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The media audience becomes more and more interested in participating in the news production process and the evaluation of journalistic work. Thus, participatory journalism fills imortant niches that traditional media cannot fill because of market pressure and profitability issues. Since participatory journalism can be seen as a chance for traditional media, we need to know more about it. Hence, we conducted a standardized quantitative online-survey among participatory journalists in Germany and compared our findings with results from the most recent German journalism study. Our basic research question is: How do participatory journalists differ from professional journalists, regarding their attitude towards journalistic ethics, journalistic quality, concerning motivations, perception of their identity and self-concept etc. Our study has identified significant differences but also similarities between participatory and professional journalists. Results suggest that despite significant differences between participatory and professional journalists it cannot be denied that participatory journalists contribute to public opinion building. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that following the 2015 refugee "crisis," German media and political discourse has shied away from assimilatory practices for refugees and asylum-seekers, reverting towards a differentialist model of national belonging as outlined by Brubaker (2001). This new phase of exclusion and boundary-drawing is increasingly negotiated and discussed by way of health paradigms, denying refugees and asylum-seekers equitable access to care and sustainable livelihoods upon resettlement. Bridging the gap between sociological theories of immigrant assimilation in the German context and empirical studies of social determinants of refugee health, this paper breaks down "health as citizenship" into four dimensions--sense of belonging (do health institutions promote or limit social cohesion, and do they impart social or cultural meaning), legal status (who is "entitled" to provisional care), rights (what "contract" exists between the refugee and the state), and participation (is healthcare a "privilege," and does it allow for exclusion based on migration background)--in doing so, this paper addresses what limitations remain for refugees' access to health in the German context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how young asylum seekers in Germany acquire and live with uncertain legal statuses--or liminal legality. It dovetails with recent debates in the sociology of migration critiquing dichotomous conceptualizations of legal and illegal migration, showing ethnographically how migrants experience the continuous legal borderline along which they actually live. While scholars have examined the consequences of liminal legality, uncertain legal statuses usually remain a black box. Attempting to fil this gap, I examine the actual mechanisms and decisions that create an uncertain legal status. I show that liminal legality results not only from the multiple possible outcomes of an asylum plea, but also from Germany's dichotomous cultural notions and legal applications of identity--age, nationalethnic origin, and unaccompaniment, in this paper--that do not fit migrants' more complex and less legible situations. The paper develops the term frictional identities to capture the fabricated, messy, and provisional identities that migrants acquire in their interactions with state bureaucracies. In contrast to other studies on the identification of asylum seekers, I avoid the one-sided portrayal of the state verifying and assigning migrants' identity by considering both state bureaucrats' and migrants' stakes and strategies in the negotiations about the identity categories migrants are admitted to. Empirically, the paper draws on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork with unaccompanied minor asylum seekers in Germany conducted since 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is nowadays a renewed interest in the scholarship of migration to identify the determinants of migration decision making. Albeit with different terms, most of the research theorizes migration as resulting from circumstances, opportunities and practices. This paper suggests shifting attention to how people "read" and navigate circumstances and opportunities, which may result in practices, from a microsociological and culture orientated perspective. Drawing on various strands of literature, i.e. cultures of migration, neoliberal subjectivity and conceptions of modernity, this paper explores the ways in which culture "enters" peoples' lives. The example of Polish migration to Germany, due to its long-standing tradition of migration and post-socialist transition to Western capitalism, is particularly telling for an examination of the ways in which cultural meanings of migration shape peoples' conceptions of subjectivity and life course considerations. Challenging reductionist conceptions of migrants' subjectivity, the analysis reveals that people do not mechanically respond to structures, nor is their migration solely determined by material aspects, even if people commonly refer to "economic" motifs as the driving reasons. Instead, as a legacy of the cultural history a particular frame of reference has emerged, through which migration is assessed in relation to expectations of a normal life, inasmuch as to becoming normal through migration. In doing so, this paper provides a more nuanced understanding of migrants' subjectivity by illustrating that people's rationality is shaped by socially accepted life-making options and their interrelations with hegemonic concepts of subjectivity, which reflect local and international trends related to migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usually, university drop-out has been studied from the perspective of academic failure, specifically a failure of students to integrate academically and socially to university (Tinto's model). Previous research has mainly supported this model but has also revealed that drop-out rates vary remarkably across fields of study, study programs, and universities. This paper takes a different starting point: it illuminates how the inclination to drop out have developed over three decades (1985-2016) and whether student-body composition affects the overall reported tendency to drop-out. Based on pooled cross-sectional data from the Konstanz Student Survey (KSS) with over 80,000 respondents in 24 universities, the paper tests factors such as gender, parental education, motivation and high school diploma grades. The inclination to drop out slightly decrease over decades while the changing composition of the student body explains around one third of this reduction. While BA/MA reform does not seem to contribute to the reduction of drop-out, the paper discusses potential changes to the matching process of students to study programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accounting of small and medium enterprises is specific, compared to the accounting of large enterprises, for several reasons. First