Framing The Meta verse. The coverage of the meta verse by the British and German Press

On October 31st, 2021, Meta announced their intentions to alter their name from Facebook to Meta. More importantly, Zuckerberg also announced his intentions to divert the attent ion of the company in regards to future aspirations as well as future investments towards a new goal, specifically the creation and proliferation of the meta verse. While the term has existed long before and the ideas being it are not new for those well ve rsed with science fiction media, the term exploded into the cultural zeitgeist after, with many news publications stating to cover it. While Germany and the UK are not too distanced in a geographical sense, in an ideological sense they are quite different, as could be seen with Brexit. As such, this papers seeks to evaluate how the meta verse was framed in terms of tonality, generic as well as issue specific frames. To derive at an answer, as to how these two European powerhouses framed the meta verse, thi paper seeks to as we rah following research question: How does the generic news framing used in the coverage of the meta verse differ in German and British news articles? To answer this question, this paper will use a qualitative content analysis method using both, inductive and deductive content analysis. The findings of this study show that while there are similarities in regards to all theree aspects, specifically tonal ity, generic framing and issues specific framing, the more nuanced difference do support pre existing theories in regards to British and German News cultures as emphasized upon by scholars such as Frank Esser and Mark Deleuze, just to mention 2. At the sa me time, in regards to tonality, generic frames and issues specific frames, major similarities can be seen as well. As the meta verse is new, this invites futures research to explore how the perceptions of the meta verse has change din the coming years.