Do the Media Fail to Represent Reality? A Constructivist and Second-order Critique of the Research on Environmental Media Coverage and Its Normative Implications.

Völker, Julia, Scholl, Armin

Abstract

First-order scientific research is often not aware of the hidden assumptions provided by an epistemologicalperspective based upon realism. Beyond philosophical considerations about the epistemological foundations,some practical normative implications deriving from them are crucial: in the field of communication andmedia studies, some scholars criticize media coverage, e.g., on climate change, as biased and distorted from reality. From a constructivist perspective, the article presents a detailed meta-analysis of the course of argumentationprovided by two empirical communication studies that follow an objectivist approach. With the help ofa second-order research strategy, it is possible to uncover their ontological assumptions and criticize their normativeimplications. Social scientists should be careful with normative suggestions for the system understudy (e.g., journalists) unless they are applied within these systems themselves.