of all, lower business volume implies less demanding accounting in terms of less turnover and the number of accounts to be processed, lower financial reporting requirements, more favourable tax treatment is expected and the like. Practical experience in the years of application of EU-accounting directives, which represent the framework of financial reporting of companies at the EU level, pointed to certain difficulties or excessive administrative burden of small and medium enterprises in relation to the requirements for large companies and identified areas for improvement. The complexity of these regulations as well as problems in practical application have led to the need to develop and publish a revised single accounting directive (2013/34/EU). This Directive was primarily adopted with the aim of simplifying the accounting and financial reporting of small and medium-sized enterprises. Today, it is common for small and medium-sized enterprises to go beyond the borders of one country. In the internationalization of business, SMEs face many challenges and potential barriers. First of all, it refers to financial, human and procedural barriers, but also to informational barriers related to regulations, rules and laws of other countries. Since the accounting and tax treatment of the same business transaction may differ between countries, it seems entirely justified to investigate whether there are differences in the regulation and regulation of the accounting system between the two countries. This paper compares the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises' accounting systems between two economically strongly connected countries, Germany and Croatia, which is the main goal of this paper. It is well known that financial reporting is a particularly important, final phase of accounting data processing. Namely, financial reporting system of these two countries is compared by using the method of comparison and classification analysis. The types and scope of financial statements have been defined and the content of financial statements that SMEs are obliged to compile and publish has been analysed. The paper pays additional attention to the analysis of similarities and differences between these two accounting regulations as well as current events in the implementation of the revised accounting directive into national legislation, especially in simplifying the financial reporting of the smallest, but numerically most represented micro enterprises. The important finding of the research show that some changes have been made but there is still room to improve accounting regulations for this segment of entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the heightened relevance of international contexts, governments increasingly aim to communicate with foreign audiences to convince them of their policies. These strategies can be regarded as part of a nation's public diplomacy. More specifically, they can be called mediated public diplomacy since it is their main goal to distribute messages through foreign media. This paper analyzes the communication during the European migrant crisis as one of the most salient transnational issues in 2015/16. Herein, the paper compares Germany's and Hungary's mediated public diplomacy, their main topics, frames, and their reliance on information subsidies. Through a comparison with the related coverage in CNN and Al- Jazeera it shows that there is a relationship between the (1) reliance on information subsidies and a (2) correspondence between media agenda and the agenda in the mediated public diplomacy. The media's frame building, however, seems to be unaffected by the application of information subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many industrialized societies we observe persistent gender pay gaps and while labor force participation of women is increasing, it is also consistently found to be lower than men's par- ticipation. The persistence of gender inequality seems surprising, given recent developments of globalization and the sectoral shift from male dominated industrial production to service work. In this paper, we address the question of how economic globalization affects gender inequality. Using employer-employee linked administrative data, we analyze trade flows between Germany and China as well as Eastern Europe. We use an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effects of trade exposure on men's and womens labor force participation and wages in Germany. We show that imports, and to a lesser degree exports, affect female and male labor market outcomes differentially. While women seem to be overproportionally negatively affected by imports, their labor force participation also does not seem to improve through increasing exports. We ascribe these disproportional effects mainly to occupational sex segregation and differences in men's and women's position in firms affected by trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Germany, inequalities in the labor market are strongly tied to social origin by way of educational degrees: Children from higher social origins moreoften choose a traditional pathway that leads to a formal university entrance exam and with it to the highest returns in the labor market. The following paper focusses on the status attainment of nontraditional alumni in Germany, who first completed their vocational training and then entered higher education with an occupational qualification but without holding a university entrance certificate. By this pathway, inequalities can be lessened if nontraditionals attain the same status as traditionals. Estimated random-effect models on data of 155 nontraditionals and 1,881 traditionals of the National Education Panel Study (NEPS) show, that over 15 years after graduating, nontraditionals attain a lower occupational status (SES) in comparison to traditionals. Referring on social reproduction and social position theory, these results are explained for nontraditionals of lower social origins by a desire for status maintenance of the SES attained before their studies and for nontraditionals of higher social origins by a failed reproducation of parental status. Both motives lead to a lower SES attainment than that of the traditionals who successfully reproducte the parental SES by their graduate degree. The findings show that although alternative route to an educational degree lessen educational inequalities, inequalities do not disappear but manifest in the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing sociological research has explained the unequal division of unpaid work between men and women among others with differences in relative resources and time availability. Numerous theoretical and empirical studies alike claim an influence of (potential) labor market success on household arrangements. We challenge a strictly monocausal interpretation of this relationship by investigating the influence of the division of unpaid work in different-sex couples on various labor market outcomes: A more equal distribution of unpaid work is argued to free time resources of the primary providers of housework - in most cases women - and to enhance their labor