Solidarity in the Public Sphere: A Discourse Network Analysis of German Newspapers (2008–2017)

Abstract

Multiple crises in the EU have sparked a renaissance of the concept of solidarity. However, discursive approaches to solidarity and the public understanding of solidarity have hardly received scholarly attention. Empirical research on solidarity is rather centered on welfare institutions as well as on individual attitudes and behavior. To shed new light on solidarity in public discourse, we investigate in which policy fields the term is most often used, which actors refer to it and how different types of solidarity are covered in the German public discourse. We investigate the coverage of solidarity in four German newspapers (<em>Die Welt</em>, <em>Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung</em>, <em>Süddeutsche Zeitung</em>, <em>Die Tageszeitung</em>) from 2008 to 2017. By deploying the discourse network methodology with 306 claims in 230 news articles, we analyze the co-occurrence of actors and issues over time. Our results indicate a varying set of issues in which solidarity occurs, a rather stable actor visibility, across time and a context-dependent use of different types of solidarity. Government actors, civil society actors as well as citizens drive the solidarity discourse showing that institutional as well as non-institutional actors make use of solidarity in their public actions regarding political protest, financial issues and migration. The study provides novel insights into the interdependence of actor and issue visibility and sheds new light on solidarity in media discourses.

COVID-19 and orientations towards solidarity: the cases of Spain, Hungary, and Romania

“…In its essence, solidarity is the willingness to help others (de Beer and Koster 2009: 15), but through extensive use, the concept was stretched to cover multiple variations (Stjernø 2005;Ellison 2012;Wallaschek et al 2020). The ambiguity persists despite recent attempts to refocus the concept (Ciornei and Recchi 2017;Lahusen and Grasso 2018a, b;Kuhn and Kamm 2019).…”

“…The ambiguity persists despite recent attempts to refocus the concept (Ciornei and Recchi 2017;Lahusen and Grasso 2018a, b;Kuhn and Kamm 2019). Solidarity may be conceived in various ways, referring to the areas of manifestations (Koos 2019), to the manifestations themselvesincluding behaviours, levels, scope, forms, and roles of reciprocity (Wallaschek et al 2020).…”

Introduction

“…It is solidarity between European citizens that can ensure the stability of the EU even in times of severe crisis. Thus, every crisis is followed by a call for solidarity to overcome it (Wallaschek, Starke, & Brüning, 2020).…”

“…The European debt crisis has sparked a renaissance of the concept of European solidarity both in political rhetoric as well as in academic discourse (Lahusen & Grasso, 2019;Wallaschek et al, 2020). It has prompted a plethora of studies looking at the mechanisms of European solidarity across academic disciplines (Borgmann-Prebil & Ross, 2010;Kleger & Mehlhausen, 2013;Lahusen, 2020a;Lahusen & Grasso, 2018;Sangiovanni, 2013).…”

What Constitutes a Local Public Sphere? Building a Monitoring Framework for Comparative Analysis

“…The public sphere can be understood as a normatively and functionally demanding concept, based on various theoretical ideas of democracy and applied to different levels of society. In communication science, empirical studies of the public sphere have predominantly focused on the national level, such as thematic publics in mass media (e.g., Eilders et al, 2004;Ferree et al, 2002a) or social media (e.g., Bruns & Highfield, 2016), or network structures of the public sphere (e.g., Wallaschek et al, 2020). A comprehensive, longitudinal, and cross-sectional perspective encompassing different levels and venues of the public sphere, such as encounters, public meetings, media and other intermediaries for enabling and organizing public communication acts, seemed only theoretically, but not empirically feasible (Neidhardt, 1989).…”