Undifferentiated optimism and scandalized accidents: the media coverage of autonomous driving in Germany

Abstract

Recent technological advances in the field of autonomous and automated vehicles suggest that they may become an integral part of society. This, however, would require the public to be adequately informed about the technology and its social ethics commission appointed by the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, formulated a rule that ‘the has the right to be sufficiently informed about new technologies and their use’ [Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur, 2017, p. 12]. The public institution to provide this information is supposed to be the mass which are frequently criticized for inaccurate and biased news coverage on autonomous driving [Vellinga, 2017;Wolfers, 2017]. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on these claims. Therefore, it is the aim of this study to put the media reporting of autonomous driving under scrutiny. We conducted a content analysis of five German newspapers including the level of detail, the balance of arguments, the tonality, and the influence of real-world accidents.