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Flashbulb memories (FBMs) refer to vivid and long-lasting autobiographical memories for the circumstances in which people learned of a shocking and consequential public event. A cross-national study across eleven countries aimed to investigate FBM formation following the first COVID-19 case news in each country and test the effect of pandemic-related variables on FBM. Participants had detailed memories of the date and others present when they heard the news, and had partially detailed memories of the place, activity, and news source. China had the highest FBM specificity. All countries considered the COVID-19 emergency as highly significant at both the individual and global level. The Classification and Regression Tree Analysis revealed that FBM specificity might be influenced by participants' age, subjective severity (assessment of COVID-19 impact in each country and relative to others), residing in an area with stringent COVID-19 protection measures, and expecting the pandemic effects. Hierarchical regression models demonstrated that age and subjective severity negatively predicted FBM specificity, whereas sex, pandemic impact expectedness, and rehearsal showed positive associations in the total sample. Subjective severity negatively affected FBM specificity in Turkey, whereas pandemic impact expectedness positively influenced FBM specificity in China and negatively in Denmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a theoretical perspective for the comparative analysis of the advocacy behavior of political parties and interest groups in legislative policy-making. It conceptualizes the policy-centered and group-centered statements of political actors as policy frames and constituency frames, respectively. In order to gauge the analytical leverage provided by policy and constituency frames, I will theorize the extent to which political parties and interest groups rely on these two types of frames respectively. The empirical relevance of both types of frames is assessed in two cases of legislative policy-making in Germany. Drawing on parliamentary debates, position papers presented in committee hearings, and press statements released by interest groups, I show, amongst others, that constituency frames play a significant role in these actors' advocacy. While the use of policy and constituency frames varies between radical and moderate parties, there are hardly any differences in their use between parties and interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the increasing diversification of both the Jewish and general population in Germany influence Jewish self-positioning in German society? It seems that especially young Jews no longer perceive themselves in a binary relationship to the majority society alone, but as part of a heterogeneous, post-migrant society. The journal Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart [Yalta – Positions on the Jewish Present], published between 2017 and 2020, served as an important mouthpiece for the young generation's rage and desires. This study identifies and expounds upon three sets of relationships within German society that Jalta wishes to redefine: relationships within Jewish communities, relationships between Jews and the majority society, and relationships of Jews to other minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Gait imbalance is one of the frequent complications in subjects with multiple sclerosis (MS). Fampridine (4-aminopyridine) is a potassium-channel blocker that is administered for gait imbalance in MS. Different studies showed the effects of fampridine on gait status based on various tests in subjects with MS. Some showed significant improvement after treatment, and others did not. So, we designed this systematic review, and meta-analysis to estimate the pooled effects of fampridine on gait status in patients with MS. Methods: The main goal is the evaluation of times of different gait test pre and post fampridine treatment. Two independent expert researchers conducted a systematic and comprehensive search in PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar and also gray literature, including references of the references and conference abstracts. The search was done on September 16, 2022. Before-after studies trials reporting scores of the walking tests. We extracted data regarding the total number of participants, first author, publication year, country of origin, mean age, Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), and the results of walking tests. Results: The literature search revealed 1963 studies; after deleting duplicates, 1098 studies remained. Seventy-seven full texts were evaluated. Finally, 18 studies were included for meta-analysis, while most of them were not placebo-controlled trials. The most frequent country of origin was Germany, and the mean age and EDSS ranged between 44 and 56 years and 4 and 6, respectively. The studies were published between 2013 and 2019. The pooled standardized mean difference (SMD) (after-before) of the MS Walking Scale (MSWS-12) was – 1.97 (95%CI: – 1.7, – 1.03) (I2 = 93.1%, P < 0.001). The pooled SMD (after-before) of the six-minute walk test (6MWT) was 0.49 (95%CI: 0.22, – 0.76) (I2 = 0%, P = 0.7). The pooled SMD (after-before) of T Timed 25-Foot Walk (T25FW) was – 0.99(95%CI: – 1.52, – 0.47) (I2 = 97.5%, P < 0.001). Conclusion: This systematic review and meta-analysis show that fampridine improves gait imbalance in patients with MS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate similarities and differences in how the press report on school education and policy in England and Germany. For the purpose of analysing relevant regional and national press coverage, we will create four data sets. Inspired by Bourdieu's theories of the state and work in relation to news media, and applying