of issues, other studies have defined affective attributes as the tone of issues (Coleman et al., 2009; McCombs et al., 2000; McCombs, 2014; Wanta & Mikusova, 2010). Valence describes the intrinsic “goodness” or “badness” of an event based on the values of the news writer. E.g., Wanta et al. (2004) defined activities of foreign countries as positive or negative in relation to whether they threaten or align with “the interest of the United States [...] or values that the United States wants to protect (e.g., human rights or democracy)” (p. 370). Tone is the way the issue is portrayed which can be influenced by the valence of the issue. E.g., sexual assault is generally considered an intrinsically bad event and is, therefore, most likely covered in a negative tone. Whereas topics, such as labour market developments are not intrinsically considered good or bad but can be covered in a positive, neutral, or negative way.
It should also be noted that Wanta et al. (2004), as well as Wanta and Mikusova (2010), measured the affective attributes of the object of the coverage, while McCombs et al. (2000) measured the affective attributes of the prior identified substantive attributes. The latter will be applied in this study, i.e., I will measure in what tone the topics linked to India
are presented rather than measuring how India is presented. This will allow a more nuanced analysis and inferences about the image formation of India. As Wanta and Mikusova (2010) pointed out, a weakness of their study is that it does not include the public agenda. Therefore, it can only give insights about the portrayal of foreign nations in the media but not how the public perceives the nations. Based on the discussion above, their approach is closer to the traditional emphasis framing methodology.
This study aims to take the approach by Wanta and Mikusova (2010) a step further by adding the comparative element of broadsheet and tabloid online media to it. Based on the literature above, this leads to the following research questions:
RQ1: How do German broadsheet and tabloid online media differ in their substantive
coverage of India?
RQ2: How do German broadsheet and tabloid online media differ in their affective
coverage of India?
To understand, which topics make it in the broadsheet and tabloid news, it is crucial to take news value theory into account. “It is assumed that events have certain characteristics [news factors] that make them newsworthy” (Eilders, 2006, p.6), i.e., lend news value to them. The selection and emphasis of news issues—and therefore agenda-setting and framing—are guided by news values (Coleman et al., 2009). Boukes and Vliegenthart (2017) investigated whether different media outlet types use different news factors when selecting news stories. Their findings showed that Dutch popular, i.e., tabloid newspapers use in particular the news factors personification, negativity, and geographical proximity. Quality, i.e., broadsheet newspapers use eliteness, influence, relevance and controversy more frequently than tabloid newspapers (Boukes & Vliegenthart, 2017).
According to Galtung and Ruge (1965), if an event is low on one news factor it has to be high on another to still become news. This is, in particular, the case for the factor cultural proximity in combination with countries that are low in international rank: “In short, from such countries news will have to refer to people, preferably top elite, and be preferably negative and unexpected but nevertheless according to a pattern that is consonant with the 'mental pre-image'” (Galtung & Ruge, 1965, p. 84). Therefore, it can be assumed that in the context of German foreign news about India where geographical proximity does not apply, events have to be high on the news factors personification and negativity to become news in tabloid media. These news values give priority to particular news beats, such as scandals, sports and pop culture (Allern, 2002) as well as “celebrities, crime, violence, sex, disasters, accidents, and public fears” (Grabe & Kleemans, 2017, p. 1). Whereas broadsheet media focus more on politics and economics (De Vreese, Banducci, Semetko & Boomgaarden, 2006; Grabe & Kleemans, 2017; van Dalen, De Vreese & Albæk, 2012). These topical preferences are often categorised into ‘hard’ news and ‘soft’ news with the former being associated with broadsheet media outlets and the latter with tabloid media outlets
(Reinemann, Stanyer, Scherr & Legnante, 2012).
Several studies have analysed the media image of other foreign countries using news categories based on the typical news beats that one can find within most news outlets
worldwide (Hafez, 2002b; Richter & Gebauer, 2010; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1985; Wanta & Mikusova, 2010). This study defines 12 news categories or news beats (see Appendix A), mainly based on those used by Richter and Gebauer (2010), of which three, in particular, are characterised by the tabloid news values personification and negativity: human interest, accidents and catastrophes, and criminality. The categories domestic politics, international
politics, and economy and finance are characterised by the broadsheet news values eliteness, influence and relevance. Therefore, the following can be assumed:
H1a: German tabloid online media cover more topics in the news beat human interest
compared to German broadsheet online media when covering India.
