Lecture on the medial shaping of war reporting

In his lecture Medial shaping of war reporting: A comparison of European TV news shows covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Martin Luginbühl presented a detailed analysis of the first television news reports on Russia's invasion, specifically comparing Germany’s Tagesschau and France’s TF1. Despite both reports addressing the same topic and occasionally featuring similar video footage, significant differences were noted in their presentation styles. The Tagesschau utilized slow, steady shots with minimal use of original sound bites (e.g., bomb sounds), and without background music. In contrast, TF1 featured a dynamic montage of short mobile phone videos showing bombings, with rapid cuts, audible sounds from the clips, and music accompanying the news presenter’s voice. Martin Luginbühl highlighted that these contrasting reporting styles can be attributed to varying journalistic cultures and differing considerations of entertainment factors in the respective media outlets.

On the second day, we had a productive informal workshop with our guest, in which we discussed the talk and previous work of him in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Jan Georg Schneider. Central to the discussion was the concept of media as an ongoing communicative process of meaning-making, rather than as mere technical hardware. Their collaborative research also explored how audiovisual communication is shaped from the outset, a key idea within the field of medialinguistics.

We thank Martin Luginbühl for his visit and are looking forward to continue our exchange on audiovisual media in different contexts.