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Immer noch gibt es in der deutschen Fußballbundesliga der Herren keinen einzigen aktiven als homosexuell geouteten Fußballspieler. Kampf, Männlichkeit und Leistung - Attribute, die scheinbar nicht zu einem schwulen Athleten passen, aber mit dem Fußball seit jeher assoziiert sind. Im Sport herrscht die Norm der Zweigeschlechtlichkeit vor, im Fußball dominiert einzig die Norm der Heterosexualität. Mit der Initiative #ihrkönntaufunszählen macht die Zeitschrift 11 Freunde darauf aufmerksam - und stellt diese Norm scheinbar infrage. In diesem Beitrag wird die darauf bezogene mediale Diskussion anhand einer qualitativen Fallstudie ausgewählter Printmedien untersucht. Denn Sport und Medien sind eng miteinander verknüpft. Es zeigt sich eine begrenzte Berichterstattung: Die heterosexuelle Perspektive bestimmt auch diese Debatte, die gesellschaftswirkliche Verhandlung von Homosexualität im Fußball wird auf die Zukunft verlagert. Until today, no active male football player in Germany's Bundesliga has outed himself as homosexual. The spirit of the fight, masculinity, and high performance - attributes that seemingly do not fit a gay athlete but have always been associated with football. In sports, the two-gender hegemony prevails; in male football it is reinforced with the expectations of heterosexual normativity. With the initiative #ihrkönntaufunszählen, the magazine 11 Freunde draws attention to this - and seemingly challenges this norm. This paper examines the media discourse in this regard using a qualitative case study of selected print media. After all, sports and the media are closely intertwined. A limited coverage emerges. The heterosexual perspective determines the debate, the societal negotiation of homosexuality in football is postponed to the future.

Twitter has pushed public opinion on foreign policy into partisan bubbles that often value alternative media sources over traditional media or political elites. Public opinion on China is no exception. On the left, some alternative media outlets support China as a socialist ideal, while others criticize it as a key player in global capitalism and neoliberal order. This leads to an important puzzle: How and why do some transnational left media disseminate pro-China messaging while others do not? We focus on two leftist alternative media outlets: the Qiao Collective and Lausan. Both organizations claim to offer a variety of counter-hegemonic-oriented discourses. We first qualitatively analyze the differences in how these two organizations frame key topics in contemporary Chinese politics including Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the Hong Kong protests. We then use quantitative social network analysis to show how their communication efforts lead to different follower audiences. In the last step, we analyze what issues the Qiao Collective is using to achieve its inward- and outward-oriented goals. Our study shows how both outlets focus on the transnational left, but each reaches distinct audiences that do not overlap. We find that the Qiao Collective jumps on traditional left-wing issues in the US to extend its reach while regularly posting positive, often revisionist perspectives about Chinese politics. This specific element conflicts with its claim of supporting anti-imperialist and pro-democracy politics and distinguishes the Qiao Collective from other transnational left outlets.

Since February 2020, the world has been facing a global pandemic of the SARS-CoV2 virus. All over the world, people have been urged to take protective measures. It is hoped that the implementation of widespread vaccination campaigns will defeat the pandemic in the long term. While many people are eager to be vaccinated against Covid-19, other voices in the population are highly critical of vaccination and protective measures, circulating much misinformation on social media. The movements opposing pandemic response measures are heterogeneous, including right-wing groups, spiritualists who deny science, citizens with existential fears, and those who equate vaccination with a loss of individual freedom. This study aims to map and compare the social media communication of anti-vaccination movements that defy social cohesion and circulate online misinformation in Germany and Brazil. By following a grounded theory approach suggested by Webb and Mallon (2007), we coded content from social media communication of opinion leaders on Twitter with extended narrative analysis methodology finding different narratives that were mapped within the inhomogeneous anti-vaccination movements. The results show that both countries’ main narratives against vaccination are very similar, but the main difference stems from Brazil’s stronger politicization of vaccines.

Focusing on Turkey, this article analyzes the role of polarization on news users’ perception of misinformation and mistrust in the news on social media. Turkey is one of the countries where citizens complain most about misinformation on the internet. The citizens’ trust in news institutions is also in continuous decline. Furthermore, both Turkish society and its media landscape are politically highly polarized. Focusing on Turkey’s highly polarized environment, the article aims to analyze how political polarization influences the users’ trust in the news and their perceptions about misinformation on social media. The study is based on multi-method research, including focus groups, media diaries, and interviews with people of different ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. The article firstly demonstrates different strategies that the users develop to validate information, including searching for any suspicious information on search engines, looking at the comments below the post, and looking at other news media, especially television. Secondly, we will discuss how more affective mechanisms of news assessment come into prominence while evaluating political news. Although our participants are self-aware and critical about their partisan attitudes in news consumption and evaluation, they also reveal media sources to which they feel politically closer. We propose the concept of “skeptical inertia” to refer to this self-critical yet passive position of the users in the face of the polarized news environment in Turkey.