H1b: German tabloid online media cover more topics in the news beat accidents and
catastrophes compared to German broadsheet online media when covering India.
H1c: German tabloid online media cover more topics in the news beat criminality
compared to German broadsheet online media when covering India.
H1d: German broadsheet online media cover more topics in the news beat domestic
politics compared to German tabloid online media when covering India.
H1e: German broadsheet online media cover more topics in the news beat
international politics compared to German tabloid online media when covering India.
H1f: German broadsheet online media cover more topics in the news beat economy
and finance compared to German tabloid online media when covering India. The news factor negativity has implications for the affective attributes of the coverage. Dulinski (2006) referred to the aim of tabloid media to satisfy the sensational desire of the readership. This emotion of sensationalism can be achieved through topics that involve the “dark side of humanity” (Dulinski, 2006, p. 24) and therefore through a negative tone. The latter is likely to be amplified when the outlet is an online newspaper, which are under more competitive constraints than print and have to attract clicks (Engesser, Esser, Reinemann, Scherr, Matthes & Wonneberger, 2014). Positive news coverage is generally
underrepresented in foreign news compared to negative coverage (Hafez, 2002a). Taking these considerations into account, it is expected that:
H2: The tone of the India coverage of German tabloid online media is predominantly
negative compared to German broadsheet online media. Method
The research method quantitative content analysis was chosen to identify if German broadsheet and tabloid media apply different substantive and affective attributes when they report about India. According to Riff, Lacy and Fico (2014), the purpose of quantitative content analysis is to indicate “typical patterns or characteristics to identify important relationships among the content qualities examined” (p. 3). It is the most suitable research method for this study to analyse patterns in the substantive and affective coverage of different media types. This content analysis will use deductive and inductive variables.
Sample
The media chosen for this study are two broadsheet and two tabloid outlets: Spiegel
Online, Deutsche Welle, Bild.de and Express Online. The period of study is the year 2018. Spiegel Online and Bild.de were chosen since they were among the five most visited German
news websites in December 2018 (Schröder, 2019; Statista, 2019).
Spiegel Online is the online offshoot of the print magazine Der Spiegel and
considered to be liberal. It generates income through advertising and subscriptions (Dörting, Streitz & Sucher, 2017). As a second broadsheet medium, the German website of Deutsche
Welle (DW), the international public broadcaster of Germany, was chosen. It is funded by
taxes and, as part of the public broadcasting system, its purpose is to provide a forum for German and other perspectives on key topics, such as politics, culture and economy, in Europe and other continents (Deutsche-Welle-Gesetz, 1997). Both, Spiegel Online and DW, have foreign correspondents permanently based in India. Bild.de is the online offshoot of the daily tabloid newspaper BILD, the tabloid newspaper with the widest-circulation in Germany
(IVW, 2019). It is considered to be conservative and generates income through ads,
subscriptions and lotteries (Fröhlich, 2013). Express Online is the online version of the daily print newspaper Express. It generates income through online advertising (DuMont, 2018). Although its readership is about a tenth of Bild.de, it is one of the largest tabloid outlets in Germany (DuMont, 2018).
The websites of the four news outlets were browsed via the search bars with the keyword ‘Indien’ [India]. Each search result published in 2018 was checked for its reference to India, including articles behind a paywall, such as SPIEGELplus and BILDplus. Videos, podcasts, written interviews, live blogs and fiction book reviews were excluded from the sample. In the following, all units of the sample are referred to as articles. In broadsheet articles the keywords ‘Indien’, ‘indisch’ [Indian], ‘Inder’ [male Indian person] or ‘Inderin’ [female Indian person] or a combination of them had to appear at least twice in the headline and/or the text, but not in enumerations, to make the article relevant. Additionally, there had to be at least one paragraph referring to India or an Indian actor. Since the articles of the tabloid media were often very short, the appearance of only one of the above-mentioned keywords was sufficient. Articles that mentioned India only as the location of an international sports event were excluded. This lead to a sample of n = 400 articles (Spiegel Online n = 142,
Deutsche Welle n = 101, Bild.de n = 121, Express Online n = 36).
