Legitimate Wealth? How Wealthy Business Owners are Portrayed in the Press.
Germany has one of the highest levels of wealth concentration of any Western capitalist country. Research on the legitimization of economic inequality highlights that wealth elites tend to stress meritocratic arguments for legitimizing elite positions and wealth accumulation. However, whether this i...
| Publicado en: | Social Justice Research Vol. 35; no. 4; pp. 404 - 436 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Dec2022
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=160255320&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 160255320 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 08857466 4LL jtl: Social Justice Research issn: 08857466 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2022 vid: 35 iid: 4 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 160255320 10.1007/s11211-022-00396-1 ppf: 404 ppct: 32 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 869KB tig: atl: Legitimate Wealth? How Wealthy Business Owners are Portrayed in the Press. aug: au: Waitkus, Nora Wallaschek, Stefan affil: Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands International Inequalities Institutes, London School of Economics, London, UK Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany su: Germany Income inequality Conduct of life Capitalist societies Rich people Western countries Business success sug: subj: Income inequality Conduct of life Capitalist societies Rich people Germany Western countries Business success keyword: Business owners Elites Frame analysis Legitimization Media Wealth inequality Business owners Elites Frame analysis Legitimization Media Wealth inequality ab: Germany has one of the highest levels of wealth concentration of any Western capitalist country. Research on the legitimization of economic inequality highlights that wealth elites tend to stress meritocratic arguments for legitimizing elite positions and wealth accumulation. However, whether this is also the case for wealthy business owners and how the media tends to portray those remains largely unknown. Drawing on a unique sample of 899 press articles from eight different media outlets between 2014 and 2018, we find a rather generous media debate. Based on descriptive evidence and a latent class analysis, we identify six latent frames illustrating how wealthy business owners are portrayed in the press. We show that the sources of wealth (inheritance, investment, entrepreneurship) are often used to highlight these owners' deep economic relevance to the German economy, while the use of wealth is predominantly framed as a mean for profit-seeking. For wealthy business owners, moral evaluation of personal conduct is less present in the media and, when it is present, is rarely negative. Our study is the first analysis of press coverage of the wealthiest German business owners indicating a legitimizing media debate of high wealth concentration in an advanced capitalist society. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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