Envisioning unity: The media discourse in South-Korea and Germany on national unity A case study on the formation of transnational public spheres

Using the example of national unity in Germany and Korea, this article examines the formation of transnational public spheres along long-running political issues. It examines to what extent a similar political challenge of two states is conducive to the formation of a transnational public sphere. We describe these dynamics along dominant frame clusters in the coverage of leading media outlets in West Germany and South Korea of the path to national unity of Germany between 1989 and 1991. Our qualitative frame analysis shows a remarkable overlap between the two national discourses in terms of topics, development in time, and frame clusters. We also found evidence for a significant influence of the national media systems, in particular in South Korea regarding political parallelism.