Coding Procedure
The unit of analysis and coding was the news story. This included the headline, the lead and the body. Images, graphs and captions were not included. The analysis was conducted by one coder.
Intercoder reliability was assessed by 41 randomly selected articles from the full sample with 11 articles from Spiegel Online and 10 articles each from the other three outlets which were coded by a second coder. For the inductive variables, i.e., the topics, the second coder used the coding list developed by the main coder in an initial-coding cycle. Intercoder reliability was assessed using Krippendorff’s Alpha which showed sufficient results. Except for one variable (domestic politics, α = 0.29) all category, topic and tone variables were 1 reliable with α = 0.73 as the lowest and α = 1 as the highest value. All Krippendorff’s Alpha values are reported in Appendix A.
Measures
The main focus of the codebook were the variables that assessed the substantive and affective attributes of the coverage. The thematic context of the coverage was identified on a broader (categories) and a more detailed level (topics).
Category. Wanta and Mikusova (2010) described what McCombs et al. (2000) called ‘substantive’ attributes, ‘cognitive’ attributes. They defined them as factual sub-issues that are linked to countries and grouped them into five categories: “social issues, economic issues, international issues, political issues and miscellaneous” (Wanta & Mikusova, 2010, p. 228). These groups are similar to typical news beats and the categories used by other scholars as codes for similar studies (Cazzamatta, 2014; Hafez, 2002b; Richter & Gebauer, 2010; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1985). Based on this literature, this study used 12 categories for the deductive coding cycle to code for substantive attributes (see Appendix A). Additionally, the category ‘other’ was created. Each category was coded ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for each article, i.e., one
1Although Krippendorff’s Alpha for this variable is very low, it has been used in this study after specifying the
article could be assigned to several categories and topics. Only the aspects that related to India were coded, i.e., if only one paragraph was related to India, the category of this paragraph was coded.
Topics. To narrow down the topics of the article, a topic was coded inductively for each category that was coded as ‘yes’. E.g., first, the category ‘accidents and catastrophes’ was identified as a theme in the article, and the topic was specified as ‘flood’. After the inductive coding was completed, the list of topics was condensed and used to re-code the articles. These variables were not used to test the hypotheses but to provide a more detailed assessment of the coverage.
Tone. One affective attribute was assigned to each topic, i.e., it was coded whether the issue was portrayed negatively, positively, or neutral, evaluated from a German
perspective. I.e., it was considered how the issue relates to values that Germany wants to protect, such as human rights and democracy. E.g., within the category ‘social issues’ the topic ‘status of women in society’ was coded as ‘negative’ because the article focused on the entry ban on women to a temple which was evaluated as a threat to gender equality, a value Germany wants to protect.
In addition, identifying variables (URL, date of publication and media outlet), the length of the article and the type of media (broadsheet or tabloid) were coded. The latter was used as independent variable in the data analysis. Furthermore, employment status and location of the author of the article were identified, and whether the article had a strong or weak reference to India.
Data Analysis
To test the first set of hypotheses, the relationships between the individual category variables and the type of media were assessed using chi-square tests. To test H2, the
numerical tone variables (V7b-V19b) were recoded into scale variables with the values -1 for negative, 0 for neutral and 1 for positive. Then, a new variable for the overall tone was computed by combining the mean score of the recoded tone variables. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to conduct the effect of media type on the overall tone of the coverage. Further one-way ANOVA gave information about the effect of media type on the tone of individual categories and topics. A multiple linear regression was calculated to predict the overall tone of the coverage based on the different author types.
Results
In 2018, the four analysed media outlets published 400 articles with a reference to India. 272 articles (68%) had a strong reference to India and 128 articles (32%) had a weak reference, i.e., India was not the focus of the news story but was mentioned in at least one paragraph. Broadsheet media (65%) published significantly more news stories with a strong reference to India compared to tabloid media (35%; x2 (1) = 5.58, Cramer’s V = 0.12, p < 0.05).
