Ordinary Citizens in Swiss Public Television News

Representing a National Public Sphere

Bibliographic Data

ID7500249
AuthorsAnne Beier (Freie Universität Berlin, corresponding author), Stephanie Fiechtner (Dep. of Communication and Media Research, Universität Fribourg), Joachim Trebbe (Freie Universität Berlin)
Year2020
Volume21
Issue8
Pages1055-1075
Publication date2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournalism Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-670X • E-ISSN: 1469-9699
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1461670x.2020.1771193
OpenAlexW3033892190
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited31

Similar to the European Union, Switzerland faces the challenge of a multilingual and multicultural public sphere. The swiss media finds itself in-between the goals of providing a national Swiss public and ensuring a political, social, and cultural integration on a domestic level. Therefore, the portrayal of ordinary citizens in public debates on Swiss television news becomes a matter of citizen actors representing the “people’s voice” as counterbalance to elite and civil institutional actors; as well as citizen actors as a representation of Switzerland’s multilingual and multicultural public sphere as an element of understanding, solidarity, and exchange between the three language areas. Our quantitative content analysis within the news of the first channels in each language region (SRF 1, RTS un and RSI LA 1) shows that although ordinary citizens function as counterparts to political and other elite actor groups, their high visibility does not equate strong voices being heard in the national public debate. Ordinary citizens very rarely get the chance to actively raise their voices or represent voices from other language areas

Civil society · Elite · European union · Media studies · Multiculturalism · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Representation (politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Linguistic research and analysis · Media Studies and Communication · Social Media and Politics · Law

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