Journal articles on the topic 'Mass media and politics Germany (East)'

This article examines the critical potential of YouTube-comments to foster the development of counter public (Negt and Kluge 1972). The argument is based on an analysis of YouTube-comments in anti-fascist protests taking place in East Germany in 2011. The comments represent political positions across the political spectrum and are analyzed as: [1] form of the comments; [2] different political positions as friend-enemy constellations; [3] the struggle for attention in the mass media; [4] the critical potential of the different alternatives represented in the comments. The article concludes with a discussion of the emancipative potential of social web platforms such as YouTube to support the struggle from below and to give voice to oppressed political positions.

This article examines the critical potential of YouTube-comments to foster the development of counter public (Negt and Kluge 1972). The argument is based on an analysis of YouTube-comments in anti-fascist protests taking place in East Germany in 2011. The comments represent political positions across the political spectrum and are analyzed as: [1] form of the comments; [2] different political positions as friend-enemy constellations; [3] the struggle for attention in the mass media; [4] the critical potential of the different alternatives represented in the comments. The article concludes with a discussion of the emancipative potential of social web platforms such as YouTube to support the struggle from below and to give voice to oppressed political positions.

Rock and pop music in the USSR and eastern Europe has become an area of increasing interest to both the western mass media and cultural studies since glasnost, perestroika, the collapse of the Eastern bloc Communist regimes and the constitution of new western-styled democratic governments. This is largely because rock music has represented probably the most widespread vehicle of youth rebellion, resistance and independence behind the Iron Curtain, both in terms of providing an enhanced political context for the often banned sounds of British and American rock, and in the development of home-grown musics built on western foundations but resonating within their own highly charged political contexts. As the East German critic Peter Wicke has claimed,Because of the intrinsic characteristics of the circumstances within which rock music is produced and consumed, this cultural medium became, in the GDR, the most suitable vehicle for forms of cultural and political resistance that could not be controlled by the state. (Wicke 1991, p. 1)

The past fifteen years have witnessed a veritable explosion of mass media productions aimed at immigrant populations in Germany. Facilitated by new communication technologies, television channels and radio stations from former “home countries” and elsewhere have become available to immigrants via satellite and the internet. Daily newspapers produced in Ankara, Belgrade, or Warsaw can be bought at German newspaper stands. There has also been a proliferation of mass media venues created locally, by and for immigrants themselves, and nowhere is this landscape of immigrant media more evolved than in the case of Turkish-language media in Berlin.

This paper examines antiforeigner violence in the former East German towns of Hoyerswerda (1991) and Rostock-Lichtenhagen (1992) as a case study for both the heightened presence of neo-Nazi/skinhead groups in Germany following 1989/in the Wende period, and the memory politics employed by German politicians in the Bundestag, as well as in media discourse, with regards to the problems entailed in uniting two Germanys which had experienced entirely difference processes of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. My analysis of the riots focuses mainly on the mnemonic discourses surrounding them, in particular the work that the image of “the East German skinhead” does within the broader context of German memory politics. This paper is also situated within the context of present-day German politics with regards to shifting cultures of memory and the electoral success of Alternative for Germany.

The article discusses the prospects of the foreign news research in the media of modern East Asia. The authors present a brief literature review on political discourse in East Asian media and suggest possible research strategies for studying the international agenda in the media of these countries. The article argues that such research approach is valuable as it allows one to better understand the way East Asian countries view foreign news and international relations, study the socio-political processes in this region from a new angle and evaluate the role of the media in politics. The article discusses several social sciences theories that can help to explain and interpret observations obtained during the analysis of publications in the media, for example, the theory of media domestication, the concepts of external legitimacy and "othering". Political regime, independence and commercialization of the media are discussed among explanatory factors. The authors pay attention to the specifics of these theories’ application to the case of East Asia, provide recommendations for data collection and research methods, and discuss various research trajectories. For example, researchers can focus on trends in the representation of an event in the media using content analysis of a large number of publications, another possible strategy is to study a small number of articles using critical discourse analysis in order to identify discursive practices and their relationship with political processes and power. Knowledge of the language, history, politics and culture of East Asian countries, gives researchers of East Asia a significant advantage in conducting such research and could provide valuable contributions.

Today, environmental issues are not only communicated by traditional mass media, but they are also posted, shared and discussed in social media. This raises the question of the extent to which social media use also influences real environmental engagement. Using original survey data collected among young adults in Germany, this study demonstrates that social media use is clearly associated with stronger engagement in green lifestyle politics. Further, regarding different motives and forms of social media use, the findings of the study show that active use of social media for informational purposes predicts green lifestyle politics.