During times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, digital platforms are under public scrutiny to guarantee users’ online safety and wellbeing. Following inconsistencies in how platforms moderate online content and behavior, governments around the world are putting pressure on them to curb the spread of illegal and lawful harmful content and behavior (e.g., UK’s Draft Online Safety Bill). These efforts, though, mainly focus on overt abuse and false information, which misses more mundane social media practices such as racial stereotyping that are equally popular and can be inadvertently harmful. Building on Stoever’s (2016) work on the “sonic color line,” this article problematizes sound, specifically, as a key element in racializing memetic practices on the popular short-video platform TikTok. We examine how humorous audio-visual memes about Covid-19 on TikTok contribute to social inequality by normalizing racial stereotyping, as facilitated through TikTok’s “Use This Sound” feature. We found that users’ appropriations of sounds and visuals on TikTok, in combination with the platform’s lack of clear and transparent moderation processes for humorous content, reinforce and (re)produce systems of advantage based on race. Our article contributes to remediating the consistent downplaying of humor that negatively stereotypes historically marginalized communities. It also advances work on race and racism on social media by foregrounding the sonification of race as means for racism’s evolving persistence, which represents a threat to social cohesion.

This study determined the antecedents of diffusion scope (total audience), speed (number of adopters/time), and shape (broadcast vs. person-to-person transmission) for true vs. fake news about a falsely claimed stolen 2020 US Presidential election across clusters of users that responded to one another’s tweets (“user clusters”). We examined 31,128 tweets with links to fake vs. true news by 20,179 users to identify 1,069 user clusters via clustering analysis. We tested whether attributes of authors (experience, followers, following, total tweets), time (date), or tweets (link to fake [vs. true] news, retweets) affected diffusion scope, speed, or shape, across user clusters via multilevel diffusion analysis. These tweets showed no overall diffusion pattern; instead, specific explanatory variables determined their scope, speed, and shape. Compared to true news tweets, fake news tweets started earlier and showed greater broadcast influence (greater diffusion speed), scope, and person-to-person influence. Authors with more experience and smaller user clusters both showed greater speed but less scope and less person-to-person influence. Likewise, later tweets showed slightly more broadcast influence, less scope, and more person-to-person influence. By contrast, users with more followers showed less broadcast influence but greater scope and slightly more person-to-person influence. These results highlight the earlier instances of fake news and the greater diffusion speed of fake news in smaller user clusters and by users with fewer followers, so they suggest that monitors can detect fake news earlier by focusing on earlier tweets, smaller user clusters, and users with fewer followers.

Mittels Kritischer Diskursanalyse (Jäger 2015) werden Ausgaben der Compact in den Untersuchungszeiträumen der asyl- und migrationspolitischen Krise (2015/16) und der ersten Monate der Corona-Krise (bis September 2020) mit dem Ziel analysiert, zentrale Entwicklungen der Zeitschrift hinsichtlich der Verbreitung antisemitischer Denk- und Deutungsmuster aufzuzeigen. Theoretische Grundlage bietet die Unterscheidung von fünf Formen des Antisemitismus nach Salzborn (2014). Die Untersuchung zeigt: Codiertem Antisemitismus kommt eine konstitutive Bedeutung zu, mit dessen Hilfe komplexe gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse manichäisch und simplifizierend erklärt werden. Zentral ist dafür der Glaube an eine die Welt beherrschende ‚globale Elite‘. Während im ersten Untersuchungszeitraum Antisemitismus unterschiedlicher Erscheinungsformen eine Rolle spielt, spitzt sich das Verschwörungsnarrativ im zweiten Untersuchungszeitraum, im Sinne einer Verschwörungskampagne (Salzborn 2019), zu. Antisemitismus hat im Magazin Compact eine hegemoniale Gültigkeit erlangt, durch die er als Verbindungselement verschiedener Themen und Strategien der Neuen Rechten fungiert. Using critical discourse analysis (Jäger 2015), the article analyzes the Compact during the periods of the asylum- and migration policy crisis (2015/16) and the Covid-19 crisis (until September 2020) with the aim of pointing out central developments in the magazine with regard to the spread of antisemitic patterns of thought and interpretation. Salzborn's (2014) distinction of five forms of antisemitism provides the theoretical basis for the analysis. The analysis shows that a coded antisemitism has a constitutive significance, which allows to explain complex social relations in a manichean and simplistic manner. Central to this is the narrative of a 'global elite' dominating the world. While other forms of antisemitism also play a role in the first period of investigation, the conspiracy narrative intensifies in the second period, in the sense of a conspiracy campaign (Salzborn 2019). Thus, antisemitism has attained a hegemonic validity in Compact, through which it functions as a connecting element of various themes and strategies of the New Right.

