Mass Media as actors in urban planning conflicts

在西方民主国家，城市规划中的冲突是一种普遍而普遍的现象。这种冲突导致执行拖延，改变计划，增加开支，偶尔放弃计划，但在某种程度上增加了民主参与。在许多争议中，行为者的配置是由两个争论方之间的典型对抗形成的：提案的支持者，即政府官员和私人开发商，以及他们的反对者，愤愤不平的当地公民或小企业行为者。这些争议往往演变成一个公共问题，并成为媒体广泛报道的问题。在这一点上，大众传播媒介和公共领域作为演员或舞台在冲突中发挥重要作用。这是三个事实的结果：(1)冲突的范围扩大到公众，受到媒体的广泛关注；(2)政治行为者制定议程，以影响新闻和公众舆论；(3)大众传播媒介的政治独立性仅在一定情况下。本研究探讨大众传播媒介在策划相关决策与执行过程中的作用。城市政治学者得出结论，大众传媒能够影响或改变城市规划冲突中的权力平衡，甚至更多地影响或改变其结果。本研究计划探讨大众传媒是否真的是这些争议的影响因素。该研究特别探讨了大众传媒在哪些方面可能成为规划机构的竞争舞台，并影响或质疑协商后的政治决定。这里使用的方法是基于理论的，比较多案例设计。它包括一组特定问题的案例研究，具有相似的背景，但结果不同。这项研究调查了六个关于市中心购物中心选址的争议。基于最新的技术水平，该研究使用了一个解释模型，其中媒体作为导致提案负面干预效应的独立变量。这种情况很少见，但很关键，只有在一定的政治条件下才会发生。这里的解释方法将这些术语视为干预变量。这项研究的工作方案必须观察、查明和分析冲突事件、主张和行为的因果链以及媒体中相应的政治宣传。成功的关键是政治主张分析，它可以收集所有公共言论行为，包括表达政治要求、呼吁行动、建议或批评的抗议事件。这种系统的、定量的内容分析允许三个方面：衡量哪些政治行为者是可见的，并在媒体中产生共鸣，确定公共辩论中的变化，并估计大众媒体在政治进程中导致结果的影响。

In western democracies conflicts in urban planning are a common and pervasive phenomena. Such conflicts cause protracted implementation, alteration of schemes, additional expenditures, and occasionally abandonment of plans, but in a way increasing democratic participation. The configuration of actors in many controversies is shaped by a characteristic confrontation between two contending parties: the supporters of a proposal, namely public officials and private developers, and their opponents, aggrieved local citizens or small business actors. Often these controversies evolve into a public issue as well as into a matter of extensive media coverage. At this point both mass media and the public sphere play an important part in the conflict as actor or arena. This is a result of three facts: (1) the expansion of the conflict's scope into a public one with widespread media attention, (2) the agenda building by the political actors to influence the news and the public opinion; (3) the political independence of mass media only under certain circumstances. This study investigates the role of mass media in planning-related process of decision making and implementation. Urban Politics scholars come to the conclusion that mass media are able to affect or alter the balance of power in urban planning conflicts and even more its outcomes. This research project examines whether mass media are a real influencing factor in such controversies. Especially the study inquires on what terms mass media could become a competing arena to planning institutions and influencing or questioning negotiated political decisions. The methodology used here is a theory-based, comparative multiple-case design. It includes an issue-specific set of case studies with similar context but different outcomes. The study investigates six controversies over proposed sites for innercity shopping center. Based on the latest state of the art the study uses an explanatory model with the media as independent variable causing negative, intervening effects for proposals. This case is a rare but crucial one that occurs only under certain political conditions. The explanatory approach here conceives these terms as intervening variables. The work programme of the study has to observe, identify and analyze the causal chains of occurences, claims and acts of conflict and corresponding political communication in the media. Key to success is the political claims-analysis that enables to gather all public speech acts including protest events that articulate political demands, calls to action, proposals or criticisms. This systematic, quantitative content analysis allows three facets: to measure which political actors are visible and resonate in the media, to identify changes in the public debate and to estimate the effects of mass media that lead to outcomes in the political process.