thematic analysis, we will investigate which specific contents are reported and how issues are covered. To provide contextual information we will also survey who is given voice in the data and which article types are prevalent. Time frame and sample size for this study are determined by balancing the partly conflicting goals of (a) paying due attention to the exploratory ethos of the investigation, (b) analysing a relatively large number of articles, and (c) working with a manageable size of the data set. On the basis of the empirical findings, we will draw conclusions about the relationship between educational policy and the press, adopting a cross-country comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate similarities and differences in how the press report on school education and policy in England and Germany. For the purpose of analysing relevant regional and national press coverage, we will create four data sets. Inspired by Bourdieu's theories of the state and work in relation to news media, and applying thematic analysis, we will investigate which specific contents are reported and how issues are covered. To provide contextual information we will also survey who is given voice in the data and which article types are prevalent. Time frame and sample size for this study are determined by balancing the partly conflicting goals of (a) paying due attention to the exploratory ethos of the investigation, (b) analysing a relatively large number of articles, and (c) working with a manageable size of the data set. On the basis of the empirical findings, we will draw conclusions about the relationship between educational policy and the press, adopting a crosscountry comparative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the scholarly neglect of visuals in health risk reporting, it remains unclear what types of visuals predominate in news coverage and why journalists choose to use them. Generating knowledge on this neglected part of journalistic work should facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of health risk reporting and its impact on society. In 2020 we conducted two studies with this goal in mind: a content analysis of visuals in the coverage of a recent E. coli outbreak in Germany (N = 200) and a survey of German health journalists (N = 49). Study 1 showed that visuals were mostly used to illustrate the presumed causes of the outbreak and recommended treatments. Study 2 presented visuals epitomising each of the frame functions identified in Study 1 to health reporters and asked for their views. Our findings revealed that journalists preferred images that involve health severity, medical aspects, and reassurance, but said that they disliked thematic and uncertainty frames. They reported using multiple visuals to fulfil several framing functions. Finally, Study 2 exposed important differences between journalists' perceptions of visuals' functions and the way scholars typically conceive them. Taken together, these studies suggest that health risk reporting may be better than its reputation, and that incorporating visuals into assessments of journalistic quality may challenge the typical criticism in a way impossible when merely evaluating the verbal component of news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights developments in public health in Europe as of October 2022. Topics mentioned include the acquisition of an operating grant by European Public Health Association from the European Commission, the lessons about health emergencies that can be learned from COVID-19 pandemic, and the advocacy of Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region for public health.

During the 1920s and early 1930s, the communist publications Der Weg der Frau (Women's Way) and the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (Worker's Illustrated Magazine) critiqued and modified the image of the commercialized Neue Frau (New Woman) in order to present a model of female modernity that adhered to the ideological commitments of the left. The magazines outlined problematic representations of the Neue Frau as a white-collar worker in film and popular novels and provided visual and textual evidence demonstrating the reality of paid labor for women. In order to emphasize the 'fantasy' of the white-collar worker, magazines reprinted images from films, reminding their readers that this image was fictional. As an alternative to the white-collar worker, publications presented the ideal Soviet woman as a model for a modern woman, connected to the emancipatory potential of revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Price of Truth: The Journalist Who Defied Military Censors to Report the Fall of Nazi Germany" by Richard Fine is a book that sheds light on the overlooked story of Edward Kennedy, a journalist who violated a news embargo to report Germany's unconditional surrender at the end of World War II. The book explores the tensions between the press and the military, as well as issues of freedom of the press and censorship. Fine's research is based on extensive archival sources and provides a compelling narrative that challenges the commonly held belief of a cooperative relationship between the military and the press during World War II. The book is suitable for both general interest readers and academic study. [Extracted from the article]

This section offers public health-related news briefs in Europe as of December 1, 2021. The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Air Quality Guidelines was launched in September 2021 offering updated air quality guideline (AQG) levels for six key air pollutants. The European Union (EU) vaccines strategy has led to the delivery of over 890 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Member States, vaccinating over 290 million citizens. The 15th European Public Health Conference will be held in Germany.

