Between Online Heaven and Cyberhell

Abstract

The diffusion of the internet in Germany was accompanied by strong attention from the traditional mass media who considered the new medium extensively in their coverage. Their media framing of the internet is analyzed following the four dimensions of framing identified in earlier research on media issues. Central to this process are the argumentation patterns used in this research which were defined with regard to a qualitative analysis of the multimedia discourse. Results of a quantitative content analysis of German news magazine coverage (1995-8) indicate that these media had a strong tendency towards a favorable assessment of the internet. The euphoric and economically optimistic argumentation patterns were most important, and outcomes of the development were evaluated as supporting the emancipation of the individual. However, this particular way of framing the internet issue is only partly reflected in the perceptions of users.

Not so revolutionary after all: the role of reinforcing frames in US magazine discourse about microcomputers

“…Others have hinted at such patterns in science and technology reporting, but have not quantified and tested these theories (Nelkin, 1987). Rossler's (2001) finding that a frame analogous to the personal frame ('emancipation consequence') re-emerged in the late 1990s in media discourse about the internet. Also, subjecting the texts of computer technology sponsors, such as press releases by computer manufacturers and government documents, to the same frame analysis and tracking this influence on media texts, would enhance knowledge about extramedia influences on media content (Miller and Reichert, 2001).…”

Framing Effects on Judgments of Social Robots’ (Im)Moral Behaviors

“…Drawing from Framing Theory (Goffman, 1974;Entman, 1993;Scheufele, 1999), producers' inclusion and exclusion of information craft a metaphorical frame that makes specific dimensions of a situation more or less salient to an audience. For instance, the emergence of the Internet was addressed in some newsmagazines within politics or financial sections, and, in others, coverage was usually located within science or media sections; some coverage focused on economic optimism and excitement about possibilities, while other stories dealt with pragmatic concerns and predictions of apocalypse (Rössler, 2001). Each of these placements helped to make the technology's relevance in specific domains salient, and the coverage foci effectively packaged the technology in valenced affect such that audiences might attend to the possibilities or problems, respectively.…”

Semantics of the internet: a political history

“…These characterisations are reminiscent of what O'Reilly (2005) labelled 'web 1.0'. Journalists referred to other notions of the Internetfor example, relating it to infrastructure or culturebut the co-occurrence profiles show that they did so less saliently (Rosenthal, 2000). Internet infrastructure, such as data transmission protocols, was a more salient topic in the governmental sphere of the 1980s (Werle, 1999); this suggests that by the 1990s, its infrastructural character was already more or less taken for granted.…”