Gesellschaftskritik von rechts hat Konjunktur: Rechtspopulistische Parteien und Bewegungen erklären sich derzeit in vielen Staaten zum Sprachrohr (angeblich) unterdrückter Meinungen. Nicht erst seit der Covid-19-Pandemie ist das Internet dabei zentraler Schauplatz der Auseinandersetzungen. Der These folgend, dass rechtsextreme Narrative inzwischen auch in gesamtgesellschaftlichen Debatten ausgemacht werden können, haben wir Videos der Social-Media-Plattform YouTube auf diese Narrative analysiert. Gemeinsamen Bezug bilden die jüngsten Ereignisse um die Regulierung von Abtreibung in Polen, wo im Oktober 2020 das geltende Abtreibungsrecht für verfassungswidrig erklärt wurde, und Argentinien, dessen Regierung Abtreibung am 30. Dezember 2020 legalisierte. Während im analysierten Diskursausschnitt Frauenrechte und eine liberale Abtreibungspolitik oft positive Bewertung finden, bieten diese Themen auch Anlass hitziger Debatten, die häufig in Beleidigung, Herabwürdigung oder Hass umschlagen. Sexismus, Misogynie und vor allem Antifeminismus können dabei als besonders geeignete Anknüpfungspunkte für rechtsextreme Inhalte identifiziert werden. Social criticism from the right is flourishing: right-wing populist parties and movements are currently declaring themselves the conduits of (allegedly) suppressed opinions in many countries. Not only since the Covid-19 pandemic has the internet been a central arena for these confrontations. Following the thesis that right-wing extremist narratives can now also be identified in debates in society as a whole, we analysed videos from the social media platform YouTube to identify these narratives. Common references are the recent events surrounding the regulation of abortion in Poland, where the current abortion law was declared unconstitutional in October 2020, and Argentina, whose government legalised abortion on 30 December 2020. While in the analysed section of the discourse women’s rights and a liberal abortion policy often find positive evaluation, these topics also motivate heated debates that often turn into insults, disparagement or hatred. Sexism, misogyny and especially anti-feminism can be identified as particularly suitable points of contact for right-wing extremist content.

Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht die mediale Darstellung von Fußballer_innen in der englischen Tageszeitung "The Sun" hinsichtlich der Verleihung des Ballon d'Or und Ballon d'Or Féminin im Jahre 2018. Das Event stellte insofern eine Besonderheit dar, als dass erstmals auch eine weibliche Spielerin ausgezeichnet wurde, wurde jedoch überschattet von Moderator Martin Solveigs umstrittenen Interviewfragen an die Gewinnerin Ada Hegerberg. Mithilfe der Methoden der kritischen Diskursanalyse (CDA) zeigt der Artikel die geschlechtsspezifische Sprache der Berichterstattung auf, anhand derer die Ideologien der Männerdomäne Fußball reproduziert und weibliche Akteurinnen auf traditionelle Geschlechterrollen reduziert werden. Während Männer in umfangreicher, heroisierender Art und Weise dargestellt werden, bleiben Frauen in untergeordneter Position oder gar unsichtbar. Darstellungen von Sexismus und sexualisierter Gewalt bleiben undifferenziert und einseitig. This paper is concerned with the representation of male and female footballers in "The Sun"'s news reporting on the Ballon d'Or/Ballon d'Or Féminin award ceremony 2018. The event marked a milestone for women’s football in that it launched a new prize for the world's best female footballer, but was overshadowed by a controversy over host Martin Solveig's behaviour towards female winner Ada Hegerberg. Employing the methodologies of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the paper demonstrates the newspaper's strong bias against female football and identifies its refusal to acknowledge the quality of the women's game appropriately. The articles' language proves to be highly sex-typed, reinforcing the notion of football as a male preserve: while male players are commonly represented in sensationalist, supernatural terminology, female players tend to be neglected or muted. Reporting on sexual harassment and abuse is similarly biased and one-sided.

