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A comparative study of British and German press articles on ‘organised crime’ (1999–2009)

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Abstract

Organised crime is the topic of many popular fiction teledramas and films, such as The Sopranos, The Godfather and Goodfellas. The relationship between fiction and fact is delicate. We argue that the same can be said for the influence of the press. How far does the press construct, rather than objectively recount an image of organised crime? We extracted 389 British and German articles from national newspapers that reported organised crime between 1999 and 2009, from the Lexis Nexis (now Nexis UK) database and the online archives of a number of German newspapers. We then analysed them using quantitative and qualitative methods of textual analysis. In this article, we analyse the British and German press discourses on organised crime between 1999 and 2009, to identify their rhetoric and compare their reporting. To do this, we will 1) define terms and explain our methodology; 2) provide a general overview of statistics; 3) provide two specific analyses of reporting of organised crime and 4) discuss our findings.

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Notes

  1. We must not forget the different theoretical approaches: the pluralist account suggests that the press competes with other interests to influence government and public opinion; the dominant value model suggests that press presents the dominant views of the political elite whereas the market model suggests that the press is driven by market or commercial considerations in setting the public agenda; in other words, ‘the media deliver what the public wants’ ([7]: 155).

  2. http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezp2.bath.ac.uk/uk/nexis/auth/bridge.do?rand=0.4386614537678801 [Accessed 25 October 2009]

  3. The Bundeskriminalamt is the German Federal Police Bureau.

  4. Bundeslagebild Organisierte Kriminalität 2010 [2] (Federal Overview of Organised Crime 2010).

  5. The White Paper is entitled ‘Local to Global: Reducing the Risk from Organised Crime’ (2011).

  6. ‘Quantitative content analysis’ will be used to extrapolate the primary data and statistics from the articles. This involves simply analysing ‘what-is-said’, as well as noting frequency and agency. The frequency of the number of international articles in British national newspapers for example, indicates how much of a priority international organised crime had over domestic organised crime.

  7. Textual Co-location

    The first stage of the individual analyses of the sample articles involved observing the use of textual co-location ([13]: 18) of the term ‘organised crime’ with other terms (e.g. ‘gang’ or ‘Albanian’) to ascertain whether the producer of the given article intended to form a deliberate connection between two specific terms in the reader’s mind. As Berelson’s third assumption advocates, the number of times a term appears on its own and in co-location with other terms ‘is in itself an important factor in the communication process’ (ibid.). In order to explore the ‘consequential meaning’ (ibid.) of the content in addition to Berelson’s ‘explicit/manifest meaning’, Richardson suggests Gerbner’s approach. Here, agency or ‘who-did-what’ must be noted in addition to frequency, for a thorough analysis. QCA however only suggests the relationship between the purpose, content and effect of a text (op. cit.: 17). Therefore, to explore this relationship further, critical discourse analysis was used to further analyse the sample articles.

  8. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

    ‘Critical discourse analysis’ ([13]: 15) was used to discuss the relationship between purpose, content and effect (op. cit.: 17) in the articles, as well as to explore the relationship between the micro, macro and meso levels of the discourse: ‘A critical approach to discourse seeks to link the text (micro level) with the underlying power structures in society (macro sociocultural practice level) through discursive practices upon which the text was drawn (meso level).’ (Thompson 2002 cited [9]). By observing power relations between different agents in the articles for example, it was possible to ascertain how the producers use linguistic tools to drive an agenda in order to influence their readership. Whether the content is decided by what the readership wishes to read about, or whether it is the newspapers’ producers who decide what their respective readerships read about, is a continuing argument of ‘cause and effect’ ([13]: 38), as Richardson explains: ‘The circular and reinforcing nature of discourse can appear like a spinning roundabout, difficult to jump onto; how do we distinguish cause and effect when effects become causes?’ (op. cit.: 37)

    Fairclough advocates that ‘every aspect of textual content is the result of a choice’ (op. cit.: 38), meaning that newspaper producers choose how the issues they discuss are published, regardless of whether the topic has been chosen by public demand. To analyse the choices made in presenting content in newspapers, we must analyse the use of certain tools, which can manipulate the reader. Van Dijk (1999 cited [13]: 39) builds on Fairclough’s method, explaining that discourse should be analysed at various levels, each of which ‘may be involved directly or indirectly in discriminatory action or biased discourse against disempowered individuals and groups’. McGregor [9], like van Dijk, supports the view that critical discourse analysis must be conducted to uncover the way in which producers of texts manipulate their readerships: ‘Oppression, repression, and marginalization go unchallenged if the text is not critically analyzed to reveal power relations and dominance.’ Therefore, each analysis of the sample articles concludes with what it seems the producers wished to communicate through their respective articles. As Fairclough (2002 cited [9]) explains, CDA can focus on other factors such as body language, visual images and semiosis. This article however will only focus on textual analysis.

  9. Although there are both German and British articles in the study, which did not include page numbers, the majority did.

  10. The page numbers for 12 of the British and 52 of the German articles in the study were not given on the Lexis Nexis (now Nexis UK) database [8]. The page numbers for 22 of the German articles were not listed in their online archives.

  11. Of all the articles, there were more than five times as many from British broadsheet newspapers, than from British tabloid or middle-market newspapers in the study, and only six articles from one single German tabloid newspaper.

  12. ‘Die Tatverdächtigen stammen aus 41 Staaten. 39,4 Prozent besitzen die deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft, gefolgt von den Exjugoslawen (13,5) Polen (11,9), Türken (10,8) und Kamerunern (4,7).’ (Die Tageszeitung)

  13. ‘Die meisten von ihnen sind Ausländer, nur 207 besitzen die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit.’

  14. ‘Wie schon in den Jahren zuvor stellten unter den 623 im vergangenen Jahr neu erfassten Tatverdächtigen die Deutschen die größte Gruppe (39,5 Prozent).’

  15. ‘Von den Redakteuren hängt ab… in welcher Form sie politische informationen verbreiten (ob auf zwei Seiten oder auf fünf).’

  16. Most newspapers in the study reported on both domestic and international events. The newspapers that did not, were Die Börsen-Zeitung (a financial newspaper) and Bild (the only German tabloid in the study). Both only published one article during the ten year period studied.

  17. The following newspapers’ online archives did not present any articles from 25/10/1999 to 25/10/2009 containing the words ‘organisierte Kriminalität’ in the headline: Rheinischer Merkur; Rheinische Post; Neue Solidarität; Junge Welt and Junge Freiheit. (150 of the German articles were found on the Lexis Nexis database [8]. The remaining 59 were bought from the online archives of their respective newspapers)

  18. ‘Brennpunkt des organisierten Verbrechens; Bundesweit die meisten Verfahren in Berlin—Hauptstadt ist Schnittstelle zwischen Ost und West; Organisierte Kriminalität in Berlin’

  19. All the quotes from this article have been translated by the authors but not all have been reported here due to lack of space.

  20. Not all reported here due to limited space.

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  1. Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Alexander B. K. Young & Felia Allum

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  1. Alexander B. K. Young
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  2. Felia Allum
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Young, A.B.K., Allum, F. A comparative study of British and German press articles on ‘organised crime’ (1999–2009). Crime Law Soc Change 58, 139–157 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-012-9372-3

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