In danger of being left behind? – Media narratives of the digital transformation in the German Mittelstand

ABSTRACT

Has the Mittelstand lost its charisma? Based on a corpus of newspaper articles, we use a multi-dimensional approach combining content, framing, and metaphor analysis to expose how media report about the digital transformation in the German Mittelstand. In terms of contents, media focus on technical issues, narrowing down the scope of digital transformation. Articles with a main focus on digital transformation show a more positive tonality compared to those with a minor focus. We identified four distinct media narratives. The negative narrative portrays the Mittelstand as in need of help to master the digital transformation, with sickness and military metaphors underlining the negative assessment. The positive narrative reinforces narrow stereotypes of who is successful with digital transformation. The future-oriented narrative evokes a desirable but vague imagined future of digital transformation. The chance-challenge narrative is the only one portraying the Mittelstand both openly and implicitly as being capable of mastering the digital transformation, not least because this narrative also relies on external experts who provide a more varied picture. We contribute to the growing body of narrative entrepreneurship research by illustrating the various mechanisms media use to create a predominantly negative and sceptical assessment of the Mittelstand and its digital transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital transformation
• entrepreneurship
• German Mittelstand
• media narratives
• LIWC
• metaphor analysis

Introduction

Digital transformation has become a key concern with impactful consequences for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and policymakers alike (Nambisan, Wright, and Feldman 2019; Schneider and Kokshagina 2021; Sebastian et al. 2020). Digital technologies are omnipresent today, changing business processes, workplaces, and daily life (Colbert, Yee, and George 2016). During the COVID-19 pandemic, they gained fresh importance for corporate crisis responses. Research on the digital transformation of businesses has rapidly increased over the last years (Kraus et al. 2021), with a pronounced focus on the business level and the competitive advantage of digital technologies.

Media contribute to shaping the (mis)perceptions of whether and how firms and entrepreneurs cope with the digital transformation. Media create and reproduce public discourses about the megatrend of digitalization; themes of reporting and language are key in this regard. Research has already shown the impact of entrepreneurial language on, e.g. resource acquisition (Balachandra, Fischer, and Brush 2021), how storytelling frames entrepreneurship (Brattström and Wennberg 2021), the role of narratives (Chandra 2018; Roundy 2016), and the influence of metaphors in entrepreneurial settings (Clarke, Holt, and Blundel 2014). Narratives have both, an imaginative force that shapes beliefs about new possible futures, so-called ‘futurescapes’ of firms (Rindova and Martins 2022, 200) or ecosystems (Roundy 2016, 2021; Roundy and Bayer 2019) as well as a destructive power to exclude less popular stories (Roundy 2016, 224; Leonardi and Jackson 2004). However, much less is known about the mechanisms media use to construct public discourses on entrepreneurship and digital transformation topics.

This paper aims to fill the gap by analysing the media debate on digital transformation in the German Mittelstand. We use Germany as an example of an industrialized country where the economic impact of digital transformation is intensively debated (Schweer and Sahl 2017). The Mittelstand which is widely regarded as ‘backbone of the German economy’ (Pahnke and Welter 2019, 351; Massis et al. 2018) represents an ideal empirical setting. In the past, it has been shown to quickly recover from crises and external shocks (Berlemann, Jahn, and Lehmann 2021) and several studies have demonstrated its innovation and growth potential (Audretsch, Lehmann, and Schenkenhofer 2018; Heider et al. 2021; Pahnke and Welter 2019). To date, there is still no agreed definition of what constitutes the Mittelstand (Schenkenhofer 2022). Different types of firms such as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or owner-managed companies are associated with the term Mittelstand (Pahnke and Welter 2019), with varying foci on quantitative proxies (e.g. firm size and turnover) and/or qualitative characteristics (e.g. management, ownership structures, perception of belonging) (Pahnke, Welter, and Audretsch 2022). Nonetheless, the label Mittelstand is widely used by the (international) press as a synonym for the success of the German business model which other countries are trying to emulate (Pahnke and Welter 2019; Logue et al. 2015). Currently, the public debate ‘praises the Silicon Valley model of entrepreneurship, contrasting the Mittelstand as low growth, low-tech and non-innovative – in short, as a hindrance to Germany’s economic future’. (Pahnke and Welter 2019, 345; italics in the original).

We draw on agenda-setting, framing approaches and narratives and use a multi-dimensional approach that combines rather explicitly told content (themes of digital transformation) and more implicit frames and narratives to identify mechanisms media use. Our main theoretical argument of this paper is that the public discourse of the German Mittelstand mastering the digital transformation is shaped by the ability of the mass media to signal to the public which issues are important and to influence public perceptions through metaphors and narrative structures. Stories framed and embedded in narratives affect the public perception (Roundy 2016; Smith and Anderson 2004), e.g. about political investments in technology and broadband rollout or about the firms’ successful implementation of an error-friendly organizational culture enabling digital transformation. We argue that narratives also have the potential to disclose narrowing mainstream clichés, and hence illustrate why the vibrant diversity and heterogeneity of entrepreneurship is less visible (e.g. heroic stories and a focus on the Silicon Valley model of high-tech entrepreneurship may close out less popular stories or alternative narratives).

As such, we refer to the growing body of literature on the power of words (Welter 2019), the role of stories and narratives in shaping entrepreneurship (Audretsch and Lehmann 2022), narratives as persuasive vehicles (Rindova and Martins 2022) to co-construct and legitimate future states (Roundy 2016, 2021), and research on contextual everyday entrepreneurship (Baker and Welter 2020).

