Einfalt oder Vielfalt? Die ORF-Nachrichten im Spannungsfeld zwischen Professionalität, Profit, Publikum und Politik

Die Nachrichten des öffentlich-rechtlichen ORF müssen sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen Profit, Professionalität, Publikum und Politik positionieren und profilieren. Die Legitimation des öffentlich-rechtlichen Status wird dabei vermehrt mit dem Hinweis in Frage gestellt, dass der ORF seinem gesetzlichen Programmauftrag nicht nachkomme und politisch unausgewogen berichte. Diese empirische Studie stellt die ORF-Nachrichten österreichischen Qualitätszeitungen und ATV-aktuell komparativ gegenüber und geht der Frage nach, wie die professionellen Standards der ORF-Nachrichten im Sinne der publizistischen und politischen Pluralität im nationalen und internationalen Kontext zu beurteilen sind. Dabei zeigt sich zum einen, dass sich die ORF-Berichterstattung weitgehend im Rahmen transnationaler journalistischer Trends einordnet. Zum anderen werden allerdings punktuell signifikante Differenzierungen zwischen öffentlich-rechtlichem und privatem Nachrichten-Angebot sichtbar - vor allem was die demokratiepolitische Dimension der Information betrifft.The public service ORF news have to position and distinguish themselves in the area of conflict amongst profit, professionalism, the public and politics. The legitimation of the public service status has lately been increasingly challenged by accusing the ORF of not complying with its legal program mandate and of politically biased reporting. This empirical case study contrasts ORF news and Austrian quality newspapers as well as the private TV-newscast ATV-aktuell. The main research question is to what extent journalistic and political plurality as professional standards are reflected by ORF news in comparison to the national and international journalistic context. As a result, ORF news widely accord with transnational journalistic trends. However, on a selective level some significant differences between public service and private news emerge - particularly as far as the public policy-dimension and relevance of information is concerned

Cross-Species Analysis of Genic GC(3) Content and DNA Methylation Patterns

The GC content in the third codon position (GC3) exhibits a unimodal distribution in many plant and animal genomes. Interestingly, grasses and homeotherm vertebrates exhibit a unique bimodal distribution. High GC3 was previously found to be associated with variable expression, higher frequency of upstream TATA boxes, and an increase of GC3 from 5′ to 3′. Moreover, GC3-rich genes are predominant in certain gene classes and are enriched in CpG dinucleotides that are potential targets for methylation. Based on the GC3 bimodal distribution we hypothesize that GC3 has a regulatory role involving methylation and gene expression. To test that hypothesis, we selected diverse taxa (rice, thale cress, bee, and human) that varied in the modality of their GC3 distribution and tested the association between GC3, DNA methylation, and gene expression. We examine the relationship between cytosine methylation levels and GC3, gene expression, genome signature, gene length, and other gene compositional features. We find a strong negative correlation (Pearson’s correlation coefficient r = −0.67, P value < 0.0001) between GC3 and genic CpG methylation. The comparison between 5′-3′ gradients of CG3-skew and genic methylation for the taxa in the study suggests interplay between gene-body methylation and transcription-coupled cytosine deamination effect. Compositional features are correlated with methylation levels of genes in rice, thale cress, human, bee, and fruit fly (which acts as an unmethylated control). These patterns allow us to generate evolutionary hypotheses about the relationships between GC3 and methylation and how these affect expression patterns. Specifically, we propose that the opposite effects of methylation and compositional gradients along coding regions of GC3-poor and GC3-rich genes are the products of several competing processes

Dissection of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Transcriptome Using Genome-Wide cDNA Microarrays

BACKGROUND: The differential pathophysiologic mechanisms that trigger and maintain the two forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn disease (CD), and ulcerative colitis (UC) are only partially understood. cDNA microarrays can be used to decipher gene regulation events at a genome-wide level and to identify novel unknown genes that might be involved in perpetuating inflammatory disease progression. METHODS AND FINDINGS: High-density cDNA microarrays representing 33,792 UniGene clusters were prepared. Biopsies were taken from the sigmoid colon of normal controls (n = 11), CD patients (n = 10) and UC patients (n = 10). (33)P-radiolabeled cDNA from purified poly(A)(+) RNA extracted from biopsies (unpooled) was hybridized to the arrays. We identified 500 and 272 transcripts differentially regulated in CD and UC, respectively. Interesting hits were independently verified by real-time PCR in a second sample of 100 individuals, and immunohistochemistry was used for exemplary localization. The main findings point to novel molecules important in abnormal immune regulation and the highly disturbed cell biology of colonic epithelial cells in IBD pathogenesis, e.g., CYLD (cylindromatosis, turban tumor syndrome) and CDH11 (cadherin 11, type 2). By the nature of the array setup, many of the genes identified were to our knowledge previously uncharacterized, and prediction of the putative function of a subsection of these genes indicate that some could be involved in early events in disease pathophysiology. CONCLUSION: A comprehensive set of candidate genes not previously associated with IBD was revealed, which underlines the polygenic and complex nature of the disease. It points out substantial differences in pathophysiology between CD and UC. The multiple unknown genes identified may stimulate new research in the fields of barrier mechanisms and cell signalling in the context of IBD, and ultimately new therapeutic approaches

Schüssel and the Media: An Ambivalent Relationship

The first televised pictures of the new coalition government between the conservative Austrian People’s Party (Österreichische Volkspartei, or ÖVP) and the right-wing populist Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ) headed by Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel on 4 February 2000 were more than critical and anything but a good start. In front of the Office of the Chancellor, on the Ballhausplatz in Vienna, thousands of strident demonstrators gathered to protest the swearing..

Negative Campaigning and the Logic of Retaliation in Multiparty Competition

The extant literature has demonstrated that the logic of retaliation is a core feature of negative campaigning. Attacks by one side induce counterattacks by the other. Yet most research on the interactive nature of negative campaigning is limited to two-party competition and provides little theoretical justification for why political actors should respond to attacks with counterattacks. The present paper addresses these research gaps. We argue that the negativity bias in human information processing and the zero-sum nature of elections make retaliation a rational strategy. Importantly, these arguments also imply that retaliation may not be the only plausible response to attacks in multiparty systems. Rather, parties may prefer to react to attacks from one competitor by attacking another. To grasp empirically how being attacked and attacking are related, we conduct a highly disaggregated time series analysis of such instances while controlling for other factors that may influence actor behavior. Our analyses draw on several thousand party press releases issued during three national election campaigns in Austria, a typical European multiparty system. They show that retaliation is an important strategy also in multiparty politics. Yet in such context, parties do not exclusively follow a tit-for-tat approach but rather display more complex patterns of attack behavior