Category: Review

Do the media deliberately hide negative facts about refugees and Muslims? Did they have reasons for painting President Putin as the bad guy in the Ukraine conflict? Are they the mouthpiece of some kind of elite and just taking the public for a ride? To find answers, communication studies researchers Irene Neverla and Volker Lilienthal presented 16 perspectives from academia and practice in a lecture series aimed at ordinary citizens at the University of Hamburg. They then brought these perspectives together in an easy-to-read volume: Lügenpresse. Anatomie eines politischen Kampfbegriffs [Lying press. Anatomy of a political battle cry]. continue to article

In their compact book Wirtschaft from the Basiswissen für die Medienpraxis series, Barbara Brandstetter and Steffen Range investigate the question of why business journalism is so unpopular. But the authors do much more than merely answering this question and providing tips for how to improve the situation. Instead, they provide a clear, concise map of business journalism in Germany. continue to article

In his dissertation Fotoreporter im Konflikt: Der internationale Fotojournalismus in Israel/Palästina [Photo reporters in conflict: International photojournalism in Israel/Palestine], Felix Koltermann examines the production conditions faced by Israeli, Palestinian and international photojournalists. continue to article

The idea of the ‘Nordic model’ has long been popular in debates on political, economic and social issues in continental Europe, and especially in Germany. Clear similarities are also seen in the media systems and the ways journalists are trained in those countries. The edited volume reviewed here also focuses on the education of journalists in line with an identifiable Nordic model. continue to article

A reviewer wanting to do justice to this postdoctoral thesis should start reading not with the thanks and introduction at the beginning, but with the bibliography from page 397. The table of contents does not show that this annex goes on to page 501 – more than a hundred pages. In providing such an exhaustive list, the Salzburg-based author Martina Thiele gives a magnificent account of herself: impressive knowledge of the literature, a consistent interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, patient research and an almost limitless curiosity about the decades-long process of learning about and documenting publications of all kinds. continue to article

Barbara Thomass’ book started life as a student project on diversity in the media and diversity management at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, as the Professor for Media Systems describes in the foreword. The students wrote the texts on the topic of ‘caught fire’ and for their final dissertations on diversity. Now published in an anthology, the articles examine the overarching question of how media in six European public broadcasters can contribute to promoting cultural diversity. continue to article

The government of the GDR saw the media not as a means of public communication but – overestimating its effectiveness – primarily as an instrument for controlling the masses. The fact that media from the Federal Republic remained relatively freely accessible in the GDR and that a “pan-German communication space” (p. 9) continued to exist gave the state a two-fold problem. continue to article

School shootings, terrorism and suicides are all phenomena that center around fatal violence – and in which the media play a crucial role. The question of how the mass media can deal responsibly with this kind of event is therefore of interest from the point of view of both journalism and society as a whole.continue to article

A meta-trend in TIME markets, convergence has now made it into the title of this standard reference work on media structures. While previous editions of Lutz Hachmeister’s compendium still carried the title Die 50 größten Medienkonzerne der Welt [The 50 largest media corporations in the world], he has now shifted his focus to media and knowledge corporations. continue to article