The State Biopolitical Program in the German Media Discourse During the Pandemic

Section: Foreign Journalism

The study is aimed at revealing the stance of three German media outlets on biopolitical tools employed by the government during the COVID-19 pandemic. The implementation of restrictive measures as well as the 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 by Martin and White (2005). The data scrutinized amounted to 16.83 mln words published on the websites of S ddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit and Die Tageszeitung during the period between January 2020 and October 2021. The results reveal overall negative evaluation of restrictive measures, while vaccination as a biopolitical tool received media support. Factors such as the representation of certain groups’ positions on the agenda, the possibilities of exerting influence and manipulation, social tension, the political views of the publication and some others influenced the choice of certain strategies in presenting the state biopolitical program, as well as its evaluations. As a result, the media outlets under study managed to maintain a certain balance between the interests of the publication, the needs of civil society and the government’s biopolitical program.

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To cite this article: Balakina J. V. (2023) Gosudarstvennaya biopoliticheskaya programma v diskurse nemetskikh SMI vo vremya pandemii [The State Biopolitical Program in the German Media Discourse During the Pandemic]. Vestn. Mosk. un-ta. Ser. 10: Zhurnalistika 5: 61–83. DOI: 10.30547/vestnik.journ.5.2023.6183