Media’s role in agenda-setting: Exploring media coverage of the German Baltic fishery discourse

In this paper, we explore how media covers and frames fishery issues. Focusing on the German Baltic fishery, we use methods from computational linguistics, political science, and fisheries science to analyze almost 1800 newspaper articles from 2009 to 2021. We document four key results. First, political events-rather than scientific policy advice-drive media reporting. Second, fishery representatives are mentioned more often than environmental non-governmental organizations (eNGOs) and with a much higher level of personalization and emotionalization. Third, reductions in European Union (EU) fishing quotas are followed by negative media sentiment, even though the status of the Baltic ecosystem would improve. Fourth, media portrayal of relevant stakeholder groups is consistent with the existence of two opposing coalitions: one emphasizing the socio-economic viability of the fishery and one advocating for the ecosystem's ecological health. Overall, we find evidence that newspapers tend to act as "advocates" of the fishers' interests and concerns.