This conversation analytic study examines responsive echt ("really"), which is commonly associated with "newsmarks," in co-present German interaction. Across uses, echt-turns are a practice for topicalizing, however briefly, something in another participant's just-prior turn. But this topicalization shapes the response space in systematically different ways: Echt-turns can be taken to (a) invite simple reconfirmation, (b) invite topical elaboration, or (c) solicit an account either to reconcile diverging expectations or to manage problems in acceptability. We demonstrate how both the design of echt-turns and participants' epistemic positioning matter to how echt-turns are treated and shape interactional trajectories. By using the notion of "inviting" a next action, we highlight the importance of conceptualizing response relevance after second-position actions, and specifically after "newsmark-type" responses, as a gradient. Data are taken from everyday and institutional interaction and presented in German with English translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research analyses the opinion articles about the COVID-19 published in the main newspapers of Italy, Spain and Germany. To this purpose, a qualitative inductive-deductive content analysis methodology has been used along two complementary phases. The first included the detailed analysis of the sample, and the second involved a method of comparative textual analysis using the Sketch Engine software. The results show the existence of some common issues about the virus, although with different approaches depending on the country: a certain vision marked by national politics in the Spanish case, an interpretative view in the case of Germany and a more social-humanistic perspective in the Italian dailies. A discourse contrary to generating panic is common in the three countries studied, but with a clear underestimation of the virus' potential consequences in the first couple of months after the outbreak in Wuhan as regards the Spanish and Italian press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prejudice and negative attitudes concerning immigration is an omnipresent phenomenon in many modern societies around the world. This study has investigated the relationship between Germans' trust in their government and the press and its association with their attitudes concerning the immigration of people from other EU member states. This study is first of its kind that has investigated the public attitudes concerning Intra-EU Immigration. On the one hand, the results of the study have identified two determinants of people's attitudes concerning immigration. On the other hand, it has reconfirmed the overall positive attitudes of Germans concerning immigration. The findings are consistent with the observation that distrust of the press and government seems to be a strong characteristic of those with negative views of immigrants and immigration. The study provides essential insights that should be taken into consideration in future immigration studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As online news today is an important source of political information and available in vast quantities, understanding its use and its impact on citizens' political knowledge is vital. The aim of the present study is to identify different usage patterns of online news and their relation to individually perceived (i.e., subjective) and actually measurable (i.e., objective) political knowledge. To do so, we conducted an online survey of German online news users (n = 396), investigating characteristics of their online news usage as well as their subjective and objective political knowledge. Latent class analysis revealed six distinct usage patterns, of which a usage pattern drawing heavily on social media and push accesses as a source of news (e.g., Facebook newsfeed, email newsletter) and being rather highly driven by entertainment needs has been found to be associated with an overestimation of one's own political knowledge (illusion of knowing). The potential negative implications of such an illusion of knowing are discussed against the backdrop of the democratic ideal of informed citizens. • Six online news usage patterns identified. • Identification based on motivations, news habits, and navigational styles. • Usage pattern drawing heavily on push accesses accompanied by illusion of knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research indicates that using social network sites as a source for news increases perceived knowledge even if, objectively, people fail to acquire knowledge. This might result from the frequent repetition of topics in news posts caused by multiple news outlets posting about the same news topics and the algorithm that favors similar postings. These repeated encounters can have a positive effect on the perception of knowing more, even if actual learning hardly occurs. An experiment (N = 810, representative of German Internet users) tested these assumptions. Participants were assigned to one of four groups and received a news feed with no information, few news posts, many news posts, or a full-length news article. Results indicate that many news posts increased perceived knowledge that is not paralleled by a gain in factual knowledge. Perceived knowledge mediates effects of reading many news posts on more extreme attitudes and the willingness for discussions. Even if participants who read the news article gained factual knowledge, they did not feel more knowledgeable than participants who were exposed to a news feed containing news posts. The results emphasize the meaning of engaging with full news articles, both for learning facts and for more accurate knowledge assessments. • Many news posts make people feel more knowledgeable than they are. • Only knowledge perception (not actual knowledge) is related to attitudes and behavior. • Many news posts indirectly affect attitudes and behavior through perceived knowledge. • News articles improve both actual knowledge and knowledge assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With her cautious foreign policy, while Turkey avoided to enter in the Second World War on the one hand, she had faced with serious internal economic and political problems which were emanating from the war on the other hand. During the war, the Turkish press was dictated and obliged to support the government's foreign policy. When it became clear that Germany was to loose the war, the Turanians who had been under the Soviet radar for a long time, were chased and arrested. Moreover, maintaining a large army as a standby reserve throughout the war disrupted heavily the Turkish economy, as the country was still struggling to create a stabilized treasury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study explores the coverage of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and its associated risks in the German press between 1993 and 2013. Using quantitative content analysis, we explored the corpus of newspaper articles to evaluate the quality of risk reporting. Our findings show an overall increase in the quality of risk-related information: articles contain more substantiating statements describing objectively cognizable phenomena with absolute numbers, prevalences, estimations, and tendencies over time. There is also an increase in the level of precision of such statements. On the other hand, the results suggest that there is little contextualization of risk information and mortality data is often communicated in absolute numbers, which makes it harder to understand and interpret the information. While the debate about the risks of AMR is led by the scientific community, the overall tone of the coverage is alarmist, which can result in growing skepticism of scientific expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers news briefs on public health. A 7.8 magnitude earthquake with multiple aftershocks struck south-east Turkiye that led to the death of some 34,000 people. A humanitarian response was launched by the World Health Organization and other United Nations partner at the request of the Turkish government. The first outbreak of Marburg virus diseases in Equatorial Guinea was confirmed in the country's western Kie Ntem Province.