Summary: Many studies indicate that the suicidal behavior in a society is affected by the suicide stories publicized. Cultural valuations appear in the way media present self-destruction. The reflection of sociocultural attitudes toward suicide can be observed and analyzed in these texts. In this research, reports about suicide (n = 2203) in the years from 1981 and 1991 taken from daily newspapers were gathered—three central and regional papers in each country. A content analysis was performed of the suicide reports in Hungary (n = 244), Japan (n = 684), the United States (n = 265), Germany (former West n = 458, former East n = 60), Austria (n = 405), and Finland (n = 87), on the basis of the following variables: mentioning of the name, personal data, prominence of the suicidal person, qualification of the suicide, methods, motives, positive or negative consequences, alternatives, and the expression(s) used to refer to the act. After a coding process, an analysis was conducted as to whether any significant differences existed in the rate of the several characteristics in the countries from the point of view of the possible imitation-identification and of the cultural differences are the most important findings interpreted.[sentence is unclear]

This article examines how the German radical-right populist party the Alternative for Germany ( Alternative für Deutschland) and its politicians have engaged with the public memory of the East German past via Twitter and how this has impacted the use of social media as a tool of political commemoration in Germany. The article analyses the mnemonic wars over ‘anniversary tweets’ related to four events: the East German Uprising (1953); the construction (1961) and fall (1989) of the Berlin Wall; and German reunification (1990). The article surveys when and how Twitter became a platform for these events’ political commemoration and the role of the Alternative für Deutschland therein. It also outlines the mnemonic discourses that the Alternative für Deutschland has deployed on Twitter around these events’ anniversaries and explores the sorts of digital contestation and transnationalization evident at these times.

In this case study of the impact of West German television on public support for the East German communist regime, we evaluate the conventional wisdom in the democratization literature that foreign mass media undermine authoritarian rule. We exploit formerly classified survey data and a natural experiment to identify the effect of foreign media exposure using instrumental variable estimators. Contrary to conventional wisdom, East Germans exposed to West German television were more satisfied with life in East Germany and more supportive of the East German regime. To explain this surprising finding, we show that East Germans used West German television primarily as a source of entertainment. Behavioral data on regional patterns in exit visa applications and archival evidence on the reaction of the East German regime to the availability of West German television corroborate this result.

The following article analyses American cultural influence on Germany - especially in the period after unification. “Wendeliteratur" as well as new cultural relations and institutions are emphasised. The role of the mass media, which have conveyed the image of the American way of life, American products and services to East German is also discussed. For a better understanding of these images the author takes a closer look at what “Americanisation" really means to European cultures. All too often cultural observers state that Europe has been exposed to a pernicious Americanism. Such attitudes, however, should caution us against a too negative image of America. Although German-American relations during the post-war period had their ups and downs, West Germans on the whole developed a positive image of America, internalising American cultural elements as part of their own identification. The East Germans, on the other hand, it will be argued, while developing an enthusiasm for America at the time of reunification, turned more and more to a very critical, rather cynical view of American culture, thus letting euphoria fade to a very rational image.

Konrad H. Jarausch, United Germany: Debating Processes and Prospects Reviewed by Louise K. Davidson-Schmich Nick Hodgin and Caroline Pearce, ed. The GDR Remembered:Representations of the East German State since 1989 Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory, 1945-1970 Reviewed by Friederike Eigler Peter H. Merkl, Small Town & Village in Bavaria: The Passing of a Way of Life Reviewed by Joyce M. Mushaben Barbara Thériault, The Cop and the Sociologist. Investigating Diversity in German Police Forces Reviewed by Alexandra Schwell Clare Bielby, Violent Women in Print: Representations in the West German Print Media of the 1960s and 1970s Reviewed by Katharina Karcher Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander M. Martin, ed., Fascination and Enmity: Russia and Germany as Entangled Histories, 1914-1945 Reviewed by Jennifer A. Yoder

This paper summarizes the results of a research project analyzing communication about global warming among those in the fields of science, politics, and the media in Germany between 1975 and 1995. The methodology of discourse analysis has been applied to investigate the changing perceptions of climate change over time and the ways in which it became an important issue on Germany's political agenda. The first part of the paper will briefly introduce the underlying theoretical assumptions and explain the multiple steps by which data covering a period of two decades have been collected and analyzed. In the second part, the paper will provide the reader with the main research results, indicating the usefulness of distinguishing among the separate discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media. The results suggest that there are specific discourse dynamics common to each of the three spheres, as well as some important disparities among them. These findings will be illustrated by a selection of examples typical of the samples analyzed. Finally, the third part of the paper will discuss the broader theoretical and practical implications of these results, which suggest that modern societies must cope not only with environmental risks but also with the risks inherent in communication.