market participation and employment careers. Besides providing causal evidence for an effect of unpaid on paid work a major contribution of this paper is to exploit recent longitudinal data and dedicate particular attention to the accompanying methodological difficulties. Based on SOEP data for the years 2001-2015 we investigate the effects of different care work distributions within different-sex couple households in Germany on their employment probability as well as the actual working hours, hourly wages and labor earnings of employed couples. Applying instrumental variable regressions with fixed individual and time effects that include controls for individual and household characteristics allows to account for the endogeneity of an individual's time spent in housework. According to our findings the labor market participation of men and women as well as their actual hours worked and individual labor earnings are negatively affected by their own and positively affected by their spouses' time spend in housework. The effects are more pronounced for women. A more equal distribution of housework within couples would thus imply a substantial step towards more gender equality on the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original "social question" of industrial society arose from strife between labor and capital and how the state should respond. As they evolved and encountered historical contingencies, these social tensions produced different power configurations in different countries. Debates have continued to the present about the best theoretical explanations of these configurations. These include class, state, managerial, institutional, rationalchoice and most recently cultural. Bourdieu's work on the field of power synthesizes much of this theoretical development, describing it as a social space that adjudicates among its component bureaucratic, political, economic, cultural, symbolic and social fields. His work remains abstract and assumes the French case, but it opens the potential for flexibly considering different combinations of these factors in empirical historical comparative analysis. This paper adopts this background framework to draw out the theoretical implications of a comparative analysis of political network patterns between labor, capital and the state in three national polities. The network data represents the late 1980s politics of making laborrelevant government policy in the USA, Germany and Japan. Data analysis shows that the three polities all exhibited forms of class division and state mediation, but differed dramatically in the state's role and the relational media of that mediation. The three forms may be labeled business-pluralist (USA), labor-management corporatist (Germany) and state-coordinated corporatist (Japan). Among the relational media, networks of expected reciprocity displayed a massively different presence: in Germany minimal, in the US only among labor organizations, but in Japan, encompassing both labor and business and centered on a managerial (though capital dominated) state. These findings imply that, among the numerous factors contributing to the historical genesis of these distinct formations, distinct cultural value systems shaped the relational doxa: utilitarian individualism (USA), legal universalism (Germany) and hierarchical particularism (Japan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to explore which factors trigger whether and how national media open up for communication flows dealing with European issues. So far research has highlighted factors that explain commonalities in debates between countries as a result of European competences and events. This paper makes an attempt to understand why a specific European issue is debated in a country, but disregarded in another or why issues are debated differently in different countries. Three hypotheses are developed that specify how the national level colors the domestic adaptations of a common European input. To find evidence for the impact of national levels on European debates, a network analysis is conducted for the German and French media reporting and commentating on EU enlargement and a common European Constitution. This network analytic concept of public debates allows for an actor-based and relational explanation of agenda-building processes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses how Germany and the United States construct Arab or Islamic actors in print media articles around the 9/11 attacks. The analysis focuses on two central questions: Who appears in the media & how are the actors constructed? What self-image is implicitly communicated? One hypothesis is that Arab or Islamic actors are constructed as geographical, cultural or political others. This construction draws an in-group definition for the self via the othering of characteristics that are ascribed to the Arab or Islamic actors. The created image can implicitly serve as an identification platform for the reader as an in-group member. The Arab or Islamic other portrays the behavior or characteristics that deviate from socially favored norms and values. By doing what is not preferred or allowed the other actors help the society (i.e. the self) to remind itself of these norms and of what its own national or trans-national, Western identity is based upon. The analysis covers 8 weeks before and 4 weeks after the event and includes 6 print media. The paper introduces four of the major types of actors and illustrates them with a few examples. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the world, markets are increasingly affected by convergence as a result of ongoing internationalisation. Many industries have become global and national borders are no longer of significance, which is especially true for member states of the European Union. However, publishing markets are partly exempted from this process. An increasing number of publishing companies internationalise and enter foreign markets. Despite this development publishing markets remain geographically limited. Coalescence in publishing industries has not taken place due to cultural and linguistic barriers. Newspaper and magazine markets as adequate examples are object of investigation within the scope of this paper. More specific, this paper focuses on media economic analysis of newspaper and magazine sectors in Denmark and Germany. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to present an analysis of the chain of strains that led to the German Revolution of 1918, which ended the Imperial Reich. The enquiry follows the analytical tradition of comparative historical sociology of revolutions that has come to be known as state breakdown theory. Two major contributions are made: First the paper broadens the analytical model of state breakdown theory, which focused on splits between state elites and the landed aristocracy in agrarian bureaucratic states. The analysis of the German Revolution goes beyond this concern by showing that state fiscal problems and elite struggles over reforms can also arise in modern industrial economies and undermine the power of the state apparatus. In particular conflicts among and between rival sectors of governmental administration, military, and industries are revealed. Second, the analysis shows that the revolution was not merely the theoretically trivial by-product of defeat in war. Instead, long-standing struggles of rival factions in the governmental administration, the military, and industries paralyzed the state apparatus. These elite splits based on a financial crisis of the state and opened the door for a spread of massive desertion and popular protests that ended the monarchical state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the history, functions and the formats of the U.S. presidential debates 2004 and the TV-duels in the German Federal Election Campaign 2002. The major result of this comparison is that the German TV-duels are by far different from the U.S. presidential debates. The paper suggests that the German debates follow a logic of their own which is intentionally directed at serving the politicians' and especially the broadcasting media's interests, and not those of the German voters.