Background: The news media is a key source for health and medical information, and relies to a large degree on material from press releases (PR). Medical universities are key players in the dissemination of PRs. This study aims to 1) explore the relation between the quality of press releases (PRs) from medical universities and their corresponding news stories (NSs) and 2) to identify the likelihood that specific scientific and interest-raising measures appear or are omitted in PRs and NSs. Methods and findings: In this retrospective study using quantitative content analysis, PRs (n = 507) from 21 medical universities in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the USA and the UK were retrieved. Of all PRs, 33% had media coverage, resulting in 496 NSs. With two codebooks, 18 scientific (e.g. reporting the study design of the study correctly) and 7 interest-raising measures (e.g. words like ‘ground-breaking’) were evaluated in the PRs and NSs. For all measures the percentage of presence in NSs and PRs was calculated, together with a Mean PR Influence Factor. Quality of PRs and NSs was defined as a score, based on 12 of the 18 scientific measures. Mean (SD) NS quality score was 6.5 (1.7) which was significantly lower than the PR score of 8.0 (1.5). The two quality scores were significantly correlated. Quality measures that were frequently omitted included reporting important study limitations (present in 21% of PRs, 21% of NSs), funding (59% of PRs, 7% of NSs) and conflicts of interest (16% of PRs, 3% of NSs). We did not evaluate the quality of the scientific papers (SPs), and can therefore not determine if the quality of PRs and NSs is associated with the quality of SPs. Conclusions: This large study of medical university press releases and corresponding news stories showed that important measures of a scientific study such as funding and study limitations were omitted to a very large extent. The lay public and health personnel as well as policy makers, politicians and other decision makers may be misled by incomplete and partly inaccurate representations of scientific studies which could negatively affect important health-related behaviours and decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the development of digital convergence, more and more mergers and acquisitions are taking place across media industries. In the past few years, most studies on horizontal mergers and acquisitions examine the concentration ratios or on vertical cases concerning entry barriers that block new entrants. Few research papers have discussed the impact of cross-media merger and acquisition and how to calculate the index. Thus, this paper introduces the experiences of index construction and application from the U.S., Germany, and South Korea, in order to provide a better analysis and concentration measurement index across different media for Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to represent and discredit the political actors and systems in Latin America throughout the international news in the on-line versions of Tagesschau, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel during 2016. The authors depict how stereotyped attributions and negative images are produced when introducing Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela. This results in a delegitimization of the political actors and systems, as well as a reproduction of the Latin American inferiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, Germany was shattered by a cluster of scandals concerning child sexual abuse in residential educational institutions. Previous attempts to broach the issue of child sexual abuse in institutions have repeatedly failed. This article investigates the historical preconditions that led to the immense awareness of child sexual abuse as raised by the media during this particular time. In order to create a holistic picture of the preconditions and awareness potential of the scandal, a database based on searching using a semantic field approach was created. The results were analyzed with respect to published discourses on child sexual abuse generally and in institutions in particular. Quantitatively, until the beginning of the 1990s, search results show a low but stable level of publication activity. This level increased strongly in the 1990s and, after a slight decrease in the new millennium, reached its peak in 2010. Qualitatively, the way violence against children in institutional settings was framed in the media coverage changed from emphasizing the motives of the perpetrator only (until the 1990s) to including more and more institutional and structural conditions that contribute to child sexual abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years communication scholars have repeatedly pointed out that commercial logic represents an integral element of (news) media logic, referring to specific news content characteristics such as conflict, personalization, negativity or scandal reporting that are assumed to be increasingly deployed by journalists to gain public attention. In order to empirically prove the assumption that commercial news media logic is on the rise, differences and commonalities in media reality construction are examined in Germany’s most influential news media across all regular news beats, analysing a total of 2973 news items from 1984/1989 and 2014. The sample includes the leading national quality daily (Süddeutsche Zeitung), the leading tabloid (Bild-Zeitung), and the major television newscast (Tagesschau). The findings suggest that, compared to the past, German news media reality is constructed differently in 2014, using—as predicted—a higher share of commercial logic characteristics. Surprisingly enough, these changes not only affect hard news in particular but especially address Germany’s paper of record, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German political policies and social pressures before, during, and immediately after the National Socialist period had considerable impact on the process of Jewish family formation. Personal ads placed in several leading newspapers based in Berlin reveal changing attitudes and parameters for the creation of partnerships and marriages during these decades, illustrating the complicated Jewish experience of emigration, survival, and self-identification during and after the Holocaust. The rise of the Nazis intensely altered the parameters of the search for a partner, changing expressions of self-description and highlighting very different life goals, just as the effects of the Nazi period would echo in postwar ads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the experiences of Jews in Germany during the era of the Third Reich and Nazi rule with a focus on the passage of time. Emphasis is given to topic such as the theme of lived time in the Jewish press and personal diaries, the social integration of Jews into the German bourgeoisie, the role of the Jewish time cycle in family life, and the Nazification of holidays, festivals, and the calendar.