We analyze Russia's communication strategies in the period leading up to and following the seizure (2014-2018) of the Crimean Peninsula in the Spanish editions of its digital platforms, Sputnik and Russia Times. Drawing from theories of political communication, we show how Russia used storytelling and framing to build an international image and political brand consistent with, and try to justify, its foreign policy actions. Specifically, Russian messages transmit no room for doubt about the legality of any of its strategies in Crimea. We argue that this communication strategy is consistent with the concept of 'sharp power' to describe Russian projection in the world. Cultural and emotional appeals designed to generate positive emotions about Russia, i.e., 'soft power', were far less common. In recent years, Russian projection of sharp power appears to have increased in the Spanish-speaking world, particularly in South America. In addition to helping explain Russian foreign policy, our findings contribute to broader debates about political branding and truth in a 'post-truth', multipolar world.

This chapter provides an overview of the various themes and points of connections between the various chapters in this section and outlines the current limitations as well as the major social and technical issues that still need to be addressed in hate speech detection. In particular, Kirtz and Talat discuss the ways in contexts—from legal contexts such as laws determining data collection methods to sociocultural contexts like annotator knowledge—affect the possibilities for the machine learning pipelines. Along with identifying current issues and limitations, Kirtz and Talat delineate future avenues for hate speech detection research.

Wir diskutieren die Darstellung von Sextouristinnen anhand der in diesem Kontext zentralen Filme Vers le sud (FR/CA/BE 2005) und Paradies: Liebe (AT/DE/FR 2012). Trotz formaler Unterschiede werden in beiden Filmen zahlreiche Differenzen zwischen Touristinnen und lokalen Männern (u. a. hinsichtlich race, age, economic background) eingesetzt, um zu suggerieren, dass die dargestellten Beziehungen ausschließlich monetär und zum Scheitern verurteilt wären. Statt auf die sexuelle und geschlechtliche Transgression der Touristinnen zu fokussieren, rekurrieren die Filme so auf vergeschlechtlichte Narrative des Scheiterns. Damit werden im Bestreben, globale Beziehungen als ambivalentes Machtgefüge kritisch auszustellen, konventionelle Geschlechterbilder einmal mehr affirmiert. We discuss the representation of female sex tourists in two pivotal movies, Vers le sud (FR/CA/BE 2005) and Paradies: Liebe (AT/DE/FR 2012). Despite their formal dissimilarities, the films make use of numerous differences between the female tourists and the local men (regarding, e.g., race, age, economic background) to suggest that their relationships are exclusively monetary and doomed to fail. Instead of focusing on the sexual and gender transgressions of women tourists, the films resort to gendered narratives of failure. Thus, in an effort to expose global relationships as an ambivalent power structure, conventional gender images are once again affirmed.

Hate is being reinvented. Over the last two decades, online platforms have been used to repackage racist, sexist and xenophobic ideologies into new sociotechnical forms. Digital hate is ancient but novel, deploying the Internet to boost its allure and broaden its appeal. To understand the logic of hate, Luke Munn investigates four objects: 8chan, the cesspool of the Internet, QAnon, the popular meta-conspiracy, Parler, a social media site, and Gab, the »platform for the people.« Drawing together powerful human stories with insights from media studies, psychology, political science, and race and cultural studies, he portrays how digital hate infiltrates hearts and minds.

Der Beitrag untersucht, wie weiblich gelesene Geschlechterrollen als Doing Gender in die Narrationen der beiden deutschen Fernsehserien Babylon Berlin (Sky/ARD 2017) und Eldorado KaDeWe - Jetzt ist unsere Zeit (ARD 2021) eingehen und diese dadurch politisieren. Zunächst wird das Verhältnis von Erzählen und Gender skizziert. Die dann folgende Analyse der beiden Serien zeigt Erzählmuster auf und beschäftigt sich mit den Kernelementen Zeit, Ort und (Erzähl-)Perspektive. Gezeigt wird, dass Babylon Berlin Fragen nationaler Identitätsbildung in den Fokus stellt und Weiblichkeitskonzepte reformuliert, ohne die Geschlechterhierarchie aufzulösen. Eldorado KaDeWe - Jetzt ist unsere Zeit hingegen reflektiert Genderidentitäten als kontingent und wandelbar. Die Serie schafft mit ihrer Erzählung über die Weimarer Republik einen Gründungsmythos für eine genderfluide Politik der Diversität. This article discusses how gender roles that are read as female have an influence on the narratives of the two German TV series Babylon Berlin (Sky/ARD 2017) and Eldorado KaDeWe - Jetzt ist unsere Zeit (ARD 2021) as a form of doing gender, thereby politicising them. First, the relationship between narrative and gender is outlined. The analysis of the two series that follows shows up narrative patterns and looks at the core elements of time, place and (narrative) perspective. I argue that Babylon Berlin focuses on questions of national identity formation and reformulates concepts of femininity without dissolving the gender hierarchy. By contrast, Eldorado KaDeWe - Jetzt ist unsere Zeit reflects gender identities as contingent and changeable. With its narrative about the Weimar Republic, the latter creates a foundational myth for a gender-fluid politics of diversity.