Based on a corpus of newspaper articles, we analyse contents, framing, and metaphorical use of media coverage on digital transformation. Our content analysis shows the predominance of technical issues supporting the technological determinism (Leonardi and Jackson 2004) in mastering the digital transformation. Related to tonality, articles with a main focus on digital transformation show a more positive tonality compared to those with a minor focus. We identified four typical media narratives: The negative narrative portrays the Mittelstand as in need of help to master digital transformation. The success plots of the positive narrative reinforce narrow stereotypes of who is successful with digital transformation. The future-oriented narrative evokes a desirable but vague imagined future of digital transformation. The chance-challenge narrative is the only one portraying the Mittelstand both openly and implicitly as being capable of mastering the digital transformation. By applying a multi-dimensional approach, we contribute to the understanding how media co-create images of digital transformation in the German Mittelstand.

Our paper evolves as follows: In the next section, we review literature on agenda-setting, framing, and narratives as a basis for later theorizing and outlining the role of media concerning the digital transformation in the German Mittelstand. Then, we give a comprehensive overview of the data and methodology used. After the analysis and discussion of our findings, we acknowledge our limitations and conclude with a call for a more nuanced understanding of digital transformation and the crucial role of media narratives to advance entrepreneurship and regional development scholarship.

Literature review and theoretical background

We build on media agenda-setting and framing approaches (McCombs and Reynolds 2002; Reese and Shoemaker 2016) to explore digital transformation in the public discourse to advance narrative entrepreneurship research (Audretsch and Lehmann 2022). We are aware that the media content about digital transformation is not a true representation of reality but their representation in media ‘is often treated as an implicitly true indicator of social reality’. (Reese and Shoemaker 2016, 392; italics in the original). By now, research has shown that media can influence and shape audience perceptions (Shen, Tang, and Chen 2014; Gamache and McNamara 2019; Rhee and Fiss 2014; Radu and Redien-Collot 2008). Media coverage mediates visibility and cognitive legitimation (Aldrich and Fiol 1994) and shapes our perceptions about specific attributes and actions of organizations (Zavyalova, Pfarrer, and Reger 2017). Therefore, media content analysis can shed light on the construction of entrepreneurial images (Roundy and Asllani 2019) and entrepreneurial stereotypes (Achtenhagen and Welter 2011; Price Schultz and Achtenhagen 2013).

Research in journalism (Neveu 2014) and entrepreneurship (Roundy 2016) stresses the strong ability of narratives to capture and hold the audience’s attention through their ‘vividness, ability to inspire emotion, use of imagery and concreteness relative to other forms of discourse’. (Roundy 2016, 240). Narratives also use archetypical plots showing entrepreneurship as a saviour for depraved places (Johnstone and Lionais 2004; Gregory 2012) or promoting heroic entrepreneurial stories (Brattström and Wennberg 2021). Media attention and reputation are increasingly used as intangible resources that can be as valuable as financial resources (Deephouse 2000) or facilitate resource acquisition (Lounsbury and Glynn 2001; Roundy 2016), but may depend on environmental settings (Uotila et al. 2009).

The topics covered in media and the way that they are framed and embedded in media narratives help public audiences to form beliefs about themselves, their society, and that of others as well. Frames assist in reducing the complexity of reality by introducing or raising the salience or apparent importance of ideas, activating schemas (Joris, d’Haenens, and van Gorp 2014), and influencing audience’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (Kahneman and Tversky 1984). The way media ‘select’ certain aspects of perceived reality and make them ‘salient’ in communicating texts (Entman 1993, 52) in turn influences public discourses. Thus, mass media play a major role in creating images and narratives of the world (Reese and Shoemaker 2016) through the way in which themes and topics are presented.

Language is important in this regard. For example, Suárez et al. (2021) uncovered that prominent mass-media outlets differ when reporting about entrepreneurs and founders in comparison to managers and executives. Lundmark, Milanov, and Seigner (2022) found differences in tone and gender bias between entrepreneurship and management journals. Based on websites (Forbes Best 100 Websites for Entrepreneurs), Roundy and Asllani (2019) provide empirical support for technology-based entrepreneurship and digital entrepreneurship as main themes in the entrepreneurship discourse. Droog, Burgers, and Kee (2020) provide a more fine-grained picture of metaphorical framing in emerging information technologies, showing that journalists tend to use their own frames in conceptualizing information technologies rather than drawing on the frames used by experts. In contrast to experts, journalists partly framed emerging information technologies as scary and dangerous.

Another typical means that media use to attract their readers’ attention are metaphors. These are figurative and rhetorical combinations of often vague concepts that ‘carry meanings’ (Clarke, Holt, and Blundel 2014, 5) but without determining meaning. They ‘establish an understanding of how things fit together’ (Hill and Levenhagen 1995, 1059) highlighting the power of imagination and sense-making processes. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) showed that metaphors are ubiquitous and fundamental for humans to communicate, understand and experience the world, arguing that entrepreneurial activities are metaphorical in nature. Entrepreneurs use metaphors and analogies to create a vision about future states and to convince stakeholders (Cornelissen and Clarke 2010). Media rely on metaphors to highlight certain types of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship (Nicholson and Anderson 2005). Metaphors affect the perception of and feelings about particular actions (Sackmann 1989), co-create stereotypes (Smith et al. 2014) and myths (Dodd and Anderson 2007) or influence entrepreneurship theorizing (Lundmark, Krzeminska, and Shepherd 2017). Metaphors are an important sense-making tool (Nicholson and Anderson 2005, 154) for complex topics such as new technologies (Carbonell, Sánchez-Esguevillas, and Carro 2016) or entrepreneurial opportunities (Discua Cruz, Hamilton, and Jack 2021).

