Games shape our understanding of culture. As market figures demonstrate, video games as digital successors of traditional games are now the economic drivers of the media and entertainment industry and form a part of our daily media habits. Since the mid-1970s, journalistic coverage has presented video games as a controversial issue, an image that has crucially shaped public opinion to this day. In the case of Germany, the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag) demands that public broadcast services provide balanced reporting. However, to date, there has been no comprehensive investigation into the media’s coverage of video games. With this in mind, the study at hand seeks to conduct the first explorative and quantitative content analysis of how the German public broadcast channels report on video games. The findings of the study support the assumption of generally biased reporting.

游戏塑造了我们对文化的理解。正如市场数据所表明的那样，视频游戏作为传统游戏的数字继承者，现在已成为媒体和娱乐行业的经济驱动力，并已成为我们日常媒体习惯的一部分。自1970年代中期以来，新闻报道就将视频游戏作为一个有争议的话题进行了报道，这一形象至今已严重影响着公众舆论。就德国而言，《州际广播条约》（Rundfunkstaatsvertrag）要求公共广播服务提供平衡的报告。但是，迄今为止，尚未对媒体对视频游戏的报道进行全面调查。有鉴于此，本研究旨在对德国公共广播频道如何报道视频游戏进行首次探索性和定量内容分析。该研究结果支持普遍偏向报告的假设。