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Debating Responsibility on the Eurozone Crisis in Traditional Media Newspaper Reporting in Greece and Germany Under a Social Media Lens

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Social Media and European Politics

Abstract

The crisis in the Eurozone has not only shaken the societies of the affected crisis countries, but it has also shaken the public discourse. The questions of who is to blame or to praise and who should act have gained new importance and urgency. They are discussed not only in social but also in traditional media. However, here they undergo an editorial filter. The chapter uses data of a large newspaper content analysis in Germany and Greece to describe major patterns in the attribution of responsibility (i.e. blame, praise, request and attribution of general competence) concerning the Eurozone crisis. The description applies a frame of social media characteristics to the reporting of newspapers by highlighting features which are assumed to be specific to social media debates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a rare exception, see Gerhards and Schäfer (2010) or Koopmans and Zimmermann (2010).

  2. 2.

    However, Rasmussen (2013) has pointed to reasons which limit a discourse to closed social circles in social media.

  3. 3.

    A detailed description of the sampling procedure, the crisis definition and the coding instruction can be found in our codebook which is online on www.ggcrisi.info. See also Roose et al. (2014). Martin Wettstein (University Zürich) provided his very helpful coding tool ‘angrist’ to facilitate the coding process. For his extensive help, we are very thankful.

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Roose, J., Sommer, M., Scholl, F., Kousis, M., Kanellopoulos, K., Loukakis, A. (2017). Debating Responsibility on the Eurozone Crisis in Traditional Media Newspaper Reporting in Greece and Germany Under a Social Media Lens. In: Barisione, M., Michailidou, A. (eds) Social Media and European Politics. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59890-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59890-5_12

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