Many academic libraries have embraced an active publishing role in recent years, an important component in libraries' efforts to address mounting pressures throughout the scholarly communications cycle. Libraries in the United States and Germany have been especially assertive in this arena. This article focuses on one particular aspect of libraries' publishing efforts in Germany and the U. S.: interventions to make the production and dissemination of the scholarly book (in print and electronic formats) more economically sustainable and its content more open. This article discusses the role of the scholarly book for early-career researchers in the humanities and social sciences and reflects on intercontinental differences. The article considers the library efforts in the context of broader, university-based publishing activities in both national contexts, particularly the relationship of library publishing and university presses. The authors discuss how differences and commonalities between the academic and economic contexts in the U. S. and Germany have led to institutional responses that diverge and converge in significant ways and they suggest that such a comparison can usefully inform scholarly communications strategies in both countries. The article considers broad national trends and also draws on examples from the authors' home institutions: the State and University Library at Göttingen and Cornell University Library in Ithaca, New York. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, West Germans began to accept the more permanent division of the country and rediscovered the regional fundaments of their federal political system. A catalyst for this process was provided by a massive regionalization of the daily press in the aftermath of the recession in 1973. That regionalization entailed the delineation of new regional distribution and advertising areas, the launch of new editions, the growth of regularly and irregularly published alternative papers and a stronger emphasis on regional news. In the 1970s regionalization cut across all segments of the market and across party affiliations and affected established papers, the irregular alternative press and even television and broadcasting. It propelled the West German daily press to its height point in German history, with more than 25 million copies per day in 1982. The new regional focus of the daily press increased public awareness of regional protests, regional identity politics and regional scandals during the chancellorship of Helmut Schmidt (1974-82) to such an extent that the article concludes that the 1970s were not only a 'global' decade, but also a regional decade. The history of the regional press that is presented in the article for the first time facilitates a new view of regional changes in economic prosperity, criticism of the federal state and the emergence of regional consumer markets between 1974 and 1982. The analysis provides a cornerstone for a more detailed media history of the Bonn Republic and a new understanding of the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Friedrich Engels, communists would “take an axe to the root of crime.” Criminality was, in this and similar views, “alien” to the very essence of prevailing social conditions in communist societies and ought to have disappeared as a phenomenon as soon as socialism was established. Yet, despite the ruling Socialist Unity Party's (SED) claim to have created “really existing socialism” in East Germany, crime existed and persisted. Official statistics showed that over one hundred thousand incidents of “everyday” criminal offenses, such as theft, were recorded annually. The SED regarded public relations work concerning criminality as essential to its prevention. This article examines the narrative of crime that appeared in the pages of the East German magazine Neue Berliner Illustrierte, which, following SED instructions, attempted to shape public perceptions by informing readers that crime rates were decreasing and that no serious crimes were taking place. Moreover, the articles made it clear that the only way to eliminate the causes of crime were for citizens to live according to the socialist tenets set forth by the party. As this suggests, the regime used the media and its treatment of crime and criminality in an attempt to win greater legitimacy and coopt citizens for the socialist project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the developments in the restitution politics in Germany since the case involving the looted art included in the collection by German art dealer and art historian Hildebrand Gurlitt and pased to his son Cornelius Gurlitt. Topics include the political and media response to the Gurlitt case, the restitution policy in German prior to the Gurlitt case, and the major role of journalists in Germany and the failure of German restitution politics.