The paper deals with the relationship between states within state-systems. The main questions are: What are the reasons for domination? Are there common patterns of state ?behavior? in different state-systems? Is there a relationship between the position of a state within the state-system and the state building process (inner state-stricture). The paper presents three case studies of state-systems. The development of the ancient Greek state-system from about 700 to 300 BC, the German state-system (Holly Roman Empire) from about 1000 AD to 1866 and the so-called Western state-system from about 800 AD to the present day. The paper includes both types of analyzes: a formal sociological analysis (geopolitics) and an analysis in historical sociology. They major outcomes of the study are: 1) States, initially located in a marginal position will dominate in the end the state-system. 2) The state building process of states in protective position differs from the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no greater domestic socio-political struggle in Germany and France than what these nations have defined as ?the problem? of the integration of their Muslim populations into the society. This problem is exacerbated by the sluggish economic situation faced by twenty-first century post-industrial nations, especially those providing a social welfare cushion to the cyclical shocks of capitalism. The interaction of the visibility and separateness of Muslims and the difficulty of maintaining generous social welfare benefits in the face of reduced economic growth are driving current developments in law, politics and public policy in France and Germany. While the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought the U.S. Muslim population under greater scrutiny and increased hate crimes against them, Muslims are, by and large, somewhat more integrated into the general population in the United States than in either Germany or France. This paper seeks to explain why, and to document efforts within each of these societies to promote the integration of Muslims into the social system. After a brief introduction to the visibility of Muslims in each society, the paper examines the utility of world systems, metaconstitutional and conflict theories in explaining the interaction between the host society and its Muslim population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question how to regulate the bequest of wealth has been an issue of great controversy in modern societies over the last 200 years. In this paper I analyze the discursive structures of inheritance law debates in France, Germany and the United States. I argue in the first part that in each country a distinct sets of issues and arguments have developed that exercise a dominant influence over the perception of the problems associated with the transfer of wealth mortis causa and the strategies deemed feasible to solve them. These culturally framed "notions of property" remain stable over long periods of time and shape discourses on inheritance law. They equip actors with culturally legitimated patterns of justification for the support or opposition to specific measures. In the second part of the paper I look at the actual development of one important field of inheritance law, estate taxation. I will describe the enduring differences which developed with regard to inheritance taxation and ask how this institutional development can be explained. Considering the distinct discursive structure in each of the three countries, it is looked at the contribution of the cultural frames to the legal changes. This shall help to analyze institutional development within a pluralistic theoretical framework that acknowledges the influence of culture, but also considers functional demands as well as economic and social interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration is often assumed to be a key condition leading to ethnic conflict. However, in both immigration studies and ethnic studies there is an inadequate theorization about the relationship between immigration and ethnic conflict, and there is little systematic cross-national comparative evidence on this relationship. This paper is a step toward filling these gaps in the literature. In contrast to the "inevitable hypothesis" that assumes ethnic conflict as a natural outcome of immigration, we propose a "conditional hypothesis" that contends that only under certain conditions will migration and contact generate conflict between groups. These conditions include, but are not limited to, group direct competition for scarce resources, unequal allocation of socioeconomic resources and political power, ethnic and cultural policy based on ethnic/cultural superiority or inferiority, and perceived threats from other groups especially those with a large size and lower-class backgrounds. The historical and contemporary evidence from selected major immigration countries reviewed in this paper seems to give little credence to the inevitable hypothesis but lend substantial support to our conditional hypothesis. It is evident that when these conditions are present, so is ethnic conflict. This is particularly true in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Germany. In contrast, in Japan none of these conditions is present, and hence we see little conflict along ethnic lines. In tandem, the conditional hypothesis and the contact hypothesis suggested by psychologists grasp more completely the role of migration and contact in relation to ethnic conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern education emerged in the long modern century stretching from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. Many accounts of modern education assert that its goals, structure, content and functions were essentially identical across all modern societies. This paper argues, to the contrary, that at least six distinctive patterns of modern education emerged, each reflecting their unique temporal and spatial context and the nature to the ideological, economic, and political changes that accompanied their birth and systematization. These patterns are the