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Aquaculture in the German print media

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Abstract

The current aquaculture methods are criticized by the public for potentially causing ecological problems and health risks for consumers. An unfavorable public perception may lead to a decline in consumption. Also the production might be affected negatively since legislation and as such approval procedures are influenced by public perception. The aquaculture industry has to consider public reactions to their production practices in order to prosper further. One way to learn about and to understand public perception is the analysis of media coverage since media are an important source of information for the public. Thus, the media coverage of an issue reveals potential points of conflict between the aquaculture sector and the public. We aimed to identify which attitude the media adopted toward aquaculture as a news issue and to determine which aspects of aquaculture were highlighted and how they were discussed. The study also focused on the presentation of recirculating systems and of organic aquaculture. Using this approach, we analyzed the media coverage of aquaculture in the most widely read German newspapers in the time period from 2008 to 2013. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative content analysis was used to examine the coverage in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the BILD. Our results indicate that the analyzed media primarily reported on aquaculture in a positive to neutral tone. Economic benefits of aquaculture dominated the coverage, whereas potential negative aspects of aquaculture received less attention. Organic fish farming and closed recirculating systems were both presented as eco-friendly practices. The German aquaculture sector was described as being sustainable and practicing good management.

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Notes

  1. For example, the drop in the sale of fresh salmon filets in France due to the media coverage of the research findings of Hites et al. (2004) regarding contaminants and toxins found in farmed and wild salmon (Paquotte 2007).

  2. The term ‘organic aquaculture' refers in this paper to all production practices which are in accordance with the EU Regulation on ‘Organic production and labeling of organic products’, EC 834/2007.

  3. In German: Aquakultur, Fischzucht, Fischfarm, Aquafarm, Fischhaltung, Teichwirtschaft, Zuchtfisch, Zucht und Fisch, Zucht und Alge, Zucht und Garnele, Zucht und Muschel, züchten und Fisch, züchten und Alge, züchten und Garnele, züchten und Muschel.

  4. The intracoder reliability measures the relative consistency of judgments within a coder over time. The amount of inconsistency depends, for example, on the carefulness and mood of the coder (Chen and Krauss 2004; Riffe et al. 2005). Cohen’s kappa is a widely used index in communication research and controls for the possibility of chance (Lombard et al. 2010; Riffe et al. 2005). Cohen’s Kappa assumes the value of one for total consistency. In general, figures that are 0.80 or higher indicate an adequate reliability (Riffe et al. 2005). For the calculation of the index, the coder coded the same 30 randomly selected articles of the sample once at the beginning of the content analysis and again at a later stage of the analysis.

  5. When articles used the term ‘near naturalness’, they referred to the scenic environment as well as to the design of the systems themselves (e.g., sand on the bottom of a basin).

Abbreviations

FAZ:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

SZ:

Süddeutsche Zeitung

RAS:

Recirculating aquaculture systems

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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  1. Thünen-Institute of Market Analysis, Bundesallee 50, 38116, Brunswick, Germany

    Yvonne Feucht & Katrin Zander

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  1. Yvonne Feucht
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  2. Katrin Zander
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Correspondence to Yvonne Feucht.

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Feucht, Y., Zander, K. Aquaculture in the German print media. Aquacult Int 25, 177–195 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-016-0021-1

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