Coverage and Sourcing Practices for Data Security Issues in Spiegel Online

The next speakers in this IAMCR 2019 session are Gerret von Nordheim and Florian Meissner, whose focus is on the media reporting of digital technology. Such reporting has largely remained dominated by corporate voices, and a previous study has examined how Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung has covered tech issues over time.

The newspaper’s coverage of the violation of privacy norms has gradually declined over the past ten years, while datafication has become a more important topic – why is this so? Some of this may be explained by an elite focus, homophilous networks amongst journalists and tech leaders, and intermedia agenda-setting. Are such patterns also typical for other outlets?

The project also explored such patterns in Spiegel Online, and also explored the Twitter networks of the journalists involved. Its coverage of data security issues has declined since an early peak in 2008, and most of these articles are written by the Netzwelt beat in the news organisation; articles from the business beat have increased in prominence since 2014, however.

This also reveals a strong economic sourcing focus, especially among business reporters; the Netzwelt reporters focus more on critical and activist sources. The project further examined whether such patterns are also reflected in the Twitter networks of these reporters. First, journalists mainly follow other journalists; beyond this, however, only the Netzwelt reporters follow activist accounts, while none of the business reporters do.

Overall, this shows a gradual economisation of the discourse about data security; activists are cited only in Netzwelt articles, and its share of Spiegel Online’s coverage of data security issues has declined over time.