Explaining National Differences of Tabloidisation Between Germany and Austria.

In times of growing commercialisation and digitisation, it is often assumed that traditional mass media react to growing economic pressures by providing more entertaining, more trivial and oversimplified content. This supposed development—also known as tabloidisation—seems to be caused by media structures, particularly the competitive pressures of tabloid newspapers and commercial television. However, to date only very few studies have explored systematically how coverage (micro level) is shaped by media structures (macro level) and the strategies of the media companies (meso level). The present study investigates, based on the industrial economic Structure–Conduct–Performance (SCP) model, whether the degree of tabloidisation (performance) of German and Austrian national market-leading quality papers and tabloids can be explained by market structures and individual newspapers' self-images (conduct). A theoretical model of tabloidisation by Reinemann et al. is empirically tested for the first time, resulting in a categorisation of four dimensions of tabloidisation: topic, focus, visual style and verbal style. Altogether, the study shows a rather weak influence both of structure and conduct, explained by reverse “tabloidising effects” of a high market share of tabloids in Austria and of commercial television in Germany. Nevertheless, it finds some remarkable differences between the four newspapers. While both quality papers are rather weakly tabloidised and the GermanBildis quite strongly tabloidised, the AustrianKroneis surprisingly somewhat less tabloidised than the quality papers, presumably due to its “peoples' newspaper strategy”. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]