Media Coverage of the Paris Attacks

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And this is the point where society and media play together in judging which stories get attention: “News outlets are influenced by consumers who are interested in events that affect them personally.” (Phillips, 2015) Why the Paris attacks where filling the front pages and major headlines can be explained by the following five reasons: (1) France is an unusual target. As tragic as it may sound, but when hearing “Paris” people think of the “Eiffel Tower”, of high culture, when hearing “Beirut”, people associate it with war. (A, Phillips, 2015) (2) Paris is a top global tourist destination. People from all over the world were affected. (Phillips, 2015) (3) Random civilians were targeted. With shocking tactics normal innocent people were killed. (Phillips, 2015) (4) The incident may imply a new battleground for the IS. Whereas the Near East has been a battlefield for many years, the attacks in Paris might just be the start of a war in Europe – that concerns people. (5) The attack was complex and coordinated. It was not a random shooting, it was well planned, structured and organized. People are highly concerned about this new power. (Phillips, 2015)

Nowadays the consumers are democratic participants of news production. Through online and especially social media the role of the audience is a distinctively different one. Articles have to compete for clicks and news have to satisfy the needs of the consumer, which underlines the fact that the news producers have to overall orientate themselves on what the consumers need. This can also be connected with the Media system dependency theory. Seeing the Paris attacks in the context of larger social systems, the reaction towards it was a combined one. It can be considerer as an interplay between society and media. Both sides depend on each other and are vitally important for the other side. The audience is an active part in the communication process, which is the reason why the covered information are also partly indirectly produced by the audience or at least produced to cover the audiences’ needs and wills.

The news value of the incident was immense

Third, and most important from a media and communication scientific point of view, is the fact that journalists had nothing but the duty to cover the Paris attacks extensively and furthermore more in depth than the other incidents. Taking the Agenda-Setting into consideration, one has to realize that media outlets and journalists do not cover stories more or less due to their personal interests or preferences but due to some really logical reasoning on what is interesting and important as much as needed and wanted by the society. Especially the democratic aspect of the internet in terms of social media and online platforms plays a big role here. Journalists and editors do not randomly decide what they want to cover, they do it according to what the society is demanding.

To emphasize that the media have set the right agenda in this case, the News Value Theory by Galtung and Ruge from 1965 appears to be a suitable approach. The two scientist believed that our perception of what constitutes an event is determined by our cultural background and not natural occurrence, whereby they additionally stressed out a “human culture” which implies that news should not vary too much globally. Back when this theory evolved, the internet was not existing in nowadays form. Nonetheless the approach of Galtung and Ruge could not fit better to describe the criteria that decides whether a story gets covered or not in nowadays world. It examines exactly which criteria a supposed news has to fulfill to get an higher news value for the society and thus covered more or less extensively.

Within their News Value Theory they pointed out twelve criteria to examine the value of a given “news”. The first eight are independent from the culture, whereas the last four are dependent. (Galtung & Ruge, 1965, p. 70) Taking a look at all of them in regards of the Paris attacks, this is what we can find:

Independent from culture:

- Frequency: The Paris attacks were a short-term event that happened only once, thus this criteria is fulfilled.

- Threshold: The attacks represent a huge event that influenced a lot of people world wide, thus this criteria is fulfilled.

- Unambiguity: Even though the attacks were a complex act of terror, they are easy to explain and easy to understand for media consumers, thus this criteria is fulfilled.

- Meaningfulness: The criteria is fulfilled because:

- The cultural proximity is high for globalized and Western media.

- The relevance and impact in political, economical and societal means is high.

- Consonance: Paris is a really familiar place for people all around the world which fulfills this criteria.

- Unexpectedness: Nobody really expected this to happen, it was really surprising violence which fulfills the criteria.

- Continuity: The coverage can and could be continued constantly since the threat is not gone and the questions are not at all answered yet, which fulfills the criteria.

- Composition: A lot of different cultures and religions, different backgrounds and nations are involved in this incident, thus the criteria is fulfilled.

Culture-dependent: (Seen from a perspective of the globalized world):

- Reference to elite nations: For all nations around the world, France represents an elite nation. Paris is one of the politically most important cities of the world and represents European unity, which fulfills this criteria.

- Reference to elite persons: In the center of the attacks were the normal French population but also stars at a concert, football players and even the French president were involved. The elite person here is represented by “the average Western civilian” which justifies also this criteria.

- Personalization: Certain terrorists were pointed out as the “evil masterminds”, the IS is seen as the offender, also this criteria is fulfilled.

- Negativity: For the whole globalized world the Paris attacks represent a horrible, unbelievable incident. This criteria could not be more fulfilled.

Summing up, in context of the News Value Theory, it is quite obvious why the Paris Attacks get such an enormous news coverage. Fulfilling all 12 criteria to a very high extent is something really rare which makes the event