Volume 44, Issue 1

In the context of decreasing media trust as well as the rise of populist movements in many Western Democracies, this study sets out to revisit the relationship between political preferences and perceived media bias. It investigates perceived bias of the entire media system, the perceived bias of individual outlets as well as perceived beneficiaries of this favorable coverage. Analyses are based on an online survey in Austria in 2015 (n ~ 1,679) and compare citizens’ perceived biases towards eight newspapers and television outlets. Results show that media system bias in Austria is strongly related to right-wing but not to left-wing extremism. Furthermore, there are not only differences between single outlets but also between media genres, as particularly tabloids are less afflicted by right-wing perceptions of bias. Finally, there is evidence of hostile media perceptions irrespective of actual media exposure.

The studies conducted over recent decades on media sports coverage indicatedmajor underrepresentation of women’s sports. The underrepresentation of women’s sports in the media is aligned with the perception of sport as a masculine construct with sportswomen as the ‘other’. However, most studies were conducted in English-speaking countries. In this article we present our findings of press media coverage in Poland. The aim of the study was to provide an analysis of sports press coverage in the largest Polish daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, with respect to gender inequality. The chosen method was content analysis. The results show an underrepresentation of women’s sports in the examined press coverage – only 12.5% of all articles concerned female sports. Qualitative analysis demonstrates that the articles differed in terms of the athletes’ gender as well. The study highlighted the gender-dependent nature of the examined sports press coverage in Poland.

This study investigates the relationship between media frames and public perceptions of global poverty. Building on a frame analysis, the paper reconstructs prevailing poverty narratives in British news articles and non-governmental organizations’ (NGO’s) advertisements between 2011 and 2013. Following this, these narratives are compared with the narratives that emerge from public opinion studies. The findings suggest that there is a strong connection between media frames and public knowledge and perceptions of global poverty. Both the media and the public define poverty in developing countries’ terms of destitute victims, lack of development and bad governance. Both suggest that the causes of poverty are internal to developing countries and imply that there has been little progress in reducing global poverty.

Drawing on literature about the different television coverage of male and female politicians and gender-specific leadership behavior, differences in the visibility of female and male politicians’ emotions on television can be assumed. These assumptions are particularly relevant when considering studies on the effects of politician’s emotional displays on voters’ assessments. In order to examine the prevalence of female and male politicians’ emotions, we conducted a visual media content analysis of about 1,000 video sequences based on a sample of 66 news broadcasts. Since this comprehensive sample includes video sequences of German politicians holding various positions within the political system, it enables us to draw generalizable conclusions on the televised emotionality of leading politicians. We find that female politicians’ emotions can be seen more frequently on television than male politicians’ emotions. Moreover, female politicians’ positive emotions are shown more frequently than those of male politicians.

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether competition hypothesis (Anderson and Carnagey, 2009) contributes to the General Aggression Model when video game genre is entered into the relationship between video game use and self-reported physical aggression. A pre-test (n=93) taken randomly from the research sample employed categorized the game genres as violent and/or competitive. 1,170 adolescents (ages 12–18) completed the written survey. Online shooter games and fight’em up games, categorized as both violent and competitive, were positively related to self-reported physical aggression, while simulation games manifested a negative relationship. Video game genres such as strategy, sports, offline shooter, racing, adventure, puzzle, and platform games were not significantly related to physical aggression. The results support the hypothesis that the presence of both competition and violence in games increases the probability of physical aggression. This study shows that (1) video game genres can be used to predict physical aggression in a non-causal way and (2) that there is support for an interaction effect of the competition hypothesis and the violence hypothesis.