An increasing number of, especially younger, users use Facebook as their primary source for news about political and societal issues. At the same time, research suggests that Facebook use contributes to societal knowledge gaps. Against this background, we investigate the antecedents of using Facebook as a substitute for other news sources. We argue that exposure to news posts on Facebook increases the feeling of being well-informed, regardless of actual knowledge acquisition. This might lead users, especially those with a low need for cognition (NfC), to use Facebook as a substitute for other news sources. We test these assumptions with an online survey ( n = 390) of German Internet users. Results show that the feeling of being well-informed through Facebook is reinforced by the quantity of exposure to news content on Facebook but not by the amount of actually read news posts. The feeling of being informed is an important predictor of using Facebook news as a substitute. Low NfC fosters this effect. It makes the substitution of other news sources more likely—but only for moderate to high levels of feeling well-informed through Facebook. We discuss these results in the light of their societal consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from an October 15, 2026 conference on church history and biography after 1945 hosted in Bonn, Germany by the Förderverein für Neuere Geschichte an der Universität Bonn e.V. historical society. Topics of presentations delivered include the history of the Catholic weekly periodical "Publik", politician and theologian Karl Forster's role in West German Catholicism, and a biography of German Catholic politician Rainer Barzel.

In the regular elections for the new DEGAM presidency, Prof. Dr. med. Martin Scherer was reconfirmed as president, Prof. Dr. med. Eva Hummers as vice president, and Prof. Dr. med. Jean-François Chenot as another vice president. New sections such as "Digitalization" and "Climate Change and Health" were also introduced. The new executive presidency also includes Edmund Fröhlich as treasurer and Prof. Dr. med. Erika Baum as an assessor and past president. New spokespersons for the various sections were also elected. The term of office for all members of the presidency is three years. [Extracted from the article]

The paper aims at presenting some aspects regarding the way in which German and Romanian cultural identity is represented in the field of journalistic communication in Romania, as it is reflected in the linguistic constructions employed in pre- and post-revolutionary written press (namely before and after 1989). Generally speaking, the definition of the concept of " hybrid identity" implies taking into account the specificity of the various historical periods in the coexistence of the ethnic groups considered (in this case, we refer to the communist and postcommunist period reflected in the written press). For this study, the authors adopt the theoretical viewpoint of cross-cultural pragmatics (Wierzbicka 1991) in assessing the language facts. The investigation is based on selective materials extracted from the German newspapers existing in Romania - "Neuer Weg" (NW) 1948-1992) / "Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung für Rumänien" (ADZ) (1993-2008), and the Romanian newspapers "Scînteia" (S) (1948-1989) / "Adevărul" (A) (1990-2014). In presenting the linguistic facts that mirror the hybridisation of the linguistic identity of the German community in Romania (Manu Magda 2012) on the level of journalistic language (Dănilă 2016) we take into consideration the two aforementioned periods: the ("early" and "late")" communist period", when there prevailed the "marked" forms of the "wooden language", which is characterised, in general, by the elimination of specific actualisations of linguistic identity and the adoption of Russian clichés; the "post-communist period", defined by two parallel directions: "reevaluation of linguistic identity" (indicated by convergence towards the core linguistic identity, i.e., the one from Germany), "linguistic globalisation" (indicated by convergence towards the international linguistic community, dominated by the "imperialism of the English language"; this direction can be noticed in relation to both languages explored - Romanian and German). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the theory of instrumental actualization in mediated conflicts, the mass media tend to exaggerate events consistent with the editorial line. This theory was tested using press coverage in Germany, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom on the Japanese seaquake, the tsunami it caused, and the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. Within a period of seven weeks after the seaquake, the coverage in the four countries in 27 national newspapers and magazines on the three events was analyzed. As hypothesized from theory, German and Swiss media concentrated on Fukushima and stressed its relevance to domestic nuclear plants, whereas French and British media placed a greater emphasis on the tsunami and rarely related the nuclear catastrophe in Japan to domestic nuclear programs. In addition, there were remarkable correlations between the views of journalists and the bias of statements on nuclear energy presented in their news sections. Findings are discussed and related to the theory of public opinion and political decisions in liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do political parties prioritise some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasise policy issues on which they have an advantage in order to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory argues instead that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are salient in the minds of citizens. This study sheds new light on the selective issue emphasis of political parties by analysing issue attention throughout the entire electoral cycle. On the basis of a quantitative text analysis of more than 40,000 press releases published by German parties from 2000 until 2010, this article provides empirical support for the riding the wave theory. It shows that political parties take their cues from voters by responding to the issue priorities of their electorate. The results have important implications for political representation and the role that parties play in democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The existence of the so-called “Werther effect” is well confirmed, and there are several recommendations on how the media should (not) report suicide to minimize the risk of copycat behavior. Unfortunately, very little is known about how suicide is actually reported. The article examines the German press coverage of six celebrity suicides with respect to compliance with guidelines on suicide reporting and analyzes changes in suicides in the wake of the reporting. It concludes that German media do not respect the recommendations in a substantial number of their articles. In addition, a significant increase in suicides and similar suicides is found. