Browsing by Subject "Discourse quality"

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Kommunikationsprobleme zwischen Landwirtschaft und Naturschutz in Deutschland und ihre Ursachen
(2022) Menauer, Verena Theresa; Schweiger, Wolfgang
Communication is considered a key prerequisite for anchoring nature conservation in agriculture in the long term. However, the longlasting, sometimes heated disputes between ac-tors from both sectors in Germany show clear deficits, especially in public communication. Instead of finding solutions and compromises, the fronts are hardening in many places. The study aimed to identify and detail the existing communication problems and their causes. A coherent framework of communication studies that explicitly deals with communication problems is missing. Nevertheless, there are a number of theoretical approaches and research traditions that examine individual aspects of communication problems or, complementarily, deal with the conditions for successful communication. Of outstanding importance is research on public discourse – it forms the main theoretical point of reference of this work. Studies on journalistic news selection, approaches to strategic communication and research on group identities also appear to be relevant. Within the framework of a qualitative content analysis, 160 publications from the years 2019 and 2020 of the four relevant groups of actors (interest-led actors, state actors, news and specialist journalism) and the available user comments were examined. Thus, a current inventory of the existing communication problems was created. The analysis also provided initial indications of their possible causes. Subsequently, four group discussions were held with representatives from agriculture and nature conservation. The results of the content analysis were discussed and deepened. The initial findings of the content analysis were thus deepened, questioned and supplemented by the subjective perceptions and assessments of those affected. The results show that the observed problems and their causes are manifold: Firstly, actors are often unwilling to reach a rationally motivated agreement. Instead of openly engaging with all actors involved in the dis-course, they refuse to talk or try to influence individual target groups through strategic-manipulative communication. Secondly, not all topics, events and presentation perspectives have the same chance of being publicly discussed. Both news and specialist journalistic media usually only report on negative, conflictrelated issues, their reports are sometimes tendentious and limited to presenting one of several possible perspectives. Thirdly, it became apparent that the manner of communication is not always appropriate because actors do not sufficiently substantiate their positions with arguments, respond sufficiently to topics and arguments of the opposing side or express themselves appropriately. The following aspects can be named as causes for the lack of discourse quality: (1) Farmers seem to have an enormous distrust of outsiders, but also of their own professional representation. More or less all actors are met with great suspicion. (2) Especially among agricultural actors, emotional and financial concerns seem to play a major role. As a result, they sometimes find it difficult to communicate objectively and to accept that non-agricultural actors are also heard in the pub-lic discourse. (3) The actors involved sometimes lack the necessary knowledge to be able to participate optimally in the discourse. This applies to actors from agriculture and nature conservation as well as to journalists. (4) The media, interest groups and state actors are subject to various path dependencies and internal organisational constraints that are not only, but primarily of an economic nature. In some cases, they have the consequence that actors cannot act or communicate freely and discourse-oriented. (5) Moreover, various unresolved conflicts of objectives lead to problems. For example, actors from agriculture and nature conservation are sometimes confronted with the problem of having to pursue conflicting interests at the same time. (6) Group-specific differences in behaviour and evaluation can be cited as a further cause. Future studies should focus on the aspect of lack of knowledge, which negatively impacts the discourse quality in several respects.
VERZERRT. SCHRILL. GESPALTEN. Meinungsklima und Diskursqualität im Internet und ihre Wirkungen auf den Journalismus
(2022) Fulda, Stefanie; Schweiger, Wolfgang
Journalists play a dual role in shaping public opinion. On one hand, they influence public opinion through their publications. At the same time, they themselves continuously monitor public opinion and orient themselves to it. It seems obvious that the way journalists perceive the world can also influence their work. In fact, it has not yet been studied in terms of the perceived climate of opinion. It is similar with the perceived digital debate culture. Quality, tone and content of online discourses are already widely addressed under keywords such as incivility and hate speech. Effects on journalism are also mentioned, but they don´t focus on how journalists perceive the combined climate of opinion and quality of discourse and how this affects their work. In fact, user comments, individual opinions and opinion leaders are of particular importance to journalists in this perception. Due to the still incomplete state of research on the perception effects of public opinion and discourse quality on journalism, qualitative, guideline-supported interviews were therefore set up on the question "How do journalists perceive opinion climate and discourse quality on the Internet and how does this affect their work?" in order to approach the possible manifestations of this topic in an explorative manner. For these interviews, which lasted 1 - 1.5 hours, 20 journalists from all over Germany were interviewed. The net sample of participating journalists differed according to department, type of employment, age, location, gender, subject areas and degree of position, with the aim of obtaining answers from as many different journalists as possible and being able to compare the answers of certain groups with each other. In addition, a website was created as a central information point for the project. With the help of a repetitive change of perspective in the survey, which addresses the approach and considerations of the interviewees, but also inquires how, from the interviewees point of view, other journalists deal with the same issue, it was possible to identify some hidden perceptual effects. Beginning with the question about the central sources of public opinion perception, via processing and the mechanisms in this process, to the recognizable effects on journalistic work, it was thus possible to trace the path of perception of opinion climate and discourse quality to the effects on journalistic topic selection and topic processing. A key finding of the survey is that it remains unclear to the group of journalists surveyed whether the perceived climate of opinion on the Internet is representative of society as a whole - many do not rule out parallels of digital and general public opinion. At the same time, it is rationally clear to many journalists that they should not be too impressed by the experiences on the Net, since these represent only a small section of society, but emotionally it does happen - because the quality of the experienced, digital discourse is so impressive. On the other hand, almost all of the journalists surveyed assume that the perceived climate of opinion influences their journalistic work, but show a lack of clarity about the extent to which they are personally affected by this in their work. They do not know the concrete effects. Finally, it became obvious that journalists base their perception of public opinion quite significantly on the perceived quality of discourse. This is an understandable approach, but one that harbors the risk of misperceptions due to third person, negativity or false uniqueness effects, to name just a few of the most important potential distortions of perception. This has consequences: If those who report on public opinion are subject to a distorted perception, then they bring this into their reporting, which reinforces the tendency for recipients to also be subject to a distorted perception of public opinion. Citizens, in turn, express themselves in social media or below journalistic articles in the comments. These are read by editorial teams and in turn used for journalistic reporting. This is where the circle closes, because this is how recipients and journalists influence each others distorted perceptions and draw conclusions about public opinion in society. Minority opinions are perceived as majority opinions, the emotionally heated discourse on the Internet shapes the impression of a growing polarization of society, and journalism carries this idea into its reporting. The consequence is a possible misinterpretation of public opinion by journalistic media, so that journalism runs the risk of arguing past the actual public opinion of society through a distorted perception of public opinion and discourse quality on the Internet.