Data and analyses

Data gathering

We focused on quality newspapers as they set the tone and agenda through their coverage of current social and economic (policy) issues. Furthermore, managers, politicians, journalists as well as the lay audience pay increased attention to their content and opinion. In short, quality newspapers are a mirror of the published themes both decision-makers and the lay audience pay attention to. Thus, we selected reputable and influential newspapers which have high circulation figures, are also reporting about management and economic issues, and allow access to database archives. For our first analysis, we included five newspapers, namely, three daily general newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Berliner Zeitung (BZ), one daily business newspaper Handelsblatt (HB), and one weekly business outlet Wirtschaftswoche (WW). For our second analysis, we restrict our database to the three daily newspapers FAZ, SZ, and BZ as we aim to capture the general media debate on digital transformation in German society whilst the two business outlets address a specialized – smaller – readership. We searched the online archives using the search function for the following keywords ‘entrepreneurship/hidden champion/Mittelstand’ and/or ‘digital transformation/digitalization/industry 4.0’.¹ The database contains 243 articles covering the time period between 2000 and 2021 and ranging in article full length from 62 to 3956 words (mean word count 902). For each article, we captured general information: headline, newspaper, date of publication, word count, genre, key event, main company mentioned, author(s).

Data analyses

We applied content, framing and metaphor analyses breaking the analysis down into two major analyses.

Analysing themes and tonality

First, we examined the themes of ‘digital transformation’, by manually coding key statements and aggregating them into higher order themes (technical, people, organizational, market, security, strategic, financial). Next, we manually checked whether ‘digital transformation’ was a main focus (89 articles) or a minor focus (154 articles). We also checked the validity of our coding by automatically coding the subsample with the MAXQDA software, using keywords based on the dictionaries ‘digital orientation’ (Kindermann et al. 2021)² and ‘tech’ (Boyd et al. 2022).

To determine the general tonality of the media debate, we used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program. LIWC has already been applied to understand the emotional and affective tone of newspapers (Humphreys 2010; Pfarrer, Pollock, and Rindova 2010) or to study the relation between linguistic style and crowdfunding success (Parhankangas and Renko 2017). The LIWC software contains psychometrically pretested and validated dictionaries which are internally reliable and externally valid across various contexts, providing statistical norms of reference corpora (Pennebaker et al. 2015). The summary measure tone is a general proxy of whether articles used more positive or negative words. We also looked at drivers and technology. Drivers reflect motivations such as affiliation (e.g. collaborate, partner, team), achievement, and power, which were used to study investors’ perceptions (Huang et al. 2021) or business opportunities (Tata and Niedworok 2020), while reward and risk illustrate whether digital transformation is associated with benefits or risks. The category technology refers to scientific and technological devices and inventions broadly understood as common innovations that have had observable impact on human culture and society (Boyd et al. 2022).

Analysing metaphors and narratives

Second, we examined how media create stories by using framing analysis to uncover the dominating narratives of digital transformation, similar to previous studies (Entman 1993; Köstler and Ossewaarde 2021) and metaphor analysis to uncover their emotive and opinion-forming role for the narratives. We restricted this analysis to the three daily newspapers FAZ, SZ, BZ as we aim to capture the general media debate on digital transformation in German society. Our subsample for this step consists of 52 articles with a main focus on digital transformation.

We continued our analysis by searching for typical narratives in the subsample. Drawing on Price Schultz and Achtenhagen (2013) we coded positive, negative or neutral coverage of digital transformation. Positive articles report digital transformation as ‘good or beneficial’ (e.g. ‘The Industry 4.0 platform is a success story’), negative articles report the ‘bad’ sides of digital transformation (e.g. ‘around 70% have not even started to change their core processes’). Neutral articles are balanced in their reporting and neither use ‘an extraordinary amount of positive or negative aspects’ (Price Schultz and Achtenhagen 2013, 1064). We further classified articles based on the type of narrative, using the categories identified by Roundy (2016): historical accounts, success stories and future-oriented narratives. Combining these two steps, we identified four typical narratives: negative, positive, chance-challenge and future-oriented.

Finally, we coded metaphors. There is no clear definition of metaphors. We define a metaphor as a linguistic phenomenon in which either a combination of two words or a metaphorical expression of a single word is used in a particular context with a sense other than the one which it normally has in other contexts (Steen et al. 2010). We manually coded metaphors and metaphor-related words within the newspaper articles into conceptual metaphor domains. Overall, we identified the following domains: person and embodiment, landscape and nature, sports and military, space and place, movement, crafts, money, growth, technology, myth, architecture, time, and a miscellaneous domain.

Findings

Themes and tonality of digital transformation

We start with the main themes of digital transformation in media and their tonality. Most popular themes, as reflected in their prevalence, are technical issues (134 codes) such as the need for digital technologies, broadband supply, Internet of Things, or platforms. Here, media mirrors academic research, which considers technology including big data, artificial intelligence, or data analytics as key drivers of competitive advantage (Schneider and Kokshagina 2021; Vial 2019). People issues (80 codes) come second, emphasizing the war for talent, insufficient digital skills, or training needs of small firms. Organizational issues were the third most often mentioned theme (37 codes) referring to future work, organizational culture, and processes. Less dominant themes in terms of media attention include factors external to the firms (12 codes), digital security (20 codes), strategic (16 codes) and financial issues (15 codes).

To detect the tonality and drivers of the media debate, we compared articles that report about digital transformation with a main focus (DTmain, 89) or minor focus (DTminor, 154) (Table 1). Articles with a main focus show a more positive tonality compared to those with a minor focus. But, in comparison to the reference corpus of the New York Times, both corpora demonstrate a more positive tonality. Also, drivers typically connected with entrepreneurship such as achievement and risk are more prominent in both corpora, potentially hinting at the opportunities of digital transformation. Reward, however, shows much lower values compared to the reference corpus. This may indicate that the digital transformation is associated with less benefits. The tech category shows higher values in the DTmain corpus compared to the New York Times corpus. Its prominence may be partly explained by our research topic, but the high value could also be a proxy for the ‘megatrend’ digitalization.