Introduction. The paper deals with the issues of the propaganda system in the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany (SOZ) between 1945 and 1949. Based on de-classified documents from Russian Archives propaganda organization, channels and methods of propaganda units of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAG) became a subject to study. The authors emphasize on control means towards German mass media and implementing the Soviet propaganda monopoly in East Germany. Methods and materials. The authors consequently analyze the main channels and methods of positive USSR image broadcasting: radio, press, SMAG propaganda unit lectures, people’s education system, activities of society for Soviet cultural studies, acquaintance trips of German delegations to the USSR, presentations of Soviet exhibitions and films. Analysis and Results. The authors come to a conclusion that the Soviet propaganda in East Germany had a low efficiency. It failed to establish a complete monopoly of Soviet propaganda units in East Germany. The SOZ population could access the propaganda from West Germany and West Berlin, which broadcast a radically negative image of the USSR. Besides, the units and institutions of the Group of Soviet Occupation Troops in Germany (GSOTG) created their own image of Soviet people, which was different from the ideal and broadcast one. Thus, it turned out to be impossible to provide the unification of the broadcast and perception of propagandist materials devoted to the USSR and its population. Soviet propaganda in Germany had gone through the transition by the late 1940s: division of Germany in two states appeared to be a reality, and the establishment of socialist society on Stalin’s model took place in East Germany. Ideological revisiting of the Soviet social constitution, and so its supremacy over the bourgeois one was to replace the conventional image of the country of total welfare and happiness.

At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in this clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell you, Irinej, we are doomed by fate to be the East on the West, and the West on the East, to acknowledge only heavenly Jerusalem beyond us, and here on earth-no one.–St. Sava to Irinej, 13th centurySince the early 1980s, the crisis of Yugoslav society has been brought to public awareness through discussions in the mass media, both within Yugoslavia and outside of the country. While the causes of the crisis were initially analyzed within the framework of the ideology of Yugoslav self-management socialism, the past several years have seen increasing use by politicians and writers from the northwestern parts of the country of an orientalist rhetoric that relies for its force on an ontological and epistemological distinction between (north)west and (south)east

The debate over the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in late 2018 showcases the crucial role of digital and, in particular, social media as vehicles of disinformation that populist actors can exploit in an effort to create resentment and fear in the public sphere. While mainstream political actors and legacy media initially did not address the issue, right-wing populist actors claimed ownership by framing (presumably <em>obligatory</em>) mass immigration as a matter of social, cultural, economic, and not least political risk, and created an image of political and cultural elites conspiring to keep the issue out of the public sphere. Initially advanced via digital and social media, such frames resonated sufficiently strongly in civil society to politicize the GCM in various national public spheres. In this article, these dynamics are explored by comparing the politicization of the GCM in three EU member states, namely Germany, Austria, and Sweden. Using a process-tracing design, the article (a) identifies the key actors in the process, (b) analyzes how the issue emerged in social and other digital media and travelled from digital media into mainstream mass media discourse, and finally (c) draws comparative conclusions from the three analyzed cases. Particular emphasis is placed on the frames used by right-wing populist actors, how these frames resonated in the wider public sphere and thereby generated communicative power against the GCM, ultimately forcing the issue onto the agenda of national public spheres and political institutions.

There is little empirical evidence of the widely shared belief that most civilians know next to nothing about defense policy and armed forces. This article examines knowledge of defense policy in Germany and its determinants. The database is a public opinion survey from 2016. The survey included six questions on various aspects of knowledge of defense policy. Its results show that knowledge of defense policy is approximately on a level with general political knowledge in Germany. Determinants from the categories of resources and sociodemographics, motivations, and opportunity structures explain individual knowledge levels. Internal efficacy, interest in politics, the intention to vote, and the perception of the Bundeswehr’s presence in the media are among the most important predictors. These results indicate that the armed forces can bridge the gap between the public and the military, the civil–military gap, by being present in society and active in personal and mass media communication.

At the same time on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, two avant-garde playwrights decided to remake a 2400-year-old tragedy. Heiner Müller (1929-1996) and Tom Stoppard (1937-) are widely regarded as two of the most innovative dramatists of East Germany and Great Britain and respectively. In 1965, Stoppard submitted a script for a spy thriller to Granada TV and Müller published his first play since being banned from the East German Writers’ Association in 1961. Though unbeknownst to each other and writing for drastically different purposes, media, and audiences, they both lit upon Sophocles’ Philoctetes as the appropriate vehicle for their work. Sympathy has been recognized as central to tragedy since Aristotle’s Poetics, and Philoctetes is the ultimate drama of compassion. The story of the wounded Philoctetes is an Ur-scene for pity in the same way that Ajax’s slaughter of the sheep in his madness is a primal scene for indignation, or Orpheus’ descent to the underworld, for grief. In finding their way to Philoctetes, Stoppard and Müller grapple with a fundamental problem of theatrical art.

