Strategic framing of the crisis by social partners: Do they make the papers?

Claims-making analysis (Koopmans & Statham 1999) concentrates on the appearance of claims in the public sphere, empirically usually based on newspaper analysis. At the same time, studies in industrial relations look at interest groups and their relations with each other. Rarely can these approaches build on data including both the unfiltered positions of organizations and how they are reported in the media, not to mention the question of what impact they have on recipients. At the same time, outside lobbying, mobilizing allies, members, but also the general public, as well as issue related campaigning become increasingly important as strategies. The framing approach offers analytical tools to address these strategic actions. This paper builds on two data sets: first a collection of press releases of three German trade unions and four German business organizations covering the time period of 2008-2015, second a data set of claims in five German newspapers (this analysis was conducted in the FP 7 project LIVEWHAT – www.unige.livewhat.ch). While these two data sources are difficult to directly connect in a statistically meaningful way, qualitative analysis can show in how far narratives, meaning structures and frames can be found in both. Press releases are issued with the aim to be reported in the media and make an impact on both the public and decision makers. The approaches and success to make it into the newspapers will differ between organizations, however, depending on resources, self understanding of the organization, availability of other channels of influence, point in time, etc. As a case study, this paper will concentrate on the framing of the Great Recession by German social partners. Following Goffman (1974) and the later developed framing approach (Entman 1993; Benford & Snow 2000), crisis are framed in a motivational dimension (impact of the crisis), in a diagnostic dimension (causes of the crisis), and prognostic dimension (what to do about the crisis). By strategically framing the crisis in all three dimensions, actors try to shape public opinion and subsequently influence decision-making processes. The German case is particularly interesting because of the crisis corporatist (Urban 2012) arrangement that shaped policy reactions to the crisis in 2008 and the following years.