Table 1. Tonality of media reporting on digital transformation in German media.

Category LIWC-2015, 2022	Reference Corpus NY Times	Digital Transformation DT minor focus corpus		Digital Transformation DT main focus corpus
	Mean	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
N		154		89
Tone ^a	43.61	58.54	27.01	64.88	25.60
Drivers	7.60	9.15	2.49	9.83	3.12
Affiliation	1.69	1.36	0.90	1.77	1.78
Achievement	1.82	4.82	1.78	5.14	1.87
Power	3.62	2.69	1.18	2.55	1.16
Reward	1.07	0.80	0.65	0.87	1.01
Risk	0.56	0.68	0.50	0.76	1.00
Technology ^b	0.46	0.37	0.52	0.69	0.66

N = 243. ^a Percentage of total words within text. Percentage below 50 = more negative emotional tone. ^b Reference LIWC 2022.

Our first analysis illustrates that digital transformation is strongly associated with technology issues and that more positive words are used when reporting on digital transformation with a main focus.

Framing and metaphors of digital transformation narratives

For our subsample, we now turn to analysing the framing of the four narratives (Table 2) and their metaphorical set-up (Table 3), beginning with the negative (18) and chance-challenge (16) narratives that dominate in media reporting, followed by the future-oriented (10), and positive (8) narratives.

Table 2. Framing the digital transformation.

