Semantic formation of the Internet policy field in Germany

This subproject (2013–2018) investigated the formation of interpretations, ideas and discourses during the emergence and development of the Internet policy field in Germany. For this purpose, it relied on extensive text corpora of national newspapers and magazines and used quantitative patterns in the text corpora to guide the more detailed qualitative textual analysis (blended reading). We used this text analysis to delineate and order the thematic space of Internet policy and to track the relevance and meaning of political concepts such as “information society,” “Netzpolitik,” “cyber” and “digitalization.” Moreover, we examined shifts in the meaning of the term “Internet” in the media coverage on politics. The findings of this subproject provide fundamental insights into the different phases of the Internet policy field’s development, revealing the specific terms and interpretations that characterized each phase and showing how these terms and interpretations were related to more general discourses on security, economy and freedom.

Contact: Maximilian Hösl

Resources:

Hösl, Maximilian/Irgmaier, Florian/Kniep, Ronja (forthcoming): "Digitalisierungsdiskurse und Ministerialorganisation". In: Tanja Klenk/Frank Nullmeier/ Göttrik Wewer (Eds.): Handbuch Digitalisierung in Staat und Verwaltung, Wiesbaden: Springer VS.

Hösl, Maximilian/ Kniep, Ronja (forthcoming): "Auf den Spuren eines Politikfeldes: Die Institutionalisierung von Internetpolitik in der Ministerialverwaltung". In: Berliner Journal für Soziologie (planned Vol. 2, 2019).

Hösl, Maximilian/Reiberg, Abel (2016): "Netzpolitik in statu nascendi. Eine Annäherung an Wegmarken der Politikfeldgenese". In: Matthias Lemke/Gregor Wiedemann (Eds.): Text Mining in den Sozialwissenschaften. Grundlagen und Anwendungen zwischen qualitativer und quantitativer Diskursanalyse. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, S. 315-342.

Hösl, Maximilian (2016): "Internetpolitik als Effekt von diskursiven Grenzkonflikten". In: Benjamin Bergemann/Jeanette Hofmann/Maximilian Hösl/Florian Irgmaier/Ronja Kniep/Julia Pohle (Eds.): Entstehung von Politikfeldern – Vergleichende Perspektiven und Theoretisierung. Ergebnisse des Workshops am 25. November 2015. WZB Discussion Paper SP IV 2016–401. Berlin: WZB, S. 29-34.