Государственная биополитическая программа в дискурсе немецких СМИ во время пандемии

Вестник Московского университета. Серия 10: Журналистика. 2023. № 5. С. 61–83.

Balakina Y. V.

The study is aimed at revealing the stance of German non-state media on biopolitical instruments employed by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic. Implementation of restrictive measures as well as vaccination campaign were scrutinized. It was hypothesized that the media taking into account their own goals and owners’ interests might not support state biopolitics in this way acting as a subject. Methodologically the research relies on Foucault’s notion of “biopolitics” (2010), the propaganda model proposed by Herman and Chomsky (2002), as well as the evaluation theory of Martin and White (2005).   The data scrutinized amounted to 16.83 mln words published on the websites of “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Die Zeit” and “Die Tageszeitung” during the period between January, 2020 and October, 2021. The results reveal overall negative assessment of restrictions and measures, while the vaccination received support via factual and unbiased information. Thus, non-state German media seemed to maintain a certain balance trying to safeguard their own interests, the needs of civil society and state biopolitical programme, revealing the signs of subjectivity.

Keywords: медиа, оценка, evaluation, subjectivity, субъектность, propaganda, пропаганда, биополитика, biopolitics, media, пандемия, pandemic