Revealing the Hybrid Patterns: Conflict Coverage as a Product of a Commercial and a Normative Media Logic

Abstract

When covering societal conflicts, journalists often feel a tension between normative and commercial requirements. Consequently, media coverage has a hybrid character consisting of elements ascribed to both a normative and a commercial media logic. Therefore, analyzing the prevalence of single elements in media coverage reveals only part of the story. Taking nine wage disputes in Germany between 2003 and 2015 as prominent instances of nonviolent conflicts, we aim at revealing the structure of news coverage (n = 1,181). A cluster analysis unfolded four distinct patterns of conflict coverage. The results indicated that the ideal-type dichotomy between a commercial and a normative media logic is more differentiated: Emotionalization and human interest framing separated patterns into some, which were more aligned to a commercial logic, and others, which were more characteristic for a normative logic. However, negativity, background information, and a hard-facts-first structure played a multifold role with the highest amount of background information being accompanied by the highest levels of negativity. Furthermore, conflict phase (strike vs. bargaining phase), conflict type (low vs. high potential impact on society), and media outlets’ genre (quality vs. tabloid vs. news agency) were identified as antecedents of the coverage patterns.