When it comes to complex topics in the field of health and risk communication, experts are of high importance for the credibility of a news media report. This paper examines the use of experts and their roles in the news media coverage of multi-resistant pathogens by means of a quantitative content analysis of German print and online news. A cluster analysis of the expert statements identifies three different statement frames describing different expert roles. The results show manifest patterns of selected expert sources, which points to professionalized mechanisms of selecting expert sources for news media reports.

Der vorliegende Artikel begründet und präsentiert einen mixed-methods Ansatz als Beitrag zu einer relationalen Journalismus- forschung. Ziel des Ansatzes ist es, die Herstellung von Öffentlichkeit in digitalen Medienumgebungen als geteilte Herstellungsleistung heterogener Akteur:innengruppen nachzuvollziehen und dabei gruppenspezifisch performativ-dramaturgische Stilmerkmale herauszuarbeiten. Zugrunde liegt ein praxeologischer Zugang, der für eine relationale Journalismus-forschung «beyond the newsroom» weiterentwickelt wird. Die Kontingenz, Vielstimmigkeit und Unübersichtlichkeit digitaler Öffentlichkeiten macht es notwendig, die traditionell mikrosoziologischen Vorgehensweisen in diesem Bereich zu verbinden mit quantitativen Netzwerkanalysen und standardisierten Akteur:innen- und Praxisanalysen. Hierfür wird ein dreistufiger Ansatz vorgestellt, der schrittweise durch quantitative und qualitative Methoden die Erstellung von «Praxisprofilen» einzelner Akteur:innen wie auch -gruppen erlaubt. Mit diesem interdisziplinären wie methodisch innovativen Ansatz soll Wandel in Öffentlichkeiten und im Journalismus auch komparativ verstehbar werden. Exemplarisch zeigen wir anhand erster Befunde zum Hashtag #systemrelevant, wie eine solche Analyse aufgebaut ist. This paper develops and presents a mixed-methods approach as a contribution to relational journalism studies. The approach aims to retrace the making of publics in digital media environments through the performative contributions of heterogeneous groups of actors and to elaborate group-specific stylistic features of their communication. It is based on a praxeological approach that is further developed for relational journalism studies “beyond the newsroom.” The contin- gency, polyphony and complexity of digital publics makes it necessary to combine traditional micro-sociological approaches in this field with quantitative network analyses and standardized analyses of actors and their practices. For this purpose, a three-stage approach is presented, which allows for the sequential development of “practice profiles” for individual actors as well as groups of actors through mixed quantitative and qualitative methods. With this interdisciplinary and methodologically innovative approach, the change of public spheres and journalism can be understood comparatively. Using the hashtag #systemrelevant as an example, we show how such an analysis is structured.

Over the last two years, digital media have contributed significantly to increasing the visibility of those who are outstandingly challenged by the pandemic. In Germany, the Twitter hashtag #systemrelevant [systemically relevant] initiated a public debate on values and working conditions. Applying the practice-theory-based concept of performative publics, we analyze the formation of this specific public with a special focus on its gendered structure. Results of our mixed-methods approach show how health care work has become the dominant issue of #systemrelevant. Civil society actors and engaged health care workers set the agenda, and journalism primarily responds to these voices. Although care work is performed predominantly by women, most of the attention online is given to men. However, on the level of tweets and linked content, the discourse in #systemrelevant counteracts stereotypical images of women in health care. Overall, the ethnographic data on the most significant collective actor show a continuous tension between symbolic recognition and their struggle for improving working conditions.

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Precarious conditions of care work are contested and deeply gendered issues all over the globe. The Covid-19 pandemic both intensifies the (national) care crises and makes care work more visible as a public issue. In this article, we ask for the opportunities, structural conditions, and limitations of voice and visibility in emerging publics beyond established media organizations. Applying the concept of performative publics and using social network analysis, we reconstruct and compare the constitution of publics around the two German language Twitter hashtags 0#systemrelevant and #CoronaEltern. In a comparative design, we ask which actor groups and what kind of genders gain visibility, and in which speaker positions women, men, and non-binary people appear. The comparison of the two case studies reveals rather different network structures and asks for more nuanced, issue-based “medium data” analyses in the linkage of gender media studies and computational methods. Whereas the public discourse on professional paid care work resembles gendered power structures, the public discourse on privatized, unpaid care work shows shifted patterns concerning female visibility. These findings are discussed critically as gendered discourse spaces of professional and privatized care work stay rather separated and thus risk reproducing traditional private/public boundaries. Furthermore, findings emphasize the importance of “invisible” relational work which keeps hashtags running. Ratios of paying attention from women to men and vice versa are unequally distributed. Females either invest more communicative effort than males or receive less attention for the equal amount of reaching out to others.

The Covid-19 pandemic reveals and exacerbates inequalities in various ways. Gender inequalities—intertwined with intersectional differences along class, ethnicity, or origin—are highly visible. Legacy and social media around the world cover and perform these issues as much as they conceal them. On the one hand, they have the ability to give those affected a voice and to intervene in public discourse. On the other hand, they reproduce stereotypes and imbalances and rely on gendered (infra)structures. This thematic issue explores the entanglement between empowering and restricting forms of media discourse and media practices. Ten contributions from different world regions, which analyze various media, and involve diverse methodological approaches, make visible reproductions of established power structures as well as new visibilities and counter-practices of marginalized groups. In sum, they generate a complex body of knowledge about global and local inequalities and the ramifications of the pandemic in and through media.