Negative narrative
Left behind	Title: The world is not waiting for Germany. German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls on business not to be left behind digitally and stresses the importance of fast data networks (Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 14, 2017). Merkel warns the business community not to be left behind digitally. Merkel stressed the importance of the expansion of fast data networks (‘The gigabit connection is necessary’) which will facilitate great opportunities for value creation. According to the Chancellor’s view, it is particularly important that small and medium-sized enterprises exploit the potential of the multitude of data that are generated. She warns ‘if the firms did not manage it, large platforms would squeeze in between them and their customers’. (…) ‘We must now put all our faith in the digital card’ [Wir müssen jetzt alles auf die digitale Karte setzen], (…) the leading industries in Germany and Europe must be digitalized, just as the IT companies in Silicon Valley were digitalized in the USA. This process must move faster than before, and Germany should therefore ‘not sit back now’, demanded Thorsten Dirks [President of the industry association Bitkom].
Low digital maturity	Title: Germany is threatened by the digital divide. Government advisors warn of a growing divide in the German economy at the national IT summit. Small and medium-sized enterprises are in danger of losing out. There is a lack of insight, but also a lack of suitable specialists (Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 16, 2016). The resume based on a 50-page paper from the German Academy of Science and Engineering makes it unmistakably clear: The entire German economy must do a better job of adapting to radical change. (…) However, this insight has not yet reached everyone. (…) Mittelstand firms in particular run in danger of falling behind if they do not invest in more digitalization. Acatech President, government advisor and former SAP CEO Henning Kagermann tells the Süddeutsche Zeitung [media outlet] ‘If small and medium-sized enterprises lose touch, this will have drastic consequences. Many jobs depend on SMEs. We have more hidden champions than any other country in the world. If we leave small and medium-sized businesses behind in Industry 4.0, we will weaken our national economy’. (…) ‘SMEs have a lot of catching up to do in terms of digitalization, especially in Industry 4.0’, says the President of the Federal Association of SMEs, Mario Ohoven.
High-tech giants versus Mittelstand firms	Title: ‘Good but not good enough’. Henning Kagermann complains about shortcomings in the German economy (Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 01, 2014). Henning Kagermann mentions technological deficiencies and a lack of skilled employees, also criticizing that the German industry invests ‘too little and lives off its substance’ and Germany still has a backlog, especially in the commercialization of new ideas. For automakers, the former SAP CEO sees particular risks from Internet companies like Google.
Chance and change narrative
Strong industrial core	Title: Where are the German high-tech founders? (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 14, 2019). Ann-Kristin Achleitner (Holder of the Chair of Entrepreneurial of Entrepreneurial Finance at the Technical University of Munich, member of the Executive Board of acatech [German Academy of Science and Engineering], member of the supervisory boards of several DAX-listed companies) and Thomas Lange (economist and member of acatech) mention ‘from a German perspective, the greatest opportunities for digitalization lie in the area of the strong industrial core and in the B2B sector – keyword Industry 4.0. The future belongs to intelligent solutions based on the Internet of Data, Services and Things, as well as artificial intelligence applications in the sectors automotive, mechanical engineering, chemicals and and health care. (…) Regional innovation ecosystems are a good breeding ground for high-tech start-up firms. They link start-up firms, established companies, scientific institutions and capital providers in the environment of promising future technologies and exert a strong pull – on capital and talent’.
Backbone of economy	Title: Let’s talk about the opportunities! (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 12, 2014). ‘No country in the world earns as much money with high-value technologies as Germany, and no country has such a well-developed domestic production with a strong industry and an anchored Mittelstand as a backbone. We have already succeeded once in taking over the technology leadership of a project of the century in a short time: the expansion of renewable energies with the help of the EEG. Renewable energies and efficiency technologies “made and designed in Germany”. (…) Becoming the green workbench for the world with intelligent solutions would be a worthwhile guiding idea for SMEs and industry!’ (…) Here sit the thinkers and tinkerers whose know-how is more in demand than ever before’.
Future-oriented narrative
Roadmap	Title: Roadmap for the digital transformation (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 22, 2015). Prof Dr.-Ing. Werner Bick presents a roadmap for the digital transformation: ‘Many innovative companies have now established the function of an “innovation scout”. These “idea profilers” build up a technology radar: They observe and cluster social, economic, ecological or technological developments outside and within their own organization and thus lay the foundation for a sustainable technology strategy (…) For the first time in their history, many companies are able to sell their customers not products, but solutions to complex issues. The platform for this is the Internet of Things, the growing together of industries in a global “Cloud of Everything”’.
Future work	Title: Every manhole cover will radio the water level on the road. Bitkom President Thorsten Dirks on broadband internet and gravel roads as well as robots and brain workers (Berliner Zeitung, August 22, 2015). ‘The future is coming faster than many believe, says Thorsten Dirks. He is convinced that society will change fundamentally in the next few years as part of a comprehensive digital transformation. That’s why the president of the high-tech association Bitkom advocates developing concepts for lifelong learning. (…) I’ll be honest: Germany may be in the lead in Europe, but on a global scale it’s only good enough for midfield at best. The goal must be a place in the top group’.
Myths/Panacea	Title: Gabriel’s new world. The Federal Minister for Economy and Energy presents his ‘Digital Strategy 2025’: Germany is to become the most modern industrial location in the world. A future investment fund worth billions for rural areas is supposed to help (Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 14, 2016). ‘Some representatives of the coalition even sneer at the ‘Holy Quadruplicity’ which is blocking each other more than it is finally tackling things together. (…) ‘Without faster Internet connections, everything is just smoke and mirrors, says Gabriel’s man Matthias Machnig. (…) Gabriel is also swearing [einschwören] the German business to engage with the new technologies. To this end, among other things, young, innovative companies (start-up firms) are to be relieved of unnecessary bureaucracy. For the growth phase of the companies, he says, the government must enable more venture capital. Gabriel wants to initiate nothing less than “a new start-up era” through numerous state support funds, start-up platforms and subsidies. (…) Particular attention is to be paid to small and medium-sized enterprises and the skilled trades. Gabriel is therefore calling for a digitalization offensive for SMEs. This is intended to provide companies with targeted incentives to invest in digital transformation. Accordingly, the volume of the program will be around one billion euros. The aim is to promote the development of new internet-based platforms and business models and to promote the European networking of companies. A “House of Digitalization” for SMEs is to be built in Berlin, where changing exhibitions will showcase what is possible and feasible with the new technologies’.
Positive narrative
Ecosystem	Title: Example region for digitalization. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 25, 2018). The region of South Westphalia has only existed since 2007 as a result of the structural merger of five counties in the southern part of Westphalia. Statistically it is one of the leading industrial regions in Germany. In North Rhine Westphalia, South Westphalia is at the top. More than 150 world market leaders have their headquarters there. With the orientation of the Regionale 2025, South Westphalia is also striving to play a pioneering role in digitalization. Max Thinius mentions that ‘the digitalization potential is much greater in rural areas than in the metropolises. (…) While many universities are still considering how to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their teaching, AI is already a topic in almost all degree programs at the University of Applied Sciences Südwestfalen’.
Rebel	Title: I am an atypical boss – Arnd von Wedemeyer, founder of notebooksbilliger.de, tells how he became Germany’s largest electronics mail order company. He talks about his relationship with employees and why you can’t study entrepreneurship (Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 1, 2018). ‘I had designed a logo and placed ads in a paper at home in Wülfrath. Then the first corporate customer came and wanted me to build him a network out of seven PCs and software to go with it. In retrospect, I’m surprised, because they made the weal and woe of their company dependent on a crazy guy in a child’s room with psychedelic carpeting. (…) I had to work at the counter. During the breaks, I continued my computer trading, phoning around on my B-net phone. I had gotten permission for that, but there were still problems. My dream was to go to South America and work for the bank there. But at the bank they told me to do a few years of counter service first. That’s when I quit. (…) During that time, I slept on a mattress in the back room of the store and made sure that nothing was invested until the account was in the black. I always get pitying looks when I tell people that, but actually it was actually great. I got up, worked, had the shortest route. That went on for two years. (…) Today I’m an atypical boss. I like working with people who do things well – then I’m relaxed and don’t have to constantly convince myself that they’re actually doing it. I’m also insanely impatient and erratic. I want to shout one idea at people, they shout another back at me, and then we get to work. Anything that takes longer leads to the fact that I’ve already started or even finished something, and no one knows what I’ve done. This way of working is not good for a corporation. And I have struggled for years, to have conversations with employees, to tell them why I think they did something well or badly’.

All headlines and quotes translated by authors.

Table 3. Leading metaphors of digital transformation per narrative.

Negative narrative
Person and embodiment: Knowledge and intelligence	Person and embodiment: health and illness	Landscape and nature	Sports and military	Space and place	Movement
blue-eyed, naïve, passive, not smart enough, not good enough, social network, say goodbye to Brockhaus thinking, bad marks, modern intranet – database, purchased knowledge, intelligent control units with digital interface	digital vital signs, mortal danger, dying, almost dead, weak points and open flanks, weak productivity gains	digital cloud, cloud computing, analog world, uncontrollable wave, wave of digitization, digital channels, resurgence, customer base, gaia-x	sharp sword, fight, attack, war, digital units, conflict fields, geostrategic rivals, digitalization changes economic rules, old apparatus trains and evaluates individual performances, second class, control, diverging power asymmetries, global digitization race	innovation country, stagnation country, Autoland Germany, smart regions	left behind, overtaken by market, keep pace with the competition or set the pace for development
Chance-challenge narrative
Person and embodiment: knowledge and intelligence		Landscape and nature	Sports and military	Movement	Crafts
digital superiority, smart machines, programs are reading		regional innovation ecosystems are a good breeding ground for high-tech start-up firms	ruler of a new global word, ‘strengthening inclusion: companies, and indeed the market economy system as such, are confronted with growing doubts about their legitimacy’, sprint, marathon, huge leaps in production	digital shift, new level of networking, the German government’s ‘Digital Agenda’ is on the right track, digitization often takes place in small leaps, but in large leaps as well	job engine, recoin for upheaval, digital tools, digital stooge, green workbench with intelligent solutions, data is crude oil: refining it and bringing it into the business process
Future-oriented narrative
Person and embodiment: knowledge and intelligence		Landscape and nature	Sports and military	Space and place	Myths
knowledge and intelligence of different network partners and external knowledge contributors, innovation scouts, idea profilers, partners, chewed knowledge		tailwind from cloud computing, global ‘Cloud of Everything’, valley hubs, centers	race, the midfield, the goal must be a place in the top group, 'we cannot prepare for the marathon for a long time, we now need to run faster!’	federal republic into a digitization republic, ‘Industry 4.0’ is also a contact point, European data space, digital ecosystems, new world	‘Holy Quadruplicity’, smoke and mirrors, swearing
Positive narrative
Landscape and nature			Space and place
cloud, in the land of 1000 mountains, digital channels, in this country, large cooperation of stars in the province			regional digital hubs, innovation laboratories, German Valley, excellent valley, digital ecosystem

