Regional economies: Reality, and national TV reporting

Abstract

The problem of the spatial patterns of information transmitted by media is insufficiently debated within the literature so far. In relation to territorial marketing, in most countries the role of TV coverage is a pivotal one as it has the most intense impact on the wider public. Moreover, the TV news-reporting agenda to a large degree also epitomises the press and radio coverage agenda. This paper aims at assessing whether the selected attributes of real economic life in NUTS III regions in Czechia find their adequate portrayal in the regionally related contributions of an economic character that appear in national TV news reporting. Our attention was devoted primarily to the territorial perspective; more specifically, to the 14 self-governing regions in Czechia. In order to reduce the urban character of Prague, two NUTS III regions with the same centre, Prague and Central Bohemia, were aggregated into one territory. This is compliant with their natural geographical characteristics. Thus, the final number of analysed territories reached thirteen. Naturally, the share of news about the given topics in individual regions should roughly correspond to the presence of the themes in terms of territorial statistics. We will attempt to examine the intensity of the above-mentioned congruence.

In this article, we shall concentrate on selected economic pillars. These pillars include economic life, economic policy, economic criminality, as well as research, development, and education. These pillars facilitate the evaluation of centralities and peripheralities in Czechia with regard to both material (i.e., real) and intangible (i.e., TV coverage-based) components. The process of gatekeeping plays a critical role in the selection of information that is transformed into media. Moreover, one cannot ignore the media bias – i.e., the bias or perceived bias of journalists and news producers – within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and the way they are covered.

The research question posed in the frame of this article is as follows: can the significant differences between the virtual portrayals and genuine economic characteristics be found in all investigated territories in Czechia? Quantitative content analysis has been utilised for the classification and structuration of individual contributions in TV news reporting. In sum, disproportions between the real and virtual economic characters of regions are identified. Deviations from potential balance could be found in all of four defined economic pillars. Even more, single events may be so intensive that they affect and even distort the whole media portrayal of concrete regions. Subsequently, the relationship between centralities and peripheralities may become more intense and at the same time flexible within the virtual dimension. In this way, the intangible dimensions of centralities and peripheralities can act as either supportive or mitigating powers in relation to their material counterparts.