Viele Asexuelle finden erst spät zu ihrer Identität. Austausch mit Gleichgesinnten hilft ein Vokabular für eigene Erfahrungen zu finden. Soziale Medien mit hoher Anonymität bieten Raum zur Entfaltung von Identitäten und Gemeinschaft (Carrasco, 2017). Abweichende Diskriminierungserfahrungen führen zu Hierarchien zwischen den sozialen Gruppen der GSRM Community. Um die Gruppenverhältnisse sichtbar zu machen, untersuchte diese Studie inhaltsanalytisch Beiträge zu Asexualität und Pride auf Twitter und Tumblr (n=1.000). Analysiert wurden die Inhalte und Nutzer*innendaten. Die Ergebnisse stützen die vermuteten Hierarchien. Heteroromantische Asexuelle, die gegen Normen von sowohl der GSRM Community aber auch der asexuellen Gruppe verstoßen, erfahren häufiger Ausgrenzung, nicht zuletzt durch andere Asexuelle. Weitere Forschung ist nötig, um die Ergebnisse für andere GSRM Gruppen zu prüfen. Mehr Verständnis für die intra- und intergruppalen Beziehungen der GSRM Community kann zu höherer Sichtbarkeit und Akzeptanz zwischen den Gruppen führen., Many asexuals come to their identity late in life. An exchange with like-minded people helps to find vocabulary for one's own experiences. Social media sites with a high level of anonymity offer space to experience identity and community (Carrasco, 2017). Divergent experiences of discrimination lead to hierarchies between social groups in the GSRM community. To make group relations visible, this study analyzed posts and user data in the discourses around asexuality and Pride during Pride Month on Twitter and Tumblr (n=1.000). The results support the hypothesized hierarchies. Heteroromantic asexuals who violate norms of both the GSRM community and the asexual group are more likely to experience exclusion, not least by other asexuals. Further research is needed to test the findings for other GSRM groups. A better understanding of the intra- and intergroup relationships of the GSRM community may lead to a greater visibility and acceptance between groups., Medien und Ungleichheiten (Trans-)nationale Perspektiven auf Geschlecht, Diversität und Identität

The advent of social media has increased digital content - and, with it, hate speech. Advancements in machine learning help detect online hate speech at scale, but scale is only one part of the problem related to moderating it. Machines do not decide what comprises hate speech, which is part of a societal norm. Power relations establish such norms and, thus, determine who can say what comprises hate speech. Without considering this data-generation process, a fair automated hate speech detection system cannot be built. This chapter first examines the relationship between power, hate speech, and machine learning. Then, it examines how the intersectional lens - focusing on power dynamics between and within social groups - helps identify bias in the data sets used to build automated hate speech detection systems.

Die 1930er-Jahre gelten als das populistische Jahrzehnt Hollywoods. Regisseure wie Frank Capra, Leo McCarey und John Ford entwerfen in ihren Werken Szenarien geglückter oder gescheiterter politischer Repräsentation, in denen sich demokratische Ideale mit politischer Theologie und amerikanischem Exzeptionalismus verbinden. Die Szenographie dieser Filme hat sich tief in das kulturelle Gedächtnis der USA eingeschrieben und prägt die politische Inszenierung von Repräsentation bis heute. Johannes Pause liest die damals entstandene Bildsprache als eine Typologie populistischer Repräsentation neu und nutzt sie als Folie, um aktuelle politische Tendenzen zu analysieren.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities already marginalized in pre-coronavirus societies, aggravated by socio-political technologies of racialization, sexism, homo- and transphobia. Dear Chaemin (directed by Bae, 2020) is an autofictional documentary series of three video letters sent from The Hague to the director's sister in Seoul amid isolation. The film juxtaposes the Korean and Dutch contexts of state surveillance, entangled with the b/ordering technologies against queer communities in Seoul and Asian communities in Europe. This paper explores autofictional documentary as an audiovisual method to engage with contemporary dynamics of international politics. First, I summarize the arguments made in the three chapters of the film Dear Chaemin. Second, I propose autofictional documentary as an effective cinematic mode that accounts for situated knowledges and critiques collective memories. Finally, I explore how the autofictional mode is further contextualized through the use of unconventional, non-lens-based audiovisual material.