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Before the 2013 German federal election, 121 participants completed a 2-session online study (which paralleled a U.S. study before the 2012 presidential election). They browsed online search results pertaining to 4 political issues while selective exposure was unobtrusively measured. In a 4 × 2 × 2 (topic × issue stance × source credibility) within-subjects design, the search results indicated either issue support or opposition, associated with low- or high-credibility sources. Hypotheses were derived from cognitive dissonance, approach-avoidance, and motivated cognition models. Findings yielded a confirmation bias. Attitude-consistent exposure uniformly reinforced attitudes; attitude-discrepant exposure uniformly weakened attitudes. Analyses with parallel U.S. data showed a stronger confirmation bias in the United States than in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The H1N1 influenza pandemic occurred in Germany between April 2009 and August 2010. Pandemics often lead to uncertainty amongst the public and so risk communication on health-related issues is one of the key areas of action for health authorities and other healthcare institutions. The mass media may contribute to risk communication, so this study analysed press coverage during the H1N1 pandemic in Germany. Methods: A comprehensive analysis of the press coverage during the H1N1 pandemic was conducted in two steps. First, a temporal analysis was carried out of newspaper articles over the entire course of the pandemic, a total of 15,353 articles. The newspaper articles were obtained from the database Nexis. The total number of articles about the influenza pandemic during each individual week was plotted against the number of incident influenza cases during that week. Second, a quantitative content analysis of 140 newspaper articles from selected dates was conducted. Results: This study indicates that media awareness seems to be strongly related to the actual situation in the pandemic, because changes in the number of infected people were associated with nearly identical changes in the number of newspaper articles. Few articles contained information on the agent of the influenza or support measures. Information on vaccination was included in 32.9% of all articles. Almost half of the articles (48.6%) used case reports. Fear appeals were used in only 10.7% of the newspaper articles; 32.9% of the articles contained the message characteristic "self-efficacy". Conclusions: The newspaper articles that were analysed in the content analysis included different information and message characteristics. The extent of information provided differed during the pandemic. As current research indicates, the use of message characteristics such as fear appeals and self-efficacy, which were also included in the analysed newspaper articles, can help to make health messages effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicative complexity concerns the variety of issues and stakeholders (agenda complexity) and their associations (frame complexity) in the news. One issue may dominate news in crises (9/11, Katrina), but as soon as complexity recovers, uncertainty may decrease and the public mood may improve. The financial crisis in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany (2007-2012) offers an example. An automated content analysis was applied to over 160,000 newspaper articles. Frame complexity decreased until the spotlight fell on the demise of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers (2008). The subsequent gradual recovery was only partly interrupted by the euro crisis. A Vector AutoRegression time series analysis shows that increasing frame complexity may indeed have fostered the recovery of financial markets and consumer confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social amplification of risk framework highlights the role which the news media play in risk communication by interacting with other agents in amplifying risk. However, the precise ways in which the media and other social agents actually amplify risks in public debates are unclear. In this article we draw on insights from the sociology of news to examine whether and to what extent social agents and news media amplify an emerging health risk. We use the debate about theEscherichia colioutbreak in Germany in 2011 to examine three issues: the amount of risk reporting by news media and social agents in their function as news sources; their evaluation of risk; and how they contribute to the escalation of risk, also known as ripple effects. In this article we draw on data from a content analysis of press releases from public health authorities and affected stakeholders and of news items in leading German news media. We found that the affected stakeholders were amplifying the risk to the greatest extent. We also found that there was a shift over time in the use of dominant frames. At the start of the debate the risk was framed as a public health issue and linked to medical-scientific progress. As the debate developed, more attention was given to political and economic consequences of the outbreak and the original health risk event was layered by other risk-related events. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The German media presentation of the so-called Greek financial crisis caused an unexpected uproar in Germany. An anti-Greek sentiment evolved and spread among German citizens and solidarity for crisis-hit Greece was mostly rejected. Public surveys revealed that many Germans even wanted Greece to exit the Eurozone immediately. This article highlights the crucial role of the media in shaping the negative public opinion. In 2010, a period which has lately been referred to as Greek bashing, the German press had discussed the Greek financial crisis heatedly and controversially. Europe’s largest daily newspaper, BILD, published numerous reports that implicitly and explicitly constituted the myth of the corrupt and lazy Greeks in comparison to the hard-working Germans. In 2012, the crisis had spread much further, and not only Greece but other countries too were suffering from high debt, economic stagnation and unemployment. The news coverage became more moderate and conciliating and presented the dramatic social consequences for the respective population. This study highlights not only the development of the German media’s tenor on the Greek crisis through time, but adds an