Substantive coverage
The first research question was concerned with the difference between the substantive coverage, i.e., the categories and topics, between German broadsheet and tabloid online media when covering India. Out of the six hypotheses developed to answer RQ1, four were supported. Table 1 shows the distribution of news beats, i.e., categories, across media types. E.g., the results show that 15% of the broadsheet stories had a human interest angle in comparison to 35% of tabloid stories. This is a significant difference between German broadsheet and tabloid media and confirmed H1a (x2 (1) = 22.18, Cramer’s V = 0.24, p < 0.001). This result was also expected for the categories ‘accidents and catastrophes’ (H1b)
and ‘criminality’ (H1c), but although tabloid media covered more topics in both news beats, the relationship is not significant.
H1d, H1e and H1f were supported, i.e., broadsheet media report more about ‘domestic
politics’ (x2 (1) = 12.5, Cramer’s V = 0.11, p < 0.001), ‘international politics’ (x2 (1) = 18.81, Cramer’s V = 0.22, p < 0.001), and ‘economy and finance’ (x2 (1) = 6.36, Cramer’s V = 0.13, p < 0.05).
Except for ‘education, science and technology’, which was covered more by
broadsheet (x2 (1) = 4.9, Cramer’s V = 0.13, p < 0.05), no significant differences between the media types were found for the other categories. In fact, some news beats showed a very similar amount of coverage for broadsheet and tabloid. E.g., 16% of the broadsheet stories
and 15% of the tabloid stories were about ‘environment and health’ and 20% of broadsheet and tabloid stories had a cultural angle.
A closer look at the topics allows a better understanding of the differences and similarities of broadsheet and tabloid news within the categories. E.g., both media types published the same percentage of stories with a culture angle. Nevertheless, as table 2 shows, the topics they reported about within the news beat culture were different: 34% of the tabloid coverage within the category culture was about ‘travel’, compared to 8% of the broadsheet coverage.
On the other hand, although tabloid media published significantly more articles with a human interest angle, the topics within this category were not as diverse (table 3).
E.g., both media types published approximately the same percentage of articles about animals when it was a human interest story. Tables that showed topics and tone for each category can be found in Appendix B.
With a share of 9% of the whole sample (36 articles), sexual violence against females was the most covered topic overall as well as for broadsheet media (table 4). For tabloid, it ranked third (10%), preceded by odd incidents (12%) and celebrities (11%). Due to the small number of articles per topic, no significance tests were performed.
Affective coverage
The second research question concerned the difference of the affective coverage, i.e., the tone, between German broadsheet and tabloid online media when covering India. The tone was assessed on a scale from -1 to 1, with -1 being negative, 0 being neutral and 1 being positive. It was expected that the overall tone of the tabloid media was predominantly
negative compared to broadsheet media (H2). A one-way ANOVA showed that this hypothesis is not supported, (F(1,398) = 0.316, p = n.s.). In fact, broadsheet media (M = -0.35) reported overall slightly more negative than tabloid media (M = -0.30). To further scrutinise the data, a one-way ANOVA was conducted for each category to compare the effects of media type on the tone of the coverage. It showed that the effect was only
statistically significant for two out of 12 categories: ‘domestic politics’ (F(1,54) = 7.06, p = .010) and ‘economy and finance’ (F(1,37) = 4.22, p = .047). In both news beats, the coverage of broadsheet media was more negative compared to tabloid media. Table 5 shows an
overview of the mean scores of the tone of all categories. All topics within the categories ‘accidents and catastrophes’ and ‘criminality’ were coded negative. Apart from these categories, ‘social issues’ (M = -0.64) was the most negative news beat in broadsheet media and ‘environment and health’ the most negative for tabloid. Stories with a culture angle had
the most positive tone for broadsheet (M = 0.42) as well as tabloid (M = 0.41). All articles of the topic that was overall covered the most, sexual violence against females, had a negative tone. Among the topics displayed in table 4, only odd incident showed a bigger difference between broadsheet (-0.33) and tabloid (-1.00).