Prussian, French, English, American, Japanese, and Russian approaches to modern education. The paper first seeks to describe the process of emergence of these respective systems, and then it reflects on some of the implications for institutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1998, one of the most remarkable developments in European integration has taken place in the defense field. On paper, all member-states but Denmark now support the idea of a common European security and defense policy (ESDP). Political-military structures have been created and new initiatives are launched almost every month, but the nature of the beast remains unclear. Should it become the independent defense arm of the European Union or a subsidiary of NATO? Should it remain an intergovernmental political forum or move towards the multinational integration of armed forces? And what should it do? Rational-choice theorists usually explain the difficult emergence of a European defense identity by focusing on supposedly conflicting state interests. On the contrary, I argue in this paper that the ?objective? (i.e. material and geopolitical) interests of European states dictate that a strong version of the European security and defense policy be put in place. However, ?subjective? (i.e. organizational and ideal) interests slow down the process of military integration because the most important member-states, for organizational and historical reasons, differ substantially in their perceptions of what the ?military? should be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the system of press instructions with which the Nazi government tried to mnaipulate the public In Germany between 1933 and 1939. Shortly after their seize of power the new political leaders began to edit such instructions. After looking to the organization of this process it is shown how the number of instructions grew over the years. In the core of the paper the types and forms of instructions are analysed. They ranged from strict suppressions to friendly requests. Additionally the paper includes an eye to the system of press instructions that was introduced later under the communist government in the German Democratic Republic. There have been obvious similarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based primarily on communication science literature available and taught in the German-speaking world. Firstly, it should be noted that this contribution to the theme of the conference is not finalized but is an ongoing work in progress. By the actual conference date, theoretical deduction will have been complemented by first empirical results on the themes presented here. By then the respective borders referenced in this paper will also have been examined and positioned within the context of their theoretical basis. Editorial departments of newspapers in Switzerland, Germany and the USA will have been analyzed empirically, allowing for comparison. The link to the conference theme of "Communication in Borderlands" is established by presenting two borders. On the one hand, "personal borderlands" are identified as different wishes and requirements of newspaper management and newspaper staff within existing organizations. On the other hand, this paper assesses "disciplinary borderlands"; how these can be made accessible and usable for communication science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

September 11 2001 was an "extreme event" in terms of news values research. An analysis of peoples communicative activities on this day can reveal how communicative networks and mass media work under extreme conditions. This paper presents findings from a German study in 2002. Results from telephone interviews with 1460 persons show that the diffusion of the news followed patterns known from other extreme events. Special attention was paid to sources of information about the event, the use of these sources over time and to further activities of information on this day. In the second part of the paper a comparison with data from studies in the US show that media have special strengths and weaknesses according to the local time of the events: news spread faster in Germany in the afternoon by means of television than in the US, while interpersonal communication was more important in early morning America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the repercussions of news media in German science-policy by attending to the concept of mediatization and focusing on structural adaptations of organizations that are relevant stakeholders in the German science-policy constellation: political parties, advisory boards, funding organizations, universities, non-academic research organizations, and disciplinary associations. Results are based on 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with decision makers within those organizations. This paper identifies similarities and differences considering the extent of mediatization and mediatization strategies, introducing the differentiation of progressive and defensive mediatization strategies. Results provide a typology of science-policy stakeholders and explain differences between the various types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern democracies, trust in government is a key indicator of political legitimacy and stability. Drawing on theories of media effects, this paper investigates whether traditional media use has a negative (media-malaise-hypothesis) or a positive (virtuous-circlehypothesis) impact on trust in the national government. For that reason, the study introduces an enhanced measurement for trust in government and suggests a serial-mediation model. To test the model empirically an online survey with 1115 German respondents was conducted. The results suggest that traditional media use has a positive direct impact on trust in government. The positive effect is further mediated by people's evaluations of politicians and their evaluations of political processes. In addition, there is a positive serial-mediation effect of traditional media use on trust in government that runs first through evaluations of politicians and second through evaluations of political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes which of the various strategic, structural and individual factors explain the use of online campaigning in Germany and compares the influence of these explanatory variables in national, state and local elections. In addition to these predictors, the paper suggests that candidates' beliefs in internet effects also explain the extent of online campaigning. Based on candidate surveys of three German elections in 2009 and 2010 (national, state and local election), the results show that particularly strategic and structural variables, such as party membership or the perceived share of indecisive voters, explains online campaigning. Internet-related perceptions were explanatory in a few cases at the state and local levels. If candidates think that other candidates campaign online they feel obliged to use online media during the election campaign. However, genuine political predictors are still very significant at all federal levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media