The paper discusses the newest trends in the German defense policy, caused by the aggravation of European geopolitical situation. The author analyzes various sources, among them official reports presented to the Ministry of Defense and the Bundestag; speeches by the Minister of Defense and by supreme commanders of the Bundeswehr; published in mass media information on condition and problems of the military forces, as well as modernization of the equipment. Officially it is deemed, that the reform of the Bundeswehr which started in 2011, so far has turned into an amorphous process of renewal (Neuausrichtung), intended to improve the military organization. Since the acting Cabinet was farmed, Ursula von der Leyen - the first woman Minister of Defense of Germany - directs these activities, and her style of work affects all the work in the Ministry. Meanwhile, the revision of the main parameters of the defensive activity and the whole German politics is caused not by a fresh leadership, but by the most sharp after the end of the "cold war" geopolitical crisis in Europe. The author comes to conclusion, that a turning point in the Defensive Policy of Germany is taking shape, so that all the aspects of military organization are now affected: command stuff training, military equipment, strengthening of ties with allies. Anti-Russian propaganda in mass-media reanimates an image of an enemy and prepares public opinion to the future growth of military expenses; it even overcomes certain pacifism, so usual in modern society. Here in Russia, one must take all this into account, as an idea of the low fighting capacity of the Bundeswehr, which was formed in the last years, is getting obsolete, and could became a dangerous illusion.

This article deals with mass media in modern democratic societies, using the example of Israeli news reports in German television (TV) news. Central to this interest are processes of mediating politics: political socialisation and education; that is to say, empowering citizens via TV news to participate in democratic processes. The article outlines the current state of TV news making in Germany. Against this background, whilst focusing on TV news production, processes of alienation within the making of news as well as a process of alienation making by the news are discussed.

Abstract In 1899, the British colonialist Cecil Rhodes went to Berlin to negotiate about his fantastical ‘Cape-to-Cairo’ telegraph and railway scheme with his former nemesis, the German emperor Wilhelm II. Why did this initiative of Rhodes, who was held responsible for the disastrous Jameson Raid and no longer occupied any official position, receive so much coverage and legitimacy in the international press? Despite the vast scholarship on Rhodes, there is strikingly little analysis of these negotiations, considering that they were hailed as marking the rehabilitation of Rhodes and the troubled Anglo-German relationship, signalled that Germany would not support the Boers in their conflict with Britain, and led to Germany’s inclusion in the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships scheme. This article analyses the reporting of the negotiations and shows that Rhodes overshadowed other political figures in the competitive ‘attention economy’ of the emerging mass press. Building on the notion of ‘celebrity politics’, it argues that the press attention for him resulted from three interconnected logics: a political logic of agenda-setting and ideological loyalties, a journalistic logic in which scarce access to Rhodes fostered his mythologising, and a mass media logic that increasingly superseded ideological divides. This mass media logic dictated a focus on Rhodes’s personal narrative (infused with literary and colonial themes), personifying politics, and performing these politics in a novel business-like style. This press attention gained Rhodes informal power and shows how, by the end of the nineteenth century, successful politics required the new ability of political figures to attract and leverage media attention. Moreover, it constituted the precondition for the growing cult of Rhodes in the twentieth century, and the subsequent criticism of this cult and its representation of racism in recent times.

Abstract This article moves the poetic ijāzah from the periphery, where modern scholars have generally placed it, to a central position in Arabic poetry and mass media. The ijāzah was well developed before its adoption in the western Mediterranean, but Cordoban, Sevillian, and expatriate Sicilian poets distinguished the competitive improvised poem from corollary works in the Middle East, where it had first been invented. I argue that it is precisely the Andalusi innovations to the ijāzah’s formal development that have allowed traditional criticism to minimize its importance, against a larger trend of popular audiences appreciating performed ijāzahs, on stage and in mass media. Modern Arabic theatre and television have found enthusiastic audiences for the Andalusi poetic dialogue, a phenomenon that frames my Classical research. Media outlets, including those working closely with government officials, stage the ijāzah in ways that maximize its ideological value. As they use it to promote secularism and putatively benevolent dictatorship, propelling Andalusi literature into current Middle Eastern politics, we critics should seek to understand the dialogic form in its contemporary, insistently political phase of development.

Abstract Since spring 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has presented an international challenge that requires expert knowledge from a wide variety of disciplines. From the very beginning, virological expertise was particularly in demand in order to advise politicians and to inform the population about the virus, its multiplication rate and its spread as well as typical symptoms of an infection. Virological expertise has been mediated through institutions that specialize in science communication and science journalism (e. g. the Science Media Center Germany in Cologne) and to a large extent through mass media. Against this backdrop, this article explores the demarcation practices of virologists in political talk shows. Our corpus consists of 25 political talk shows which were broadcast on publicly available channels in Germany between March 2020 and April 2021. The article addresses the tensions between the domains of science, politics, and media and demonstrates how virologists try to maintain and defend the borders between these domains. On the basis of interactional linguistics, we analyse the pointing practices of three virologists (Melanie Brinkmann, Alexander Kekulé and Hendrik Streeck) to identify crucial demarcation practices employed.

