Skandal, medialisierter Skandal, Medienskandal: Eine Typologie öffentlicher Empörung

More than a marginal phenomenon: Relevance and content-related aspects of mediated sport scandals

“…A further important aspect of contemporary scandals is that mass media play a highly influential role as they can be seen as a key prerequisite to bring scandalous transgressions to a broader audience. This aspect is acknowledged in numerous publications (Burkhardt 2011;Imhof 2002;Kepplinger et al 2012;Thompson 2000). Therefore, contemporary scandals can be specified as 'mediated scandals' (Thompson 2000).…”

Moralism, Constructivism, Relativism: Identifying and Describin g the Approaches of Research on Scandal

“…While for society-related moralists, the media function is confined to the revelation of the scandal, the media-oriented constructivists [5,7,[30][31][32][38][39][40][41] bring the media into sharper focus. Consequently, the reason for the onset of the scandal is not a violation of a norm by a person, but the act of affixing of the label of scandal to an actual situation.…”

“…Here, the media are considered playing the key role [9,39], acting not only as a neutral information transmitter, but also following their own agenda [31]. Kepplinger [6], as well, sees the media not solely in the disclosure role, because "scandals are not predetermined issues which can be uncovered and reported".…”

“…Instead, he interprets scandals as the consequence of public communication about deficits, which the media can orchestrate and construct purposefully. Burkhardt [39] even introduces the "media scandal", regarding it as a distinct type of scandal, into the scientific discourse. Therefore, if we assume that the media produce scandals purposefully, the scale of the scandal depends on the media's power to define the scandal and their ability to publicize the incident as such.…”

“…That is the case because the social and symbolic capital is being updated and negotiated during the scandal [30]. According to the media-oriented constructivists, the increase of scandals can be predominantly traced back to the following changes in the media system: "Commercialization and differentiation of the media system; professionalization of investigative journalism; establishment of new information technologies and increase of media prominence associated with that" [39]; the media's tendency to move into entertainment, tabloidization, round-the-clock cable networks and internet news services, social media and trivialization (i.e., means that can be well placed in the context of scandal), as well as the stronger media competition for customer loyalty/followers [31,42,43]. Against this backdrop, scandals are predominantly believed to be negative.…”