Translated by authors.

The negative narrative implicitly denies the Mittelstand its agency for mastering the digital transformation. Main plots emphasize the ‘danger of being left behind’ and the ‘low digital maturity’ of the Mittelstand in comparison to ‘high-tech giants’ (Table 2); and technical topics dominate media reporting. Metaphors reinforce the dominant plots by creating a feeling of an omnipresent danger for the Mittelstand (Table 3). Mittelstand firms are illustrated as passive, slow, and in need of help and government interventions. This is reflected in metaphors which personify the Mittelstand as ‘naïve, blue-eyed’ and lacking ‘insight’ and health-related metaphors that present a Mittelstand which is in ‘mortal danger’ or ‘almost dead’.

Unlike the other narratives, movement and military metaphors are widely used to highlight the negative consequences of a failed digital transformation. They create an image of the Mittelstand as not being able to keep ‘pace with the competition’, which is ‘overtaken by the market’ and ‘attacked’ by ‘internet companies like Google’, which in contrast are glorified for their digital skills, market power, and exploitations of customers’ data. The Mittelstand on the contrary is described as ‘passive’, ‘sitting back’ and ‘living off its substance’ whilst ignoring that the ‘sword of Damocles is hanging over firms’. Metaphor use in this narrative thus creates vivid images which underline the inability of the Mittelstand to cope with digital transformation. Overall, this narrative employs by far the largest variety of metaphors in our subsample.

The chance and challenge narrative characterizes digital transformation through polarization visible in the framing, themes, and metaphors used, but with an overall positive and optimistic tone and relying on a mixture of success and future-oriented plots. Typical word pairs are ‘big and small’, ‘new and old’, ‘confrontation and partnership’, ‘low and high’, or ‘continuity and discontinuity’. As starting point, media use the dichotomy of chance and challenge to create cognitive tensions and then offer a call for action as solution. This narrative thus frames the process of digital transformation positively as one during which chances can be realized and challenges overcome. The main plots emphasize that digitalization will alter the core industries and traditional firms whilst the Mittelstand as ‘backbone of the economy’ is understood as capable of mastering the digital transformation. Overall, the narrative emits a picture where family business traditions and the strength of the Mittelstand are valued. Any comparisons with the high-tech giants and Silicon Valley entrepreneurship model are more emancipated than the negative narrative, highlighting the agency of Mittelstand firms and their inherent strengths. Germany’s industrial sector and the ‘data security’ advantages ‘made in Germany’ are important ‘assets’. Also, experts play a more prominent role: they create ‘counter-narratives’ by stressing that a focus on technology alone fails if the people aspects of digital transformation are neglected.

This narrative draws on fewer metaphor domains than the negative narrative but applies those in a way that emphasizes the process of digital transformation. Movement metaphors characterize digital transformation as occurring in ‘small’ and ‘big leaps’, with the Mittelstand moving ‘off to new shore[s]’, whilst landscape and nature metaphors highlight its regional embeddedness – the ‘breeding ground’ – as antecedent for a successful digital transformation. With chance and challenge narrative, the outcome is basically open to success and failure, and need not necessarily lead in a positive or negative direction, although the overall positive tone of this narrative promises a more likely outcome of realizing chances instead of being overcome by the challenges.

In contrast to the chance and challenge narrative, the future-oriented narrative describes a distant vision of the future with an uncertain outcome. The digital transformation is imagined through investments in technology (‘broadband’) and people (‘lifelong learning’), who play an important role as ‘idea profilers’, ‘innovation scouts’ and ‘brain workers’. Overall, ‘landscape and nature’, ‘sports and military’, and ‘knowledge and intelligence’ metaphors are quite balanced. Media praise the potentials of ‘a global “Cloud of Everything”’, calling for investments without clearly specifying which ones or explaining their payoffs.

Myth metaphors convey an image in which the Mittelstand is at the mercy of the government. The Minister of Economics is described as ‘saviour’ who imagines ‘a new start-up era’ and is calling for a ‘digitalization offensive for SMEs’. Headlines and texts such as ‘Gabriel’s new world: The Federal Minister for Economy’ who will ‘build a House of Digitalization’ for SMEs’ attribute all agency to government officials. Media also create ironic images of politicians such as ‘Holy Quadruplicity’, exaggerating unlimited power to them. Words like ‘swear in’ and ‘smoke and mirror’ underpin the fragility and uncertainty of the ‘creation of a new start-up area’ as future outcome; promises of salvation through a ‘billion-euro investment fund’ remain vague, given the political realities, and thus are unlikely to happen. Myth metaphors also illustrate technology as panacea for digital transformation because ‘without faster internet connections, everything is just smoke and mirrors’, and the German economy ‘must be sworn into technology’, supported by start-up firms, but rural areas in particular need a ‘fast network’. Again, this reinforces a stereotypical image of the German Mittelstand or even the whole economy as not tech-savvy.