With the intention to control for the relationship between media type and affective coverage, I also gathered data concerning the author of the text. However, Bild.de did not mention the author of more than 70% (n = 88) of the analysed articles. Therefore, I looked particularly at broadsheet with a focus on news agencies since they made up about half of the authors for Spiegel Online (47%) and Deutsche Welle (53%). A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant effect (F(3,239) = 6.59, p = .000). Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated, that the news agencies’ mean score (M = -0.54) was significantly lower than the
scores of journalists of the outlet (M = -0.11) and freelancers (M = -0.22), i.e., the news stories written by news agencies were considerably more negative than the articles written by the other two author groups. A multiple regression analysis showed that the tone for articles written by news agencies as compared to all other sources was significantly more negative (F(2, 397) = 10.385, p < .000), with an R2 of .50.
Discussion
In this paper, I investigated which substantive and affective attributes German broadsheet and tabloid online media link to India to understand how they differ in framing the country. The results showed similarities in the affective coverage, but differences in the substantive coverage.
Significant differences in the substantive coverage of broadsheet and tabloid media were found for four out of six hypothesised news beats and five out of 12 news beats total. Furthermore, the coverage was slightly different in another five and similar in two categories. Based on this data, it can be assumed that broadsheet and tabloid media do not portray the same image of India since they focused on different news beats. However, the analysis of the topics within the categories showed that only examining the news beats does not give
sufficient information about the differences when it comes to the image that is framed. The news beats human interest and culture demonstrate this particularly well: while human interest is the news beat covered most by tabloid media with a statistically significant difference between the media types, i.e., tabloid report more than broadsheet, the topics within the category are similar for both media types. When broadsheet media covered human interest stories, they wrote about the same topics as tabloid. On the other hand, the stories with a cultural angle received the same percentage of coverage but broadsheet media reported about a larger variety of topics than tabloid (table 2).
The most covered topics overall, ranked high for both media types. Sexual violence against females was the topic most covered overall and by broadsheet media when the object of the coverage is India. According to Durham (2015), the coverage of sexual violence happening in India increased since the 2012 rape case of a student on a bus in New Delhi which made headlines all over the world. She pointed out that in their coverage about this rape case, U.S.-American media made no references to similar incidents that happened at the same time in North America and therefore did not acknowledge sexual violence against women as a worldwide problem. “Instead, it isolated and differentiated India as a crucible for sexual violence, exacerbating global hierarchical power structures” (Durham, 2015, p. 185). While she argued that sexual violence in India receives coverage due to the ‘Western gaze’ on the topic, it also has to be noted that the rape cases in India in 2018 had severe
implications on domestic politics as the death penalty was introduced for rape cases of minors. The content analysis of this paper showed that legislation was a common topic reported about within the news beat domestic politics by broadsheet and tabloid, i.e., changes in the law carry a certain news value independently of the topic sexual violence. Other explanations why this particular topic is considered newsworthy can be found in the news factors continuity—once something has made the news, follow-ups are more likely—and consonance—the event is consonant with the mental pre-image (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). According to Galtung and Ruge (1965), “the more distant the nation, the more consonant will the news have to be”.
Furthermore, stories featuring animals made it often on the media agenda. Most of them were unexpected, individual incidents with animals that are not native to Germany, e.g., monkeys, pythons, elephants, leopards and tigers. In a content analysis of movies about India, Ramasubramanian (2005) found animals as being part of a stereotypical portrayal of India.
Odd incidents were the topic most reported about by tabloid media. They are unexpected, strange, and mostly negative events of individuals, e.g., Indians who died while taking a selfie. Odd incidents frame a problematic image of India because although the events are individual and independent, their accumulation in the media might make them appear “normal” in the Indian context. The topic other deadly accidents refers to accidents that are neither road nor train accidents, e.g., a baby that fell from a balcony. Like odd incidents and animal stories, they mostly represent single, non-regular events. Articles with a celebrity angle referred to Bollywood movie stars, popular gurus, Indian billionaires, the Dalai Lama and The Beatles. Floods were among the most covered topics in relation to India in 2018, due to the severe flood in Kerala in August.