Which news sources do supporters of populist islamophobic groups and their opponents rely on, and how are these sources related to each other? We explore these questions by studying the websites referenced in discussions sur- rounding Pegida, a right-wing populist movement based in Germany that is opposed to what its supporters regard as is- lamization, cultural marginalization and political correct- ness. We draw on a manual content analysis of the news sources and the stances of Twitter users, to then calculate the overlap of sources across audiences. Finally, we perform a cluster analysis of the resulting user groups, based on shared sources. Preferences by language, nationality, region and politics emerge, showing the distinction between differ- ent groups among the users. Our tentative findings have im- plications both for the study of mass media audiences through the lens of social media, and for research on the public sphere and its possible fragmentation in online dis- course. This contribution, which is the result of an interdis- ciplinary collaboration between communication scholars in Germany and journalists in Austria, is part of a larger ongo- ing effort to understand forms of online extremism through the analysis of social media data.

There Has Been Much Concern In The Past Few Years About the ‘decline of parliament’ in West European democracies. In the United Kingdom, criticism of the New Labour government has included its apparent neglect of Parliament demonstrated by the style and strategies of the government, ranging from reduction in the time allotted to prime minister's question-time and the utilization of the mass media rather than Parliament as the forum for important policy statements, to the government's refusal to accept reforms to the method of appointments to House of Commons select committees, as recommended by the House of Commons Liaison Committee. Strong party discipline, coupled with sanctions which can affect the political careers of MPs for failure to obey the edicts of the party leadership, have limited the autonomy of MPs in Britain, and, to a varying degree, in other West European countries also. Certainly the German Bundestag has been criticized for being too much under the control of the leaderships of the political parties, in terms of voting on legislation, the stage-management of debates and the choice of leaders of the parliamentary parties (the removal by Chancellor Schröder of Scharping as leader of the SPD parliamentary party in 1998 at the instigation of Lafontaine, the then party chairman, is a notorious instance).

Abstract Often, as much in the mass media as in scientific circles, one resorts to the categories of “East” and “West,” which are usually recited in a series of variations (for instance ‘western values,’ ‘western civilisation,’ ‘western democracy,’ etc.), that are used to indicate different, if not opposed visions of life, politics or culture. The article shows how from the start, in Greek and Roman political thought and historiography, an ideologically oriented reading of one’s own past developed; these dynamics then were taken up again and accentuated, especially in the modern era, often to justify and legitimise processes of conquest and domination.

This study examines political party contestation over Europe, its relationship to the left/right cleavage, and the nature and emergence of Euroscepticism. The analysis is based on a large original sample of parties’ claims systematically drawn from political discourses in the mass media in seven countries: Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. It addresses questions concerning parties’ mobilized criticisms of European integration and the European Union (EU), specifically: their degree and form; their location among party families and within party systems; cross-national and diachronic trends; their substantive issue contents; whether their ‘Euro-criticism’ is more tactical or ideological; whether claims construct a cleavage; and their potential for transforming party politics. Findings show that a party’s country of origin has little explanatory power, once differences between compositions of party systems are accounted for. Also governing parties are significantly more likely to be pro-European, regardless of party-type. Regional party representatives, by contrast, are significantly more likely to be ‘Euro-critical’. Overall, we find a lop-sided ‘inverted U’ on the right of the political spectrum, but this is generated entirely by the significant, committed Euroscepticism of the British Conservatives andSchweizerische Volkspartei. There is relatively little evidence for Euroscepticism elsewhere at the core, where pro-Europeanism persists. Finally, parties’ Euro-criticism from the periphery mostly constructs substantive political and economic critiques of European integration and the EU, and is not reducible to strategic anti-systemic challenges.

The unfinished Arab revolutions produced unsettling conditions, sectarian wars, counter-revolutionary wars, proxy wars and transitional democracies. US and Arab media responses could not find effective words to describe them and their underlying geopolitical implications. Whether to name them ‘protest’ or ‘unrest’, American mainstream media initially welcomed the events with a cautious curiosity while Arab media favoured a romanticized coverage. But as the protests spread fast and continued, a more dominant popular narrative in the US shaped by the ‘exceptionalist’ perspective about the Middle East emerged. This article explains how dominant discursive framings deployed a form of ‘nature talk’, specifically through names, phrases and locutions such as ‘Arab Spring’, ‘Jasmine revolution’, ‘Arab transition’, and horticultural words like ‘flower’, ‘rose’ and ‘blossom’ to describe the Arab uprisings. Because of an intellectually limiting media-produced racial vernacular during the period of mass protest, this dominant mainstream narrative spoke about the events either by using neo-imperial language that characterized the revolutions as an Islamist threat or by employing culturally reductionist vocabulary which infantilized protesters. The goal here is to place specific media frames and images that such linguistic constructions create and disseminate within the context of power relations, the politics of naming and knowledge production.