The positive narrative relies on success stories which are very closely connected with heroic elements of individuals, firms, or ecosystems. They either describe the successful entrepreneurs or successful regions (ecosystems), framing both as subjects and highlighting their agency in using digitization to transform their businesses or to contribute to digital transformation at a regional level. At an individual level, the ‘rebel story’ can be seen as a classic German version of a garage-based entrepreneur starting small and ending as billionaire: a successful entrepreneur who started his business in his ‘child’s room’ but is now the male boss of Germany’s largest electronics mail order company. Rebel behaviour was evident in his youth as he only completed his education for the sake of his parents, but later on quit a bank apprenticeship. The plot also conveys entrepreneurship as something which cannot be learned and studied.

At a regional level, the success story ‘ecosystem’ highlights pioneering firms, in particular regions which have successfully achieved digital transformation. Here, ‘space and place’ and ‘landscape and nature metaphors’ are widely used to underline regional successes (‘home of industrial giants’ or ‘with more than 150 market leaders in their headquarters’). Landscape and nature metaphors are often used with clichés such as ‘in the land of 1000 mountains’ which is the brand of the highly successful industrial region of South-Westphalia. They are also used to juxtapose ‘world-wide’ known regions for hidden champions with ‘large cooperation of stars in the province’. Other examples such as ‘excellent valley’ or ‘German Valley’ highlight successful attributes of ‘Silicon Valley’ entrepreneurship, emphasizing that these regions have been able to master digital transformation because of their similarities with this particular model of entrepreneurship.

Discussion

Media agenda-setting affects the way the public understands a topic and the importance they attach to it (Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007; Shoemaker and Reese 2013), thus co-creating mutual thought patterns (Lundmark, Krzeminska, and Shepherd 2017). The way news stories are framed conveys stereotypical views of what constitutes entrepreneurship (Price Schultz and Achtenhagen 2013) and creates archetypical narratives (Brattström and Wennberg 2021).

Archetyping and stereotyping also guide how media report on digital transformation of the Mittelstand. By predominantly focusing on technological themes, media pick up the ‘technology salvation’ story of entrepreneurship research (Brattström and Wennberg 2021, 5), while at the same time narrowing down the scope of digital transformation.

Media also draw on simplified plots of Silicon Valley ideals as exemplary for how businesses should be digitalized and why particular regions are more successful in this regard than others, thus downplaying any variations in how firms can master the digital transformation. Hence, media construct digital transformation as driven by a small segment of firms, whilst the large (non-observed) majority, in contrast, is implicitly presented as not being capable of transforming. Instead, media reinforce a stereotype of Mittelstand companies needing help with instead of being capable of driving the digital transformation, thus belittling the genuine strengths of the German Mittelstand (Audretsch 2021; Pahnke and Welter 2019).

Not surprisingly, this is particularly visible in the negative narrative, where colourful metaphors accentuate the overall negative tone of media coverage. But even the positive narrative subtly frames the non-observed majority of Mittelstand firms as less capable, paradoxically through its strong focus on success plots and portraying of certain entrepreneurs and/or regional ecosystems as heroes of digital transformation. Although success plots make for fascinating news stories, they again narrow down digital transformation, this time reinforcing stereotypes of how digital transformation is achievable and who can be successful. Thereby, the positive narratives implicitly refute any other path to success.

When journalists exaggerate and sensationalize selected information to cast organizations (Zavyalova, Pfarrer, and Reger 2017) they disseminate information by drawing on their own frames (Brüggemann 2014), being less critically in proving the credibility of sources (Jensen 2008). Journalists use metaphors as a ‘figure of speech’, trying to relate to their readers, but also making judgements by using words and phrases that usually ‘refer to other topics’ (Charteris-Black and Musolff 2003, 158). This explains the strongly opinion-forming effects of the metaphorical expressions we see in the media coverage of digital transformation. One particular expressive example for these effects of metaphors is the future-oriented narrative. As outcome, it foresees a strongly desirable but rather vague and exaggerated future state of digital transformation. Mythical, sometimes outright religious metaphors reinforce both desirability and vagueness, evoking an imagined future (Beckert 2016) that no one knows how to realize and whether it can be achieved at all whilst at the same time denying agency to the Mittelstand itself. As such, even a more balanced and future-oriented narrative implicitly offers an overall sceptical assessment of digital transformation in the Mittelstand, not through what is said but rather through what is not written about.

It is only the chance-challenge narrative which portrays the Mittelstand as being (more) capable of mastering the digital transformation. Partly, this is done by giving room to external voices who provide a more varied description of digital transformation and Mittelstand businesses. In our analysis we noticed how journalists sometimes let others speak, be that the entrepreneurs themselves in portraits (as in the positive narrative and its success plots) or various experts in commentaries, quotes in articles or similar. The latter pattern is especially pronounced in the chance-challenge narrative. Experts were used to create counter-narratives of digital transformation, emphasizing the people side instead of highlighting the technological difficulties. Such reporting underlines the strengths of Mittelstand firms and opens up feasible avenues for them as how to master the technological challenges coming with digital transformation, but without forcing them to follow a predefined path with a predictable outcome.