channels and news sources have multiplied on cable and the Internet, and many of these sources, especially in the U.S., have clear ideological and partisan profiles. This raises the specter of partisan selectivity and audience fragmentation, or partisan "segregation." The paper investigates this phenomenon in Germany and finds strong evidence of partisan selectivity at the information level based on an information board experiment. At the media level, however, this is clearly not the case. Using representative survey data, the paper investigates media use and bias perceptions of German voters during the 2009 election campaign. The media bias of specific media sources is measured both by direct bias perceptions of survey respondents and as the relative share of readers or viewers with partisan identifications with left-of-center and right-of-center parties. The results suggest that the traditional mainstream media channels still dominate the campaign coverage while the Internet plays only a marginal role in Germany so far. The case for partisan segregation is exceptionally weak, not due to a lack of demand, but due to a lack of supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the transformation of media structures and possible effects on public communication from 1960 to 2005. To build a basis for the evaluation of trends and situations in the various models of media and politics (Hallin/Mancini 2004), this paper will systematically analyze and compare the cases of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (democratic-corporatist), Great Britain (liberal) and France (polarized-pluralist), by classifying media suppliers and media supply with an etic approach. By this, we can show the large (but not necessarily linear) transformation of media structures: differentiation of the press from its former political and social ties, more press concentration and generally more tabloidization. Against the background of increasingly commercialized media systems, this paper argues for a research design that connects the structural and content side of the media, presenting indicators and first results of an ongoing comparative content analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper "Writing the History of the Discipline: A Sociology of Science Approach to the History of Communication Research" provides an approach towards a disciplinary historiography which is founded on the sociology of science and helps to systematically and transparently describe and explain the development of communication research. The aims of our paper are to reflect on how the intellectual and the social dimension of science and its environments are related to each other, to reflect different factors of disciplinary development, to provide a system of categories for research, and finally to discuss whether historical research is compatible with theoretically deduced proceeding. After a brief discussion of different approaches in German and American historiography of mass communication research - such as intellectual, biographical and institutional approaches - we develop and explain an integrated model of disciplinary historiography that meets the demands of social sciences: theoretical foundation, methodological reflection and transparency. In a third step we discuss whether the principles of social-scientific research, especially theoretically deduced proceeding, are compatible with those of historiographic inquiry. It will be important for us to consider that our approach has to be sensitive to historical circumstances. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a fresh look at the age-at-migration effect, i.e. the negative correlation between the age at which young migrants enter a host country and their educational attainment. It complements established views with institutionalist arguments. Looking at Germany, it shows that a highly stratified secondary education system with early tracking exerts an additional downgrading effect on the educational opportunities of newly arrived teenagers. Further, the paper investigates whether particular immigrant groups can withstand the risks connected with higher age at migration, analyzing such factors as parental education and legal-political status. Based on bivariate and multivariate analyses of the 2005 German Sample Census, the paper shows that privileged groups are not exempted from the negative effects of migrating during secondary education, while those who suffer from accumulated social and legal disadvantages are unable to exploit the advantages of migrating at pre-school age. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been almost twenty years since the fall of the infamous Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of Germany. Those two events were momentous occasions, symbolizing the end of the Cold War and the genesis of post-communist Europe. However, many reports throughout the 1990s indicated that a psychological-cultural "wall in the heads of people" had replaced the geopolitical Berlin Wall. Though the physical barricades had fallen, stereotypical portrayals of East and West Germans (known respectively as Ossis and Wessis) soon became prevalent. Moreover, new forms of de facto segregation and cultural estrangement between East and West Berliners emerged soon after reunification. In the current era, it is important to ask whether or not Berliners are still experiencing informal spatial schisms and antipathies as a result of past territorial polarization. If indeed such unofficial urban boundaries still exist, then how have Berlin's young people been impacted? This ethnographic paper seeks to address such questions by focusing on in-group/out-group perceptions of Berlin youth. Significantly, German teens and young adults have very few if any memories of an officially divided Berlin, with most born after the Wall's fall. The existence of shared (non-oppositional) spaces populated mostly by youth are investigated in this paper, based on the theory that the presence of transnational youth subcultures in urban borderlands effectively blurs social boundaries and diminishes the salience of traditional (East-West) identification categories. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been 89 years since M. Weber died. Many of the studies achieved on Weber-s Theory that part of sociology, law, politics, history and even economy. So, Weber was known as the last general genius in sociological part. But Weber-s influence on other academic areas caused many disputes which connected to Weber-s theory. Especially, Weber-s methodology has aroused a controversy for a long time. Even though, Weber-s methodology influenced positively many of the study fields. The matter is beyond dispute. Weber-s methodology view was so complicated and difficult. If understand of Weber-s point of view, should premise the apprehension of German history school and national economy-s view. And We should understand what difference between marxism and german historical philosophy. But, In the paper, I will show to minimum-s access to Weber-s methodology. Instead of, in this paper, with M. Weber-s methodology view, I willing to understand historical events. So, this paper attempts to show that understanding weber-s methodology, accessing to historical events(as weber-s methodology), and providing specific example(South korea-s candlelight vigil) ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last years "religion" went a more and more important topic in German media culture. A break for this was the election of the German pope and the catholic World Youth Day - both impressive media events. But also looking at the Internet and computer games religion is a topic again. Based on large scale empirical studies on the World Youth Day (2005) and present "digital religious worlds" (2007), the paper argues that we can understand "branding" as one dominant pattern of the mediatisation of religion: Firstly, mediatization implies a pressure on different religions to communicate themselves in a quantitative perspective across different media. Only if a "religious offer" exists like a brand across the different media it has a chance to present itself "in the centre" of media cultures. Secondly, mediatization means that religious contents do lose their "sacred", "exclusive" space of communication. The communicative space of the present media is increasingly a commercialised space of product competition. Therefore branding refers to the necessity of a self-presentation in the present media. In discussing this, the paper contextualises the process of "mediatization of religion" critically in its interrelation to a "commercialization of religion". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debate about the future of public service broadcasting in the UK and Germany. Under the impact of new media technologies and political de-regulation, a 'paradigm shift' has occurred towards a 'market model' of broadcasting regulation. Yet, public-service broadcasting in these countries enjoys a strong legitimacy and an institutional entrenchment underpinned by path dependency of public policy, and in Germany's case a constitutional-legal commitment to public-service broadcasting. In both countries, though more so in the case of the BBC, public broadcasters have met the challenge of the new media by developing a range of new services. Despite coming under the close scrutiny of the European Commission competition authorities, the expansion strategies of the public service broadcasters have so far not been impeded from that quarter, though they have been compelled to define their remits more clearly and make their funding arrangements transparent. The paper argues that the BBC has benefited from special advantages. It is viewed not simply as a public service broadcaster, but both as a key driver of new digital media and also as the UK's 'national champion' in the global media marketplace. To this extent, it has enjoyed a greater licence than have the German public broadcasters to expand the range of its new media activities. Hitherto, German policy makers appear to have been more traditional in their thinking about the nature of the public serrvice remit and more swayed by the commercial communications lobby, though this may change in light of recent developments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to outline fundamental aspects of the ethics of PR within a theoretical-analytical framework in the first part of the paper. This is achieved on the basis of some major ethical problems and an analysis of potential conflicts that are relevant to PR and which are reflected in different ethical approaches, in particular, individual and organizational ethics or the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of conviction (Max Weber). Problematic ethical issues are defined and structured systematically in a model which distinguishes between different relationships. An overview of the status of research in the German-speaking context on the topic of PR ethics facilitates provisional statements appertaining to the awareness and acceptance of ethical codes in Germany.Some important results of a recent survey of 2,312 German PR practitioners are presented. This survey was carried out in 2007 and focused on aspects of PR ethics, on the acceptance and the degree of familiarity with ethical guidelines in Germany's professional field of PR practitioners, on the significance of morally induced goals and professional self-understandings or professional identities. It could be shown how important truthfulness is seen for German PR practitioners and which - specifically ethical - reasons are evaluated as problematic for the industry. On the basis of a debate about tie-in deals in Germany that currently reached a level of intensity results about the acceptance and legitimacy of such procedures within the professional sphere are also introduced. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether recent changes in family policy in Germany and Spain promote equal opportunities for women and men to participate in the labor market and care for young children and the elderly. It also analyzes the social forces propelling policy change. We show that in both countries, family policies underwent a significant readjustment process toward gender equality in earning and caring between 1997 and 2007. We also show that this process differs across the two countries and is far from complete in both. Spain has reacted to its ageing population by introducing a progressive policy package for dependent people and their care providers. Germany has introduced a new parental leave policy to counter low fertility rates and encourage men to participate in caring for young children. However, in both countries, there are still policies that retain disincentives for women to earn and men to care, including joint taxation in Germany and the lack of childcare services for young children in Spain. The paper shows that economic and demographic pressures, combined with changes in family structure and women's employment behavior as well as the gender equality policy agenda of the European Union encouraged policy developments towards gender equality in earning and caring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic training can be regarded as the key qualification in contemporary knowledge societies. Against this background, public debate has repeatedly highlighted two problems of the German system: first, a comparatively small proportion of the population attaining higher education and second, a relatively high degree of social selectivity in education, not least among university graduates where children from lower classes are highly underrepresented. Graduating from university is, however, just the final step of an extended educational career. Sociological transition research has revealed that final educational attainment must be understood as the result of a sequence of successive decisions. So where on the long way to the university degree does Germany 'lose' its potential academics and in particular its lower-class children?This paper presents a detailed picture of the life-course development of educational careers by reconstructing the various steps of the collective educational history of a particular birth cohort. The paper takes account of both