Schneller, bunter, leichter? Kommunikationsstile im medialen Wandel ed. by Lisa Blasch, Daniel Pfurtscheller, Thomas Schröder (review)

A volume considering the changes wrought in communicative style by a shifting media landscape has an obvious relevance today. Based on contributions to a February 2016 conference—four months before the Brexit referendum, nine months before Donald Trump’s election, and more than a year before the election of the Austrian black-blue coalition—the various chapters were conceived before many of the markers of an ascendant right-wing populism frequently associated with media upheaval. The essays assembled here thus offer contextualization of trends that have recently exploded into mainstream discourse.

Schröder’s introductory “Medienkommunikation im Wandel” provides a framework for the volume, introducing three “Metatrends des Medienwandels”: the changing relationship of word and image (Bilderflut); the increasingly active role of the recipient; and the problematic results of a shift toward the wishes of that recipient (Boulevardisierung) (13). While all of these changes might be associated with the rise of the internet, Schröder traces their origins to the mid-1980s, showing how newspapers and television had already begun to demonstrate new tendencies the web would later radicalize.

The subsequent chapters are divided into three sections, although a heterogeneity exploding any organizational framework is already evident in the first section, “Metatrends des Wandels.” Two essays reach far beyond the opener’s time frame. First, Michael Klemm’s engaging discussion of Jahresrückblicke as medial figures of memory (Assman) stretches across the history of these programs on the ARD from 1952 to the present, offering an intriguing “kleine multimodale Kultur- und Diskursgeschichte der Bundesrepublik” (53). Konstantin Niehaus’s chapter on German-language newspapers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries explodes the time scale still further. Like Lisa Blasch’s chapter that directly follows, it challenges the simplification of a concept like Boulevardisierung. Where Niehaus takes on notions of an increasingly colloquial and therefore dumbed-down language in postwar newspapers, countering the uninformed assumption that older newspapers had not featured such language, Blasch discusses the prevalence of human-interest stories and celebrity narratives in contemporary media. Drawing on John Fiske’s concept of the hyperreal figure, her suggestion that such “hyperreal[e] Medienfiguren” might function as “textuelle Schauplätze öffentlicher Debatten” (112) calls to mind Robin Lakoff (author of The Language War)—an interlocutor who is unfortunately absent from this volume. The section features a wide range of methodologies, from applied linguistics in Aleksandra Gnach’s chapter on virtual communities to a focus on narrative in Friederike Hermann’s timely analysis of reporting on refugees, which focuses on criticism leveled at the German television channel ARD for not reporting on a refugee-related rape in Freiburg, an event that was immediately connected to the 2015 New Year’s assaults in Cologne, even though they had little in common. Hermann notes the power of the narrative: “Hinter diesem machtvollen Narrativ, das vorherrschende Gefühle aufgreift, verschwinden die Fakten” (45).

The second section, “Formate,” is by far the largest, though some of its seven chapters might just as well have been included elsewhere. For instance, Daniel Pfurtscheller’s investigation of the children’s quiz show 1, 2 oder 3 over forty years has much in common with Klemm’s discussion of Jahresrückblicke. Similarly, Martha Kuhnhenn’s analysis of the glyphosate debates calls to mind Herrmann’s chapter, with its handling of contemporary controversies. Three chapters address online news: Tanjev Schultz investigates the “teaser” in digital news stories, marking out interesting trends like the “Von-Wegen-Teaser” (“Alle Teaser sind originell? Von wegen,” 199) and showing how teasers can sensationalize but can also guide users to more sophisticated content. Karl N. Renner’s chapter and Cordelia Wolf and Alexander Godulla’s contribution have the same object: multimedia long-form journalism. In spite of their rather different methodologies—Renner surveys different examples through the lens of communicative action, while Wolf and Godulla present an empirical analysis of reception...