The media is pervasive in the society. Media is crucial in the spread of information. The transgender community often gets misrepresented in the media. The media significantly shapes public perceptions, attitudes, and understanding of various social issues. Over the years, media coverage of transgender individuals has undergone a transformative evolution, reflecting a growing awareness and commitment toward inclusivity. Transgender individuals, historically marginalized and misrepresented in the media, are now given more visibility and representation. This shift in media coverage is a crucial step towards fostering a more inclusive society and promoting the rights and dignity of transgender individuals. While progress is still being made, there has been a notable increase in visibility and understanding of transgender issues within the media landscape. This paper examined the evolving media coverage of transgender individuals and also explored positive representation, notable initiatives, and the impact of these changes on public perceptions and transgender visibility.

Zu Beginn der COVID-19-Pandemie reagierte der Großteil der betroffenen Länder mit Maßnahmen, die das öffentliche Leben weitgehend einschränkten. Gleichzeitig baten Politiker:innen und andere gesellschaftliche Akteur:innen die Menschen, Abstand zu halten und zu Hause zu bleiben. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage, wer für Ursachen und Lösungen der Pandemie als verantwortlich wahrgenommen wurde. Maßgeblich geprägt wird eine solche Verantwortungswahrnehmung durch deren Darstellung in der medialen Berichterstattung mittels Responsibility Frames. Entsprechend setzt sich der vorliegende Beitrag mit den Responsibility Frames in der Berichterstattung zu COVID-19 sowie der Verantwortungswahrnehmung seitens der Bevölkerung in der ersten Welle der Pandemie in Deutschland auseinander. Zu diesem Zweck wurden eine teilstandardisierte Inhaltsanalyse der Printberichterstattung sowie eine bevölkerungsrepräsentative Online-Panelbefragung im Zeitraum Januar bis Mai 2020 durchgeführt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Medien insbesondere gesellschaftliche Verantwortung hervorhoben, während die Bevölkerung komplexere Verantwortungsattributionen aufwies. Insgesamt aber waren, anders als in der Berichterstattung, individuelle Verantwortungszuschreibungen in der Bevölkerung am stärksten ausgeprägt. Dies ist angesichts der Bedeutung der Verantwortungswahrnehmung für das individuelle Gesundheitsverhalten und die Bereitschaft, politische Maßnahmen zu unterstützen, ein zentraler Befund., At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the affected countries responded with measures that largely restricted public life. At the same time, politicians and other social actors repeatedly asked people to keep their distance and stay at home. Against this backdrop, the question arises as to who was perceived as responsible for causing and fixing the pandemic. Such a perception of responsibility is decisively shaped by its portrayal in media coverage. Accordingly, this article examines the responsibility frames in the reporting on COVID-19 and the perception of responsibility on the part of the population in the first wave of the pandemic in Germany (January to May 2020). For this purpose, a partially standardized content analysis of print coverage and a population-representative online panel survey were conducted. The results indicate that the media mostly emphasized societal responsibilities, while the population showed more complex attributions of responsibility. Overall, however, in contrast to the reporting, attributions of individual responsibility were strongest among the population. This is an important finding, given the importance of the perception of responsibility for individuals’ health behavior and the willingness to support political measures., Jahrbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

This article deals with the problem and the different levels of implicity in the context of antisemitic hate speech. By means of authentic examples stemming from social media debates, we show how alluded antisemitic concepts can be inferred on the basis of conservative interpretation. We point out the role of different sources of knowledge in reconstructing the ideas implied in a statement as well as potential sources of error in the interpretation process. The article thus focuses on the methods and findings of the interdisciplinary research project "Decoding Antisemitism" conducted at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at TU Berlin. By doing so, it explains the procedure of qualitative content analysis as a fruitful approach to understand the actual repertoire of antisemitic hate speech online.

