TY - JOUR

T1 - Explaining media coverage of Constitutional Court decisions in Germany

T2 - The role of case characteristics

AU - Meyer, Philipp

N1 - Funding Information: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Without the helpful tips and guidance from Christoph Hönnige, Philipp Köker, and Dominic Nyhuis, this paper probably would not have been written. I thank you. I am also very grateful to Christoph Garwe, Martin Oertzen, and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions for improving this paper. I would also like to thank Nina, Monika and Norbert Meyer, Rabea Deem, and Katrin Aschmann for their moral support.

PY - 2020/7/15

Y1 - 2020/7/15

N2 - Research on the media coverage of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court has revealed that the newsworthiness of a court decision – as determined by specific case characteristics – influences the likelihood that the decision will be covered by the media. However, in the context of European constitutional courts, media coverage of court decisions can be understood to be a form of justice reporting that focuses on general public interest and is operationalized by case characteristics that indicate the newsworthiness of the decisions. Using the case of the German Federal ConstitutionalCourt, the determining factors behind whether court decisions are featured in the German media (i.e., that they receive media coverage in at least one newspaper article) are expounded. A local text alignment measurement of court decisions and newspaper articles enables media coverage to be identified based on original data on 3,404 decisions and 9,436 newspaper articles from between 2008 and 2018. The results demonstrate that media coverage of the German Court is not affected by declarations of unconstitutionality, though coverage is more likely when a decision is accompanied by a press release, an oral hearing, a dissenting opinion, or a combination of all three items. As these decisional aspects are the prerogative of the FCC, the results demonstrate that the German Constitutional Court has the necessary instruments to independently influence media coverage.

AB - Research on the media coverage of decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court has revealed that the newsworthiness of a court decision – as determined by specific case characteristics – influences the likelihood that the decision will be covered by the media. However, in the context of European constitutional courts, media coverage of court decisions can be understood to be a form of justice reporting that focuses on general public interest and is operationalized by case characteristics that indicate the newsworthiness of the decisions. Using the case of the German Federal ConstitutionalCourt, the determining factors behind whether court decisions are featured in the German media (i.e., that they receive media coverage in at least one newspaper article) are expounded. A local text alignment measurement of court decisions and newspaper articles enables media coverage to be identified based on original data on 3,404 decisions and 9,436 newspaper articles from between 2008 and 2018. The results demonstrate that media coverage of the German Court is not affected by declarations of unconstitutionality, though coverage is more likely when a decision is accompanied by a press release, an oral hearing, a dissenting opinion, or a combination of all three items. As these decisional aspects are the prerogative of the FCC, the results demonstrate that the German Constitutional Court has the necessary instruments to independently influence media coverage.

KW - judicial politics

KW - constitutional courts

KW - political communication

KW - newsworthiness

KW - Judicial politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85088149632&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/10584609.2020.1784329

DO - 10.1080/10584609.2020.1784329

M3 - Article

JO - Political Communication

JF - Political Communication

SN - 1058-4609

ER -