the country-specific institutional structures of the educational system and inter-individual variation in educational trajectories and combines both aspects in an analysis of the most relevant types of educational transitions associated with the 'academic track'. Altogether, the transitions aggregate to the final number of graduates as well as to the observed amount of inequality in educational attainment. In our empirical analyses, we are interested in both the overall selection at particular transitions and social differences in these transition patterns. We use survey data from various sources on participation and social selectivity in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports considerable changes in content and style of German election coverage between 1990 and 2005. The findings are based on a content analysis of the main evening news of the four major television channels, spanning five Bundestag elections and focusing on the portrayal of the chancellor candidates. During the observation period television has immensely expanded its coverage of the candidates. Simultaneously there was an increase in the visualization of candidate portrayal. German television news conveys an increasingly lively, colorful and exciting picture of the election campaign. The changes partially fit into the pattern of convergence (i.e., a mutual assimilation of public and commercial channels). As well as studying the change in style, our analysis also looks at some specifics of the 2005 election when for the first time a woman was contending for the office of chancellor. Our comparison of the television image of the candidates contradicts the presumption that a woman competing for chancellorship might come off worse in the news than her male adversary. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emotion cultures of two branches of the local women's movement in Erfurt, a city in the former East Germany. While the growing literature examining the role of emotions in social movements tends to focus on the positive functions of emotionsâ?”such as how they attract and mobilize participantsâ?”this paper considers the potential pitfalls of emotions. Specifically, I examine the emotion cultures of two key feminist organizations in Erfurt. Differences in emotion cultures reflect competing ideas about feminism and the role of the state in redressing gender inequality, and also inhibit successful movement-wide mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to explain why men from economically strong western countries marry women from economically weaker countries. Two hypotheses are deduced from general partner choice theories (exchange theory, economic theory of the family). 1. Low physical and social attractiveness as well as low opportunities lead to marriage with a woman from a poorer country. 2. Men from economically strong countries use the international marriage market to marry comparatively more attractive women than it is possible in marriages with women from their national marriage market. The paper tests the hypotheses for marriages with German men, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP, 1984-2005). First, it turns out that the attractiveness and the social contacts of men with wives from poorer countries and men with German wives are very similar. The hypothesis that low attractiveness and low social contacts lead to these marriages is thus proved wrong. Second, it is shown that due to an age-related marriage squeeze, German men older than 30 years tend to marry women from poorer countries. Third, the results offer strong evidence that the economic gap between the countries of origin allows German men to marry more attractive wives when they opt for women from poorer countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While literature on melancholy in the European, especially German, context is readily available, research on melancholy in a contemporary American context is limited. When American melancholy is addresed, its focus is primarily in the realm of psychology and aspects of depression or sadness. Not only has there been little formal research on melancholy in contemporary America, it appears that the state of melancholy is antithetical to American values of success and progress. Germans, on the other hand, have been willing to address melancholy as an issue in the context of German culture. Does this mean then that only Germans are melancholic? Certainly not. This paper examines themes of melancholy in two films -- the German film, "Gegen die Wand," and the American film, "Sideways." The analysis indicates surprising similarities in melancholic themes in these two contemporary and popular films. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women earn less than men, and among women, mothers earn less than non-mothers. Recent evidence reaffirms the importance of parenthood in accounting for the persistent gender gap in earnings in the United States, but the mechanisms that account for this gap are not undisputed, and the wage penalty for motherhood remains poorly understood. Against this background, the paper examines wage penalties for motherhood in the United States and Germany, two countries that differ significantly in terms of both labor market and welfare state institutions supporting the continuous employment of mothers. We find that white and African-American mothers in the US, along with women in western Germany, earn 6%-9% less than women without children, but working mothers in the states of the former East Germany experience no penalties. Much of the gap can be attributed to differences in time spent in the workforce, and to occupational and sectoral segregation. However, part-time workers experience severe penalties in the US, but not in Germany. We conclude that the adoption of convetional male-breadwinner behavior remains the best guard against wage erosion, but labor market institutions in Germany provide better protection for working mothers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the French Ministry of Justice, the German Statistical Office, and the British Home Office are used to investigate the impact of the securitization of immigration policy on criminal justice net-widening in Germany, France and Britain. These three societies demonstrate the primary variations in welfare management and union strength that Sutton (2004) found to be important in explaining national incarceration rates. The paper clarifies the interrelations among immigration policy change, the national immigrant integration model and criminal justice net-widening. It explains the influence of executive, court and NGO-sponsored initiatives on criminal justice scrutiny of foreign workers and minority group members. The findings reflect the influence of policy shifts at both the national and European levels on the criminal justice supervision of the "outsiders" constituting each nation's post-World War II foreign work force. The results also suggest that the impact on incarceration rates of corporatist and neoliberal economic and political regimes is not the same for "insiders" and "outsiders". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]