The interrelationship between heteronormativity, homonormativity and hegemonic masculinity has widereaching ramifications for the representation of important moments and agents in LGBTQIAN+ history. In this study, the author examines how the films Howl, Stonewall and Milk enact the emancipation of their protagonists, while simultaneously reproducing their oppression and aestheticising their discrimination, thus making it consumable. This contradiction is emblematic of new forms of exclusion that function more subtly than blatant homophobia, outright sexism or overt racism, while at the same time rejecting a more complex repre-sentation of social experiences but instead solidifying static, definable identities. Die Verschränkung von Heteronormativität, Homonormativität und hegemonialer Männlichkeit hat weitreichende Konsequenzen für die Darstellung wichtiger Momente und Akteure der LGBTQIAN+ Geschichte. Die Autorin untersucht, wie die Filme Howl, Stonewall und Milk die Emanzipation ihrer Protagonistinnen und Protagonisten inszenieren, während sie gleichzeitig ihre Unterdrückung reproduzieren und ihre Diskriminierung ästhetisieren und konsumierbar machen. Dieser Widerspruch steht sinnbildlich für neue Formen von Ausgrenzung, die subtiler funktionieren als unverhohlene Homophobie, unverblümter Sexismus oder offensichtlicher Rassismus und sich zugleich einer komplexeren Repräsentation von sozialen Erfahrungen verwehren sowie statische, abgrenzbare Identitäten verfestigen.

The term "crisis" has become synonymous with describing the political, social, and economic state of many Arab countries including Lebanon. These continuous crises, including a global pandemic, have manifested in Lebanese news and current affairs through messages of hate disseminating via the media and journalists. Hate speech circulated via airwaves and the Internet has been shown to cause more harm than having hate shared in private conversations. The global pandemic, followed by the Beirut Port explosion in August 2020, has raised the level of hate speech in public, and Lebanese journalists have been used directly or indirectly as tools for propagating hate speech. This reflective account engages Lebanese journalists with the aim of producing a set of guidelines for tackling hate speech in news coverage and current affairs programs. Two workshops were conducted with Lebanese journalists in Lebanon in an attempt to understand the level of awareness of hate speech and its consequences among Lebanese journalists, assess how they understand hate speech, and determine the importance of guidelines and tools in helping journalists identify and tackle hate speech.

This guide explains, in four steps, how to build a phony text classifier using supervised machine learning - a classifier that is absolutely unreliable but looks outwardly sophisticated and attractive. You might enjoy this text if one or more of the following statements apply to you: You are interested in the automated identification of hate speech or related content in online discussions, as long as it looks good; you want to do something with machine learning to impress your peer group, but you do not have the nerve to dig deep into this field as well; you are either a somewhat sneaky or a humorous person. Of course, however, if you are a good and decent researcher, you might also take hints from this text on how not to step into the accuracy trap and how not to fall for the tricks of phony classification.

In Egypt, the relocation of residents of informal areas of housing into “proper” living environments is presented as a major political achievement offering citizens a much-improved quality of life. Therefore, it is not surprising that, following the Arab Uprisings, the current regime is widely publicizing relocation projects as success stories on TV and social media. As a way of garnering legitimization and securing stability, this official representation is reshaping the residents’ urban life and evoking narratives of slum dwellers’ transformation into respected citizens. Tackling a new area of interdisciplinary research between urban studies and media and communication studies, this article investigates the portrayal in mainstream media channels and social media platforms of two relocation projects (Al-Asmarat in Cairo and Al-Max in Alexandria), contrasting them with the residents’ perceptions of their new homes and their efforts to produce counter-imagery. The authors argue that both the state-dominated representation of the Al-Asmarat resettlement as an ideal solution to the crisis of informal settlements, as well as the more bottom-up construction of the Al-Max community as a picturesque fishing community, do not reflect the material experience of the inhabitants—despite it being presented as such in nationwide reporting. The effective centering of the public debate around the mediatized images has thus deflected criticism and enabled urban development projects to be positioned to legitimize the current rule despite the shortcomings of their implementation.

This article contributes to the analysis of local media and democratic transformation in Tunisia since the Arab Uprisings. It aims to assess the extent to which pluralism, freedom of expression, and participation—central tenets of democratisation—are evident at the local level. Tunisian local media, unlike the national media, is relatively free of governmental control. Local media is also decentralised. It is this autonomy from the government which makes the analysis of local media fundamentally important for understanding politics in Tunisia. While national media is linked to the most powerful elements in the country, the diversity of voices within the media at the local level provides an opportunity to grasp the grievances, struggles, and agency of people in Tunisia, especially the most marginalised communities. This article will detail the changes in the media landscape, especially for local media, in Tunisia and connect our analysis of local media to better understand the Tunisia that has developed between dictatorship and democracy and the extent that the fledgling Tunisian democracy can withstand its most recent test.

Employing content analysis, this study compares the coverage of the Arab uprisings by the People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China) and Caixin Net (a typical commercial media) with statements from the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the last decade. It shows that the overall attention given to Arab uprisings in the People’s Daily and Caixin Net declined during the period, but there were shifts in the framing of the conflicts, presentation of issues, and positions. The article demonstrates and analyses how the approach and outline of the conflicts in the People’s Daily changed from disaster to criticism, and then to comparison—its position towards the events generally negative—and how Caixin Net moved from a disaster to a contextual framing of the events, its position tending to be neutral.

