Tabloidization of News Rather Than Punitive Turn – Crime and Penal Issues on French and German Newspaper Front Pages (1971–2017)

This chapter presents an analysis of front-page headlines of French and German daily newspapers since 1971 with a focus on crime, criminal justice and public order. The first part is devoted to a long-term analysis of four national quality newspapers from 1971 to 2017, and the second part to a shorter period of analysis (2007–2017) of ten national and regional newspapers with a comparison of quality and tabloid press. The long-term comparison shows that the mediatization of crime and justice issues by the French quality press is more tabloidized than in the German press, but there does not seem to be a punitive turn in the media coverage by national press. In the shorter term analysis, we see that the French press published twice as many articles about crime and justice issues as the German press on the front page. Furthermore, crime issues tend to be framed as societal problems more often by the French than by the German press. If crime news appears to be part of the economically driven tabloidization process, then there is no punitive turn in terms of a changed agenda even with the inclusion of the tabloidized press in our study

Archaeology · Criminology · Geography · German · Media studies · Meteorology · Newspaper · Political science · Punitive damages · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Political and Social Issues