More straightforward are the results concerning the affective coverage. Against the expectations, the tone of the India coverage of German broadsheet and tabloid media (M = -0.30) was overall about the same with broadsheet being slightly more negative (M = -0.35). This aligns with the findings of Engesser et al. (2014) who looked at German-writing media, among them Bild.de. The authors hypothesised that tabloid explicitly use positive news to demarcate themselves from broadsheet media (Engesser et al., 2014). The general negativity of the coverage also confirms Hafez’s (2002a) statement that foreign news are generally more negative than domestic news. Except for celebrity and travel, the most covered topics
mentioned above are reported in a negative tone (table 4), which forms an overall negative image of India. It has to be noted though that reality cannot be equally trisected into negative, neutral and positive events. However, as Hafez (2002a) pointed out: “it is to be assumed that the social reality of each country is complex enough to not consist exclusively or
The topics discussed above were the most prevalent substantive attributes that Spiegel
Online, Deutsche Welle, Bild.de and Express Online linked to India in 2018. The coverage
was dominated by negative affective attributes. Although significant differences were observed, the coverage of German broadsheet and tabloid online media showed similar patterns and trends. In particular, the most covered topics frame a very narrow image of India. It can be assumed that this image is conveyed to the different readerships of broadsheet and tabloid online media (Bastos, 2016), which for the sample of this study means more than 50 million unique website visitors per month (Schröder, 2019; Statista, 2019).
An explanation for the similar coverage could lie in the dependency on international news agencies that sell their stories to broadsheet as well as tabloid media. Half of the broadsheet coverage came from news agencies and although the amount could not be measured for tabloid media, it can be assumed that news agencies were the authors of the majority of stories. According to Hagen (2013), all news media rely on news agencies, in particular when it comes to foreign news. Welbers, van Atteveldt, Kleinnijenhuis and Ruigrok (2018) found that Dutch online media are in particular influenced by the same articles of the news agency ANP and sacrifice their diversity for the sake of speed. They conclude that this strong dependency harms the diversity of political coverage.
Conclusion
Media influence the images that humans hold about the world. This is in particular true when it comes to foreign news since the majority of people cannot make their own experiences of issues outside of their proximity. Images are created by the selection of stories and the choice to present information in certain ways, which relates to agenda-setting and framing theory, both guided by news values. Using these communication theories as the basis
for a quantitative content analysis of two broadsheet and two tabloid media outlets, this study investigated how the German online newspapers differ in framing India.
The results showed similarities in the affective coverage and differences in the
substantive coverage. Despite these differences, both media types presented an overall narrow image of India, dominated by stories with a social issues and human interest angle. The general tone of the coverage was slightly negative for broadsheet as well as tabloid media.
The findings have implications for theory and practice. First, news value theory needs to be scrutinised in terms of broadsheet and tabloid media, as well as online and foreign news. Second, the role of news agencies as agenda-setters has to be considered by scholars as well as journalists. Third, on the premise that the role of the media in the context of foreign news should be to enable mutual understanding and learning about other cultures and people, and for Western media to avoid the ‘imperial gaze’, journalists should consider a larger variety of topics and narratives when they report about India and other countries.
This paper gives a detailed insight into the differences of the foreign news coverage of German broadsheet and tabloid media. India was an interesting case to look at due to its diversity and relations to Germany. However, it is only one of many countries that could be analysed using this methodology. The approach demonstrated relevant results, particularly in adding the topics to the level of analysis in substantive coverage. Nevertheless, this study has some limitations. The categories chosen cannot be considered equally measurable and
overlap for some news events. While some categories, e.g., ‘accidents and catastrophes’, have a clear definition, ‘domestic politics’ was more difficult to apply due to its overlap with other news beats such as ‘environment and health’. This became evident in the low intercoder reliability of the variable (α = 0.29). The inductive nature of the topic results may make them less replicable and the inductive coding list gives room to further merge the topics. Moreover,
a larger sample over a longer time period would allow significance tests for the topic variables, and show whether certain issues would rank high on the media agenda without being connected to certain events. E.g., if sexual violence against females is the most covered issue without discussions about the death penalty legislation.
Future research may test agenda-setting effects, and compare the media and the public agenda. Furthermore, a profound analysis of news values of tabloid media in the context of foreign news and an analysis of the agenda-setting influence of news agencies would add to the body of literature. In addition, future research may examine if stereotypes are not only the outcome of media coverage but also a news value.
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Appendix A Tables
Appendix B Codebook
General coding instructions
Before starting the coding process, coders are required to read the instructions in this codebook thoroughly. The sample (n = 400) consists of news items, articles and written features (in the following referred to as articles) of four German online media: Spiegel
Online, Deutsche Welle (German website), Bild.de, and Express Online. All articles are in
German.
