The mediatisation of university governance: a theoretical and empirical exploration of some side-effects

Abstract

This paper is concerned with analysing potential negative effects of mediatisation of university governance in Germany. Among others, mediatisation reflects a change in expectations on how higher education institutions (HEI) should relate to the public. We start with an exploration of two sets of developments that spawned this change of expectations. On the one hand, the policy idea of a trend to a knowledge society affected what public contributions are expected of HEI. On the other hand, reforms to decentralise HEI-governance compelled universities to orient themselves more directly towards the demands of external stakeholder. Both developments reinforce each other, both are associated with extended needs for actor intermediation, and for consolidating means of orientation. Since performance figures and competition solely allow for a partial mapping of society’s demands and needs, HEI and state administrators alike can be expected to make additional use of the public discourse to evaluate comparatively a multitude of demands and expectations. This results in what we call a model of mediatised university governance. Since the media discourse on higher education is strongly biased towards news values, this type of governance bears a potential for unintended side effects. In the second part of the paper, two empirical illustrations of side effects are discussed. First, the role of media attention in accidentally reinforcing a reputational mismatch of teaching and research is investigated. For a second case, we focus on an overstretching of the information value of media-effective rankings for decision making. The cases draw upon survey data, semi-standardised expert-interviews and content analysis of news media coverage.

Mapping mental models of science communication: How academics in Germany, Austria and Switzerland understand and practice science communication

“…Their importance in science politics is well established ( Akin, 2017 ; Schmid-Petri and Bürger, 2019 ) and their prevalence among academic and scientific organizations and their leadership has been repeatedly analysed (e.g. Davies, 2020 ; Friedrichsmeier and Marcinkowski, 2016 ). However, it is still largely unclear to what extent individual academics have internalized these models.…”

University central offices are moving away from doing towards facilitating science communication: A European cross-comparison

“…From these variables, we built indices of intensity of public communication activity for the three communication means: the 'public events' index refers to the sum of participations in activities ( 1) to (9), the 'traditional media' index is given by the sum of items (10) to (14), and 'new media' sums up the number of interactions in items (15) to (19). Reliability analyses show high internal consistency for the 3 indices (Cronbach's α = .734 for public events, .674 for traditional media, and .785 for new media) (S1 Table ).…”

“…Coding (= 1) is very important, and (= 5) is not important. Items were: (1) to respond to the university mission, (2) to respond to requirements from funding bodies, (3) to respond to national policies for public engagement with science, (4) to raise the university profile, (5) to attract funding, (6) to give back to taxpayers, (7) to get public support for the university, (8) to disseminate the university research to the public, (9) to recruit students, (10) to listen and involve the public in the university activities, (11) to stimulate public debate, (12) to influence policy, (13) to contribute to the legitimacy of science in the public sphere, (14) to further the career of the university staff (see S2A Table for descriptive of items).…”

“…Communication of science and public engagement are seen under the umbrella of the ‘third mission’ of universities as important to establishing relationships with various stakeholders, industry, and the public more broadly [ 10 , 11 ]. Yet, their efforts for communicating research have often been associated with a promotional culture of the university [ 12 ], and intended medialisation of science [ 13 ] to search for broader visibility and self-promotion rather than public enlightenment or engagement [ 14 , 15 ] as they face multiple competitions (students, staff and funding) [ 16 – 18 ]. Scholars have pointed to challenges for science communication and public engagement to thrive in universities, arising from ‘capitalist pressures’ in science, marketisation and commercialisation of research, which ‘sells science’ [ 19 ] through PR and marketing research and transforms science communication in propaganda [ 20 ].…”

Tracing accountability in higher education

“…This is marked in the literature by the common consideration of market forces (Murphy, 2011); of globalization (Huisman and Currie, 2004;Woodard et al, 2011), which in this case usually means universal access to higher education (Conner and Rabovsky, 2011); and increased competition (Olssen, 2016), not least to attract students (Milliken and Colohan, 2004). In this endeavor, mediatization (Friedrichsmeier and Marcinkowski, 2016) and trademark orientation (Rooksby and Collins, 2016) becomes important. Market orientation interacts with changes related to business orientation (Murphy, 2011); the adaptation of education programs to the labor market (Carney, 2006); and the adaptation of academic planning, budgeting and daily administration to processes developed in the private sector (Waugh, 2003).…”