Social media have become conduits through which audiences can challenge elites in media and politics. Recent updates to cascading activation, originally developed to explain how frames flowing from powerful figures gain public dominance, give greater theoretical scope for audiences to exert influence. Yet empirical understanding of how and in what circumstances this happens with respect to agenda-setting - another core media effect - is not well-developed, especially given the affordances of digital technologies. We address this gap by connecting theorization on cascades to developments in intermedia agenda-setting. Specifically, we analyze the dynamics surrounding the perceived reluctance by ARD-aktuell, the newsroom of Germany's public broadcasting consortium, to use its prime-time broadcast "Tagesschau" to report the arrest of a refugee accused of murdering a German woman in December 2016. By presenting finely grained timelines linking content analysis of 5,409 Facebook comments with Tagesschau editorial responses and parallel media coverage of this event, we contribute further conditions under which audience-informed cascades may occur: notably, when publicly funded news organizations are involved, and the issue at stake invokes both domestic and international aspects which sustain disagreement.

History is littered with tales of the absurd, odd, and unusual. From Gorgons and mermaids to bearded ladies and elephant men, people have, for centuries, been fascinated by those who deviate from physical and mental social norms. Such fascinations seemed to peak during the 19th century when showmen, like PT Barnum, bought and exhibited those deemed too different and macabre for “normal” society. However, as science and medicine progressed, and the protection of human rights became more important, freak shows and travelling sideshows dwindled (Nicholas & Chambers, 2016). Society’s fascination with the unusual though, did not. Despite increased political correctness and calls to end “fat shaming,” bullying and the like, reality television appears to encourage “a dehumanising process that actually lessens our regard for other people” (Sardar, 2000). While some writers have considered how reality television exploits stereotypes and links social norms to hegemonic whiteness (Cooke-Jackson & Hansen, 2008; Rennels, 2015), few have commented on the similarities between such programming and the stylings of the 19th century freak show. Utilising Thomson’s (1996) concept of freak discourse, and Bogdan’s (1996) assessment of freak narrative, this article examines how reality television programming as a genre, despite its varied plots, uses a narrative formula that can be likened to 19th century freak shows to enhance its storylines and “produce a human spectacle” (Thomson, 1996, p. 7).

Consumer reviews on platforms like Amazon are summarized into star ratings, used to weight search results, and consulted by consumers to guide purchase decisions. They are emblematic of the interactive digital environment that has purportedly transferred power from marketers to ‘regular people,’ and yet they represent the infiltration of promotional concerns into online information, as has occurred in search and social media content. Consumers’ ratings and reviews do promotional work for brands—not just for products but the platforms that host reviews—that money can’t always buy. Gains in power by consumers are quickly met with new strategies of control by companies who depend on reviews for reputational capital. Focusing on ecommerce giant Amazon, this article examines the complexities of online reviews, where individual efforts to provide product feedback and help others make choices become transformed into an information commodity and promotional vehicle. It acknowledges the ambiguous nature of reviews due to the rise of industries and business practices that influence or fake reviews as a promotional strategy. In response are yet other business practices and platform policies aiming to provide better information to consumers, protect the image of platforms that host reviews, and punish ‘bad actors’ in competitive markets. The complexity in the production, regulation, and manipulation of product ratings and reviews illustrates how the high stakes of attention in digital spaces create fertile ground for disinformation, which only emphasizes to users that they inhabit a ‘post-truth’ reality online.

This article analyzes the gendered representation of military service in the German YouTube series Die Rekruten (DR) (The Recruits), a popular web series produced on behalf of the German armed forces (Bundeswehr) for recruitment purposes, which accompanies 12 navy recruits during their basic training. The article is situated within research on masculinity and the military, in particular military recruitment. It supplements current scholarship by studying a previously neglected case that is of particular interest given Germany’s antimilitarist culture, which should make military recruitment and military public relations more difficult. The article asks how military service is represented in DR, what its discursive effects are, and what role (if any) masculinity plays in this process. We find support for recent feminist research on military masculinities (including in military recruitment) that emphasizes ambiguity and contradiction. What distinguishes the construction of military masculinity in DR from, for example, recruitment advertisements in the United States or the United Kingdom is its markedly civil character. This not only broadens the military’s appeal for a more diverse audience but also increases the legitimacy of the military and its activities. It does so by concealing the violence that has for the past two decades also been a very real part of what the Bundeswehr does.