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When it comes to complex topics in the field of health and risk communication, experts are of high importance for the credibility of a news media report. This paper examines the use of experts and their roles in the news media coverage of multi-resistant pathogens by means of a quantitative content analysis of German print and online news. A cluster analysis of the expert statements identifies three different statement frames describing different expert roles. The results show manifest patterns of selected expert sources, which points to professionalized mechanisms of selecting expert sources for news media reports.

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Many technologies are fast-growing drivers of innovation and as such have the potential for major transformations of people’s lives. Related to that, technologies and particularly the development of new technologies (also called emerging technologies) call for a variety of actors who try to make themselves heard in the public sphere. Scientists, economic actors, politicians, regulators, and ordinary citizens try to have a voice in the public discussion about the development, implementation, and specific applications of technologies—thus, they strive to reach the audience through media coverage.

A significant amount of political communication research is grounded in the dynamics of the media’s and the public’s attention to public issues, assuming that the news media draw the public’s attention to issues, thereby fostering an informed and participating citizenry. However, there is evidence from several countries that this mechanism is disrupted for issues with high shares of news coverage during a period. Against this background, this article scrutinizes the idea that recipients become fatigued from these issues in the news. Having transferred findings on overexposure from other media stimuli to the news environment, issue fatigue is defined as a negative cognitive and affective state consisting of decreasing issue-specific information processing involvement, perceived information overload, and increasing boredom, annoyance, and anger toward an issue. Issue fatigue can lead to the avoidance of information about the issue, thus serving as a new explanatory approach to avoidance of media information at an issue level. Further consequences, causes, and the development of issue fatigue are discussed.