Quality of Economic Policy Reporting and Framing Economic Policy Crises: Media and Political Strategies and Processes

The mass media are central to shaping public discourse, particularly during economic policy crises. As key intermediaries, the mass media influence how complex economic policy issues are framed, interpreted, and debated by the public. This thesis explores the quality and framing of German media reporting during critical national, European and global economic policy crises, focusing on the interplay between media outlets, strategic actors, and framing processes. First, the research assesses the quality of the German print and online press during the Greek and Italian sovereign debt crises of 2015 and 2018, evaluating the media’s adherence to quality criteria of relevance, balance, neutrality, and background reporting. Subsequently, analyses of media framing are conducted during the Italian debt crisis and the European discourse on economic aid during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. This analysis examines whether crises precipitate shifts between neoliberal and Keynesian paradigms. Additionally, the thesis investigates the long-term media framing of German labor market policy and compares international media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This comparison focuses on framing differences in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Further, the thesis delves into the frame building process during the 2022 energy and gas crisis in Germany, analyzing how the politicians Robert Habeck and Olaf Scholz framed the crisis and how their strategic framing influenced the press. The thesis sheds light on the relationship between strategic actors and the media, illustrating the dynamic interactions that shape public discourse during crises. Finally, this thesis broadens its scope to examine the strategic communication of German government politicians on the social media platform X. By applying machine learning techniques alongside automated and manual content analysis, as well as statistical and computational methods such as logistic regression, cluster analysis, and topic modeling, this research contributes to framing research. These methods uncover both issue-specific and generic frames, thereby identifying new generic frames in the context of political communication during the energy and gas crisis. This thesis provides a comprehensive investigation into media quality, framing processes, and the methods in framing research, offering insights into the role of the media in times of economic crisis and its potential impact on public understanding and policy paradigms.