international perspective and widens the view by comparing the media treatment of the different countries involved. Based on 122 online articles, the study methodologically focuses on the analysis of metaphorical language in the news coverage of three comparable international news magazines: SPIEGEL (Germany), The Economist (the UK) and TIME (the USA), and contrasts the representation of Greece with the depiction of larger indebted European countries like Spain and Italy. The analysis shows remarkable differences in the evaluation and presentation of the crisis, which can be linked to the degree of involvement of Germany, the UK and the USA in European policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greek crisis has attracted more public-political attention than any other sovereign debt crisis within the European Union. This article investigates the argument that this is due to the symbolic-catalytic role that the Greek crisis played in forging a specific approach to state rescue and the reform of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Drawing on assumptions of interpretive-narrative political studies about the discursive construction of crisis and a Critical Discourse Analysis of editorials from the financial press, the study shows how this approach was ‘catalyzed’ by a specific construction of the ‘Greek case’. Reference to the ‘Greek case’, in particular the high level of government debt, rendered austerity a plausible option of crisis management. Reference to the contagion potential of the Greek crisis justified the application of austerity across the Eurozone. The Greek crisis was also seen to reveal the systemic flaws of the EMU and suggest deepened economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The years 1946–1960 saw a wave of reports of flying saucer sightings on both sides of the Atlantic. To date, however, few scholars have examined how the phenomenon moved across states and regions, what responses it garnered and what impact it had on contemporary thought and values. This article examines how the mainstream press and public intellectuals in postwar West and East Germany reported on and discussed flying saucer reports. The evidence shows that both cold war geopolitics and the occult were used to explain sightings, but that suspected American influences and anti-American sentiments figured heavily in how most reports were interpreted. Flying saucers thus functioned as cyphers for considering alien influences in postwar society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

German women were working within a context strikingly different from either the USA or the UK following the granting of suffrage in 1918. Focusing on the largest of the bourgeois women's organisations, the Federation of Women's Associations (Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine, BDF), this article situates the post-suffrage strategies and priorities of the German women's movement within their particular national context. The BDF have been accused of failing to fully utilise the vote as a tool for change, but a study of their journal, Die Frau, shows that it was the weight of external factors that reduced the BDF's impact, rather than any failure of courage or commitment by the women. An overview of German press coverage of female suffrage before, during and after the war sets out the mental landscape within which the women were operating and gives for the first time a much-needed indication of public response to the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Christa Wolf died in 2011, the German media commemorated her in numerous, largely similar obituaries that echo statements issued by liberal-conservative politicians and reference allegations generated during the literary debate (1990/1991). Ambivalent, ironic or hostile, they downgrade or defuse Wolfs political stance, render the author and her politics futile, or work to streamline her with the ideologies dominating unified Germany. A comparative analysis of obituaries and texts by Wolf exposes the rationale behind the majority of testimonials, namely to devaluate the socialist idea in order to legitimize contemporary politics in a time of global crisis for the capitalist system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last few decades personalization has been identified as a defining trend of contemporary political communication. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed and there are very few studies that explore more than a single-case study. This article investigates media personalization in comparative perspective by analysing the press coverage of recent general elections in Germany (2009) and the United Kingdom (2010). Was the reporting in both campaigns (equally) personalized? How and to what extent does the phenomenon vary across the two countries? What does this mean for our understanding of personalization? The analysis shows that there are at least as many differences between the countries as there are similarities; although both campaigns can be considered personalized in some respects, the form it takes is substantially different due to structural variations in the media and political systems, as well as the more transient, but key, impact of the distinctive characteristics of the campaigns and each of the candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the young Marx's defence of press freedom in the repressive Germany of his day is more important than the tradition of Orthodox Marxism has generally allowed, and is best considered as a crucial constitutive feature of the massively influential career as critical thinker and political activist to come. Furthermore, it is in and through Marx's reconfiguring of the idea of the public in these early writings that his work may make a significant contribution to today's most pressing debates around the practice and elusive ideal of democracy, and notably those in South Africa involving the so-called Freedom of Information bill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period 1880–1930 saw women composers achieve unprecedented prominence as composers of large-scale works. This success coincided with the first wave of feminist movements in England, France and Germany. This article views the junctions where these two groups of women met through the vehicle of the feminist press, documenting the tensions and misunderstandings that occurred between emerging women composers attempting to be taken seriously as creative entities and feminists seeking to improve the political, social and professional lot of women. The pervasive aesthetic of male musical genius remained unquestioned by many feminists in spite of examples of female creative brilliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]