The Third Culture and the Fourth Estate: Investigating Journalistic Perspectives on Institutional and Epistemological Conditions for Social Science Media Representation

This article investigates reasons for the elusive news media representation of social science and embeds its results in broader institutional and epistemic contexts. Methodically, it combines expert interviews with senior journalists covering social science topics for German leading media outlets and case studies of the media coverage of selected sociological publications. The findings show that there does not seem to be a shared understanding of social science even among journalists covering disciplines from the social science spectrum. Moreover, the journalistic interview experts perceive traditional media department structures as limiting and as an obstacle to covering social science adequately. The case studies additionally illustrate parallels between the inner-academic diversity of social science and the dispersion of its findings across media departments. It is argued that these insights can be related to longstanding institutional boundaries and epistemic conflicts systemically shaping academia and journalism alike – making social science communication a particular challenge.