Limitations and future research

A possible limitation of this study could be that we exclusively focus on quality newspapers in Germany. Yet, this can be seen as a promising research area to be addressed in the future, namely, to investigate whether tabloid and local newspapers report differently. Exemplarily, for metaphor analysis Nicholson and Anderson (2005) used data from the British newspaper The Independent, as it is considered a high-quality, politically neutral newspaper and Radu and Redien-Collot (2008) decided to select national and regional newspapers, magazines, the specialized press, newsletters, news press agencies, and Internet news using the Lexis Nexis archive. In the course of the (digital) transformation of newspaper publishing and the increasing importance of social media, it may be questioned whether analysing media coverage based on criteria such as reputation, authority and circulation is still appropriate (Etter, Ravasi, and Colleoni 2019). Future research investigating how enterprises communicate via websites or social media including visual representation (Clarke 2011) will enrich our understanding in terms of self-representation as well as enable new insights into how images are used. As the interplay of media-mediated clichés and the self-portrayal of entrepreneurs(hip) is crucial for social evaluation processes (Prochotta, Berger, and Kuckertz 2022), further studies that use (archival) media-generated and enterprise-generated textual and visual data uncovering the co-construction of narratives will be fruitful. Finally, our study discusses the importance of experts in providing ‘counter-narratives’ that present the full picture of digital transformation in the German Mittelstand. Further research is called to uncover the role of experts, in particular investigating their standing and (media) prominence and whether experts among different sectors (e.g. politics, science, corporate) receive more or less attention from the mass media.

Given the predominantly negative and sceptical picture of digital transformation of the Mittelstand in Germany media offer, one could rightly question whether the variety of narratives that we identified is of importance at all. We believe that narrative variety matters in several ways, also suggesting future research avenues that we have not explored in our study.

First, different types of narratives may be popular with different audiences, thus creating a more varied public image of digital transformation than is visible by solely analysing the media representation. This suggests the reception of media narratives with its different audiences as one interesting avenue for future research.

Second, the popularity of media narratives also can be assumed to change over time: When do media narratives of digital transformation change and why; do already existing media narratives gain popularity; or do new media narratives emerge and take over – those are some potential research questions in this regard.

Finally, our study is currently limited to Germany and its media debate on digital transformation of the Mittelstand which may be unique given the cultural, historical, and regional embeddedness of Mittelstand firms (Pahnke and Welter 2019). Here, future international comparative studies could examine how media frame and assess entrepreneurship and small businesses and digital transformation in a variety of contexts, to provide insights into differences and similarities of media reporting.

Media influence public debates through offering a picture of digital transformation that highlights selected aspects while neglecting others. How the majority of non-observed entrepreneurs cope with the digital transformation is not explicitly covered; they remain invisible. Here, our study adds to research by analysing the partial invisibility of entrepreneurship in the media. Related studies have, for example, analysed the underrepresentation and stereotypical heroization of women entrepreneurs in the media (Achtenhagen and Welter 2011; Baker et al. 1997; Hamilton 2013; Nadin, Smith, and Jones 2020). Our study confirms that media invisibility also is an issue for mainstream topics such as digital transformation because hero stories of successful digital entrepreneurs implicitly exclude the broad majority of ‘everyday’ entrepreneurs. Consequently, less popular, mundane everyday entrepreneurs(hip) have to compete with success stories and Silicon Valley ideals.

However, we are in doubt as to whether it is media alone that decide on which topics to report on or not. Of course, journalists favour reporting about successful firms ‘to make a good story’ (Lovelace et al. 2018, 422; Lovelace et al. 2022) and about mainstream practices while firms that do not fit into established categories tend to be overlooked (Kennedy 2008). Instead, we believe that entrepreneurship research also contributes to what is recognized as newsworthy by media, by still favouring the study of the chosen few that master digital transformation in spectacular ways instead of opening up to the variety of everyday entrepreneurs pursuing less remarkable paths.

Although our study does not address statistics or specific regional economy and development issues, our data material shows that in the wake of digital transformation, competitive nations such as China and the USA play a central role in the media narratives as posing a potential threat to the German Mittelstand. Furthermore, within Germany, selected regions and clusters are predominantly mentioned, such as the South Westphalia region and the start-up scenes in cities of Berlin and Munich, which are highlighted with positive attributes, while eastern regions and rural areas tend to lose out. As researchers increasingly call for studying softer factors (Roundy 2016; Audretsch, Lehmann, and Seitz 2021) we examined the mechanism of social construction and add insights such as which themes of digitalization or which local ecosystems are more popular in the media studied.

Conclusions

Our study illustrates the various mechanisms media apply to set a distinctive agenda on digital transformation in the German Mittelstand. The combination of content, framing and metaphor analysis was particularly useful in this regard, as we were able to detect and explore narrative patterns that are not directly observable. By studying the various mechanisms how media shape the public perception, our study contributes to the current debate, challenging the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to digital transformation in the Mittelstand and instead arguing for a more varied understanding of the complexities of digital transformation. We conclude that research on media narratives will advance entrepreneurship and regional development scholarship by integrating insights into subject fields such as technological determinism and the role of narratives in the public discourse of the German Mittelstand mastering the digital transformation. This study adds to our understanding that the focus on technology issues (technological determinism) denies implicitly the complexity of digital transformation and the focus on few firms often located in popular places and regions (e.g. listed, or big firms in popular cities or ecosystems versus ‘invisible’ firms in rural regions) does not reflect the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship. Furthermore, metaphors, frames, and plots (e.g. success stories of heroes or popular ecosystems) transmitted by media are crucial elements to identify how the role of clichés of mainstream images of entrepreneurs(hip) are co-created in the public discourse of the German Mittelstand mastering the digital transformation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The project is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – SFB 1472 Transformations of the Popular – 438577023.

Notes

1. German original: Unternehmertum, Hidden Champion, Mittelstand, digitale Transformation, Digitalisierung, Industrie 4.0.

2. Using shareholder letters from large US firms, Kindermann et al. (2021) link strategic orientation, digital innovation and transformation themes, introducing ‘digital orientation’ as a new construct.