In the last few years, great attention has been paid to the protest potential of students, especially in the context of the mass protests of 2021-2022, which happened at both federal and regional levels. An important scientific issue, which is of practical importance for public authorities and politicians, is determining the motivations and actualization of the student protest movements, as the most organized segment of the youth environment. Based on the results of 14 focus groups held in 8 border regions of Siberia and the Far East (including the Altai Krai, the Zabaykalsky Krai, the Primorsky Krai and the Khabarovsk Krai, the Omsk Oblast, as well as Tyva, Buryatia and Altai Republics) as well as the analysis of the social media and blogosphere of the mentioned regions, the author suggests that the students experience fears, weariness, and disappointment. However, the factors actualizing the protest moods are highly limited. Actual precedents and threats of criminal prosecution that have been applied to the political activists by the government since 2019, as well as the pressure from the authorities and the socialization agents, lead to the demoralization of the youth and their refusal to participate not only in protests but also in pro-government events.

Abstract The European Parliament (EP) is the only directly elected institution at the European Union (EU) level, and its empowerment was long regarded to quasi-automatically lead to greater legitimacy of EU politics. The strength of the EP has grown continuously. However, this has not translated into greater appreciation of a crisis-ridden EU which seems more fundamentally questioned than ever before. Starting from the assumption that mass media serve as the most important source of political information and therefore as a crucial connective interface, we explore newspaper contents about the EP and their effects on public support for it to assess the actual link between the people’s representation at EU level and the people at home. The analysis is conducted for EP elections of 2009 and 2014 in Finland, Germany and the UK. Results suggest that effects of coverage on public support of the EP became stronger and more direct in 2014, which is explained by the increased salience of EU politics in times of crisis. However, expectations of what the EP is or should be may have to be adapted to the reality of a second-order parliament.

China is currently Germany’s main trade partner. For many German companies, it is an attractive production site and an important link in global value chains. Despite existing disagreements, both sides in their official documents have continued to view their relationship as “comprehensive strategic partnership”. Yet experts and German mass media have increasingly tended to call China a “systemic rival”. Berlin is aware of the fact that it is having to deal not with a competitor but with a real contender for the world’s economic and technological leadership. Moreover, it is feared that the Chinese model based on the combination of state economic dirigism and political authoritarian methods of government may find a sympathetic ear in some countries. The question is how to build relationship with China in this new situation. The quest for a reasonable balance between calls to give a “tough” answer to the Chinese capital expansion, the drain of technologies and restrictions that German companies are facing in China’s market on the one hand and the necessity to continue a constructive dialogue with the new superpower on the other – that is the main task of German politics with respect to China. In view of the absence of a common political stance to be followed by the European Union countries in their dealings with China and the growing U.S. pressure aimed at securing, from its allies, support of the policy of confrontation towards China, the formulation of the German Chinese policy will most likely have to be situational resembling an attempt to solve an equation with many unknowns. The article explores trade and investment aspects of German-Sino relations and existing contradictions in the domain of sсientific and technical cooperation and technology transfer. Analysis is made of German business complaints regarding conditions of doing business in China, as well as of steps taken by the German authorities to limit Chinese investors’ activity in Germany.

In times of genetically modified food, globalized production and distribution chains, food safety is a major issue in public policy. Although industrial actors have traditionally had remarkable influence on political decision-making in this area, challenger organizations from civil society have gained influence by mobilizing support and shaping public discourse on the Internet. The authors' study analyzes online issue networks concerning food safety in order to assess the actor constellations and coalitions that may serve as an opportunity structure for the mobilization of the issue. By comparing the US, the UK, Germany, and Switzerland, the authors investigate the differences in policy settings between pluralist and corporatist democracies. They find that the mobilization structures related to food safety issues are actively promoted by the challengers themselves. In countries where challengers do not find support within national politics, the challengers' online communication refers to mass media as witnesses to legitimize their concern in public debates.

The study of East Asia as an intriguing Problematik in the field of economic development and as a methodological challenge in comparative politics has fascinated academicians in North America and in Western Europe for a whole generation. Only recently has it become a major concern of policy makers and the general public in the so-called First World. Ironically, as government officials and the mass media begin to show great interest in the rise of industrial East Asia, cautious academicians feel compelled to make more differentiated observations about the region. As a result, the public demand for broad generalizations is often met with considerable qualifications from the academic community. Indeed, scholarly efforts have been made to show that the whole concept, "Industrial East Asia," may be inadvisable, that Japan is an anomaly on the world economic stage and that the rise of these states as the most dynamic region in international trade has very little to do with shared cultural orientations. As a student of East Asian culture, I am excited that interpreting East Asia in the light of conceptual resources learned from the West, originally the professional goal of a small coterie of like-minded researchers, is now shared by a widening network of concerned citizens of the world. I am also grateful that fascination with Japan and the Four "Mini-Dragons" has progressed from exclusively economic and political analyses to include social studies and cultural appreciation. I use the word "progressed" advisedly. Even though I emphasize the vital importance of culture in our understanding of East Asia, I am fully cognizant of factors such as international trade, the geopolitical situation and the institutional sector in formulating an explanation for the rise of industrial East Asia.

