Focus report of the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor with a focus on discourse & media, law & counseling
How is racism addressed and negotiated in three areas of society - the media, the law and in advisory structures ? The starting point for the analyses is the increasing social and political recognition of racism, which at the same time reveals mechanisms of defense. The focus report shows and examines the simultaneity of these seemingly contradictory tendencies.
Press contact: Angie Pohlers presse(at)dezim-institut.de; 030-200754-130
The study
The task of NaDiRa is to systematically investigate the causes, extent and consequences of discrimination and racism. Using various research approaches and methods, the report shows the extent to which there is a simultaneous recognition of and defense against the phenomenon of racism in the three sub-areas - media, law and counselling.
The media analysis examines the patterns of racism reporting in German daily newspapers (the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the taz from January 1990 to December 2021). In addition, a qualitative content analysis of SZ reporting on four racially motivated acts of violence(Rostock-Lichtenhagen, Solingen, NSU self-disclosure and Hanau) is carried out.
For the analysis of the legal system and the counseling structures , the two fields were considered together. This provides an innovative research perspective that analyzes the interpretation of the law in its social context. To this end, court decisions from various instances and jurisdictions are evaluated. The field of racism counseling is also examined.
Focus on media
German mass media have increasingly addressed and problematized racism in recent years. How sustainable is this "new" media attention for racism really? To what extent does this thematization go hand in hand with defensive tendencies ? As part of a longitudinal media analysis, the focus report examines how the media visibility and interpretation of racism have changed between 1990 and 2021.
Methods and research approaches
- Text corpus: Creation of a longitudinal text corpus of racism reporting in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and taz from January 1990 to December 2021.
- Scope: The racism partition comprises 42,034 articles with almost 32 million tokens.
- Inclusive racism dictionary: Development and validation of an inclusive racism dictionary (terms such as "racism", "racist", "xenophobia").
- Automated text analysis: Systematic evaluation of the corpora using dictionary-based frequencies, feature extraction, co-occurrences.
- Qualitative content analysis: In-depth analysis of the SZ's reporting on four acts of racist violence: the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the arson attack in Solingen, the NSU self-disclosure and the attack in Hanau.
Online dashboard
The results and data can also be viewed in detail in the Dashboard-NaDiRa.Medien.
The dashboard offers the following options:
- Viewing the data, automated text analysis, dictionaries, results on reporting on racism by Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, taz (42,034 articles with approx. 32 million terms, period: January 1990- December 2021)
- Interactive insights into media coverage of racism in Germany as well as individually researchable data
"Our results show that raising awareness of structural and everyday racism in editorial offices is becoming increasingly important. The media have a special responsibility here to reflect these dimensions of racism so that something can change at a societal level."
Figure 1 shows numerous short-term peaks in reporting on racism in Germany over time:
- three longer peaks (in the 1990s, the early 2000s and after 2015).
- From 2010/2011, media attention increases continuously, regardless of specific events.
- In the early 1990s , the salience curves (pogroms in Hoyerswerda and Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the arson attack in Solingen) rise significantly.
- Short-term spikes in attention combined with acts of violence (the bomb attack in Düsseldorf-Wehrhahn in July 2000, the attack in Chemnitz in August 2018 and the attack in Hanau in February 2020).
Anti-racist movements and demonstrations also have an impact on the media agenda:
- January 2015 saw intensive reporting on the largest Pegida demonstration to date
- The violent death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mobilization success of the Black Lives Matter movement led to another particularly striking peak in reporting.
This means that racism is increasingly being addressed and directly named in the German media. A sustained increase in reporting on racism has been observed since 2010/2011. There are two dimensions of racism that receive particular media attention due to their high news value: Protests and acts of violence.
Figure 3 shows that racism has increasingly been explicitly named since 2004/2005 and in particular from 2010 onwards.
- In the same period, the use of terms such as "xenophobia" and "xenophobia" declined. These terms are forms of problematic othering ("changing") and misjudge racism as the actual cause and are blurred, analytically incorrect or euphemistic.
The media discourse on racist violence - investigation of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom (August 22-26, 1992), the arson attack in Solingen (May 29, 1993), the self-disclosure of the NSU core trio (November 4, 2011), the attack in Hanau (February 19, 2020) - shows the following tendencies and reflects the following topics:
Narrowing and shortening frames:
- Organized right-wing extremism: localization of racist violence in right-wing extremism (Rostock-Lichtenhagen, NSU)
- Pathologization and individual perpetrators: Focusing on the background and motives of the perpetrators (Solingen, Halle, Hanau, Munich)
- Trivialization of violence: euphemistic description of the acts (Lichtenhagen)
- Victim-perpetrator reversal: those affected are (partially) blamed for the violence that happens to them (Lichtenhagen, NSU).
- Damage to Germany: the negative consequences of the acts of violence for Germany are discussed (Lichtenhagen, Solingen).
- Responsibility and failure: the focus is on responsibilities, possible failures and inaction on the part of the police and the state (Lichtenhagen, NSU, Hanau).
- Investigation and law: After the acts of violence, there are frequent reports on the ongoing investigations and legal consequences (NSU).
Opening frames:
- Concern: After the murders in Hanau, the perspective of racially marked people in Germany is visible from the first day of reporting. In addition, after Hanau, the demands and actions of the bereaved families and friends are also reported.
- Metadiscourse and criticism: Criticism of institutional structures and the media is on the rise.
NaDiRa joins the demands for more media diversity published in 2020 by the New German Media Makers, the Google News Initiative, Leidmedien, the Lesbian and Gay Association (LSVD), the MaLisa Foundation and ProQuote Medien on the platform www.mediendiversitaet.de.
Recommendations for action and measures:
- Knowledge critical of racism
- Diversity and representation
- Error culture and strengthening critical voices within
editorial offices
Focus on law and consulting
How can those affected defend themselves against racism? What institutional channels and structural hurdles are there?
The dual tendency is also evident in these social areas of law and counselling: over the past two decades, legal channels have increasingly opened up through which racism can be sanctioned. A broad field of counselling organized by civil society has emerged to support those affected. Nevertheless, there are various challenges in the legal system and also in the civil society-organized counselling landscape.
Methods and research approaches of counseling and law
- Evaluation of court decisions that explicitly name terms such as "racism", "racist", "race" and variation (basis: juris legal database, period: 2010-2023).
- Argumentation patterns: Search for patterns in the approach of German courts to the phenomenon of racism (legal dogmatic reconstruction and critical analysis of the law).
- 15 semi-structured interviews with experts from the field of civil society counseling from Berlin and Saxony who deal with racism as a cross-cutting issue and who explicitly focus on racism.