The coding data must be entered in this Google spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EHwCegxCAP5QSE99nhz32SSA46D_LSAxS1gMj mU8guQ/edit?usp=sharing
Each variable described below can be found in both, this codebook and the spreadsheet. In the sampling process, the links of the articles were added to the Google spreadsheet. To start the coding process, the article has to be opened through the link.
Coders should install a browser extension to conduct the word count. It is recommended to use the extension ‘Word Count’ by Peter Organisciak available in the Google Chrome web store.
Sampling: The websites of the four news outlets were browsed via the search bars with the keyword ‘Indien’ (India). Each search results that was published in 2018 was checked for its reference to India, including articles behind a paywall, such as SPIEGELplus and BILDplus. Videos, podcasts, written interviews, live blogs and fiction book reviews were excluded from the sample. News and features were included in the sample. In broadsheet articles the
keywords ‘Indien’, ‘indisch’ [Indian], ‘Inder’ [male Indian person] or ‘Inderin’ [female Indian person] or a combination of them had to appear at least twice in the headline and/or the text, but not in enumerations, to make the article relevant. Additionally, there had to be at least one paragraph referring to India or an Indian actor. Since the articles of the tabloid media were often very short, the appearance of only one of the above mentioned keywords was sufficient if it was not an enumeration or if the remaining text did not refer to India at all. Articles that mentioned India only as the location of an international sports event, such as the hockey world cup, were excluded. This lead to a sample of n = 400 articles (Spiegel Online n = 142, Deutsche Welle n = 101, Bild.de n = 121, Express Online n = 36).
Unit of analysis: The unit of analysis it the news item article. This includes the headline, the lead and the body. Images, graphs and captions are not included in the coding.
Link: In the sampling process, the links of the articles were added to the Google spreadsheet. Date of publication: Indicate the date of publication in the format dd.mm.yy.
V1 Media outlet: Indicate the number of the media outlet, according to the list below. 1 Spiegel Online
2 Deutsche Welle 3 Bild.de
4 Express Online
V2 Type of media outlet: Indicate whether the media outlet is a broadsheet or a tabloid outlet.
1 broadsheet
Spiegel Online and Deutsche Welle are considered broadsheet media outlets. 2 tabloid
Bild.de and Express Online are considered tabloid media outlets.
V3 Length of article: Fill in the length of the article according to the list below. To estimate the word count, a browser extension, such as ‘Word Count’ can be used. Count the words from headline to the last sentence of the body. This should not include photos and ads. It is not necessary to calculate the exact number of words. The browser extension can be used to get a rough estimate.
1 short
An article with 300 or less words. 2 medium
An article with 300 to 1000 words. 3 long
An article with more than 1000 words.
V4 Author: Identify the author of the article and report according to the list below. This might include short research about the position of the author. Author names are generally stated at the beginning or end of an article and can be abbreviated.
1 news agency
An organisations that produces and sells news reports to other media outlets, often mentioned with abbreviations at the beginning or the end of an article, e.g., AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa, ANI, IANS, PTI.
2 journalist of the outlet
A journalist that is employed by the respective media outlet. This can be a foreign correspondent based in India or South Asia as well as an editor or journalist based in Germany.
3 freelancer
A journalist that works as a freelancer and is therefore not employed by the respective media outlet. She or he can be based in India, Germany or any other country. This might include external experts, such as scholars, scientists and politicians.
4 other media
This includes press releases, commercial content, journalistic articles that were first published by another medium, and any other media content.
99 other
An author that cannot be defined by any of the categories mentioned above. Or the author is not mentioned.
open category
In case of authors that are not covered by codes 1 to 5, please add the respective label to the column. This will be re-coded later on.
V5 Location of Author: Indicate where the author is based. This might include short research about the author.
1 permanently in India
Journalists that live in India, e.g., foreign correspondents, journalists of news agencies and freelancers.
2 temporarily in India
This code applies to journalists who are not permanently based in India but traveled there to conduct research, e.g., as part of a grant or fellowship project. This might be a freelancer or a foreign correspondent who is based in another country in South Asia but we can assume that he or she travels regularly to India.
3 not in India