This paper analyzes the self-positioning of the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) in world politics. The author has studied BRICS multilateral documents, addressed to the rest of the world, from 2009 to 2019, the documents related to summits procedure, and the related news archives of the international mass media. By means of discourse analysis, the paper traces the collective view of the group on the international issues, the changes in the group’s self-representation, and the reasons for them. The author concludes that, in spite of legally being not an intergovernmental organization, but a forum, BRICS still has a joint and consolidated position on many international issues, which is being outlined in the group’s multilateral documents. Shared views cover such issues as the reform of international financial institutions, the reform of the United Nations Organization, the regional conflicts in Africa and in the Middle East, the need for increase in representation of the Global South in international financial institutions, the international struggle against terrorism and other security threats. In addition, since 2013, BRICS has carried out annual (except for 2019) joint meetings with non-BRICS countries during its summits. In 2013-2016, there were BRICS meetings with the representatives of the chair country’s region. In 2018, there were two meetings held: “BRICS plus” summit with the leading countries of the international institutions of the Global South, and “BRICS outreach” summit with regional leaders. In 2020, both formats were planned, too. Therefore, we can observe the group’s self-positioning as an actor of world politics, however, at the same time, this trend largely depends on the priorities of the chair country every year. Each of the member countries has its own view of the group, and each tries to fulfill its own needs. Probably, the group would be fully self-represented as a world politics actor, if the states’ foreign policies were more consolidated. Yet, they do not reach complete consensus, because of the divergent national interests. This research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant № 18-18-00236)

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Politics and Current Demographic Challenges in Central and Eastern Europe,” guest-edited by Tsveta Petrova and Tomasz Inglot. During the past two decades, many European countries, including Germany, Italy, and Spain in the west, and Poland and Hungary in the east, encountered prolonged demographic crises. These challenges first became evident in the late 1990s as fertility rates declined rapidly, much below the level necessary to ensure a simple replacement of generations. Moreover, since the EU accession, mass labor migration from the new Member States to the more developed western European countries added yet another dimension to the growing population problems. This article attempts to explain variation in governmental policy responses to these developments between two countries, Poland and Hungary. Hungary, owing to its long-term tradition of relatively generous and extensive social programs directed to families, youth, and children, should be expected to handle its population emergency much better than Poland. Yet, the opposite has happened. In the last few years, Poland has proposed and implemented several innovative measures to address fertility and migration pressures while Hungary has remained committed to its traditional social policies in this domain. I will analyze and compare the two cases by examining a combination of historical factors related to the legacies of demographic emergencies defined in terms of national strength and survival, and by examining the politics of family policy, with a special focus on the creation of coalitions of governmental and/or nongovernmental actors that either facilitate or obstruct effective policy innovation.

One of the research topics which intrigues researchers in the subject areas of applied linguistics, international relations and politics is political discourse and the way it is perceived and represented in the media. Researchers have analysed and interpreted the political and international relations discourse of various politicians and diplomats in different countries. By the same token, Iran, as a country with an influence on the political issues of the Middle East and a role in international dynamics and trends, has devoted a plethora of research to itself where researchers have examined and critiqued the international and foreign policies of Iran in various periods of time, in relation to various countries and in connection with various political and international events and situations. However, a search carried out by the present researcher showed that there are not many publications on how the British mass media, newspapers in particular, perceive and represent the Iranian government’s international relations discourse. To address this lacuna, a corpus of news stories and reports extracted from two renowned British newspapers, the Guardian and Daily Mail, was analysed by adopting a double hermeneutic content analysis approach. The results suggest that the two newspapers, in spite of being famous for having polar political views, seem to have similar perceptions and representations of the above discourse. The study also provides directions for further research in other contexts.

On 25 October 1993, British artist Rachel Whiteread revealed her most ambitious sculptural work to date ‐ House. The solidified space of this Victorian-era, terraced home physically existed for a mere 80 days; yet, during this time it became the subject of an intense media interest and heated public debate which reached the United Kingdom’s Houses of Parliament. While House has been discussed in depth within art historical scholarship for almost 30 years, trends in this academic body of work tend to focus on absence and memory in a highly contested public space, as well as thoughts on loss, death, architecture, the art market, politics and gentrification in London’s East End during the latter part of the twentieth century. What is lacking, however, is an examination of House within the larger context of visual culture and what it may, or may not, mean for contemporary viewers. Analysing the historical context of the work’s location through a Marxist lens, reveals the dehumanization which occurred within the East End’s class constructs throughout the nineteenth century, and its effect on housing policies well into the twentieth century. Reading the sculptural work itself, using the methodologies of semiotics, unveils mythologies regarding what is and is not expendable in our western spaces; particularly, the working class, houses and works of art in post-industrial capitalist societies. The ideologies embedded within these mythologies continue to appear in our mass media images to this day, leaving unanswered questions regarding what is truly valued in our societies. Thus, Whiteread’s unique work is an artistic intervention into an image-saturated environment, asking the viewers and readers of cultural texts to consider at what point in time we will seek to change how we treat that which has been arguably undervalued.

