Transnational interdependence and new crisis communication governance? German Media coverage of Europe and Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic illustrated that today's political control mechanisms of global risks demand international collaboration on various levels and between various actors. Journalism has a pivotal role to play for global governance as an early warning system in the knowledge society. The paper provides a qualification of potentials and ambivalences of global media interdependence in global crisis by analysing if and how the German press treated other countries as better practice models. A special emphasis is given to a comparison between the coverage of global actors (WHO), European (Portugal, Italy) and Asian countries (South Korea, Taiwan), which developed successful practices during the Covid-19 pandemic, which deserved to be considered as best-practice models. The paper reveals moments of reflexive media interdependence but also highlights the limits, which are pronounced in a gap between North-North and North-South relations in both amount and depth of policy coverage and stereotypical constructions in lifeworld coverage.