The article analyses the foreign direct investment cooperation between the European Union and the People’s Republic of China under the Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative is proposed by China and is aimed at developing cross-regional transport and logistics infrastructure connecting China with South-East, South and Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe. The author examines the history of the initiative and its assessments by international organizations (e.g. the World Bank and the ESCAP UN) and investigates the structure and statistics of the EU-China investment relations, basing on the examples of the most important China’s investment partners (including France, Italy, Germany and the Vishegrad Group countries). The discrepancy between the conditions for the EU and the Chinese investors is highlighted. The author defines and characterizes the major models of the Belt and Road projects’ development, which are used by China in cooperation with the EU Member States. The EU investors in China face restrictions imposed by the national regulation of foreign investments. In particular, the external investors do not have access to the sectors crucially important for national interest and security (e.g. high-tech sectors and mass media). At the same time, Chinese investors’ access to the EU financial markets is not limited, allowing them to become important shareholders in the EU companies and to transfer technologies. It raises concerns within national governments and the European Union itself. The national governments are establishing and adopting screening mechanisms for foreign direct investments and additional regulations to control important sectors and enterprises. At the same time, the EU Member States are developing a common view on the prospects and mechanisms of cooperation with China under the Belt and Road initiative. The EU countries have not yet reached a consensus upon the Belt and Road initiative and the prospects of the EU participation in it, so the author focuses on the strategies of the examined countries. Germany is calling for a common position for all the EU member states and advocates for using the EU-based mechanisms and platforms for cooperation with China. Such demands are also connected with the promotion of a common EU investment screening mechanism in order to protect the Member States’ interests and security. Italy is deepening its cooperation with China through bilateral mechanisms, mainly based on a memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt and Road initiative. France, on the one hand, shares the common interest with Germany regarding the need for the common EU policy towards the Chinese initiative, but on the other hand, the country is deploying new projects with China. The Visegrad Group states are forging their ties with China through bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms and they are interested in the growth of Chinese investment inflows. This undermines the unanimity of policy towards China and the Belt and Road.

Thi conference, which consisted of many sessions, was very wellattended. Since giving a review of each session is impractical, I will discussthose points that relate to academic trategies and intellectual trendsand that are relevant to Muslim academia.Organization: Social disciplines have become very diverse.Sociology, if not at the top, is no exception. Thus it seems that organizinga conference aroW1d a theme is rather limiting. This meeting, entitled "TheChallenge of Democratic Participation," consisted of nine categories: plenary,thematic, regular/section session, special session, didactic seminar,open topic refereed roundtables/informal discussion roundtables, bookpanel/poster sessions, and professional and teaching workshops. Plenarysessions discussed subjects of national or statewide policy concerns, suchas "Reconstructing the Political," or "Reflection of the 1992 Los AngelesRebellion: Views of Community Leaders." The thematk sessions analyzeddemocratic participation on many levels: labor's role in democratization,trade unions, religion and institutions, governance in highereducation, mass media strategies, and gender. The thirty-three special sessionsfocused on timely topics: pan-ethnicity in the United States; the relevanceof the Black church; the politics of educational texts, health care,and the family values debate; xenophobia in Europe; fundamentalism inthe Middle East; NAFTA; and federal support to social sciences ...

RESUMENLa historia del cristianismo no se entiende sin el complejo fenómeno mariano. El culto mariano ha afianzado la construcción de identidades colectivas, pero también individuales. La figura de la Virgen María estableció un modelo de conducta desde cada contexto histórico-cultural, remarcando especialmente los ideales de maternidad y virginidad. Dentro del imaginario católico, la Europa contemporánea ha estado marcada por la formación de una cultura aparicionista que se ha generadoa partir de diversas apariciones marianas que han establecido un canon y un marco de interpretación que ha alimentado las guerras culturales entre secularismo y catolicismo.PALABRAS CLAVE: catolicismo, Virgen María, cultura aparicionista, Lourdes, guerras culturales.ABSTRACTThe history of Christianity cannot be understood without the complex Marian phenomenon. Marian devotion has reinforced the construction of collective, but also of individual identities. The figure of the Virgin Mary established a model of conduct through each historical-cultural context, emphasizing in particular the ideals of maternity and virginity. Within the Catholic imaginary, contemporary Europe has been marked by the formation of an apparitionist culture generated by various Marian apparitions that have established a canon and a framework of interpretation that has fuelled the cultural wars between secularism and Catholicism.KEY WORDS: Catholicism, Virgin Mary, apparicionist culture, Lourdes, culture wars. BIBLIOGRAFÍAAlbert Llorca, M., “Les apparitions et leur histoire”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des religions, 116 (2001), pp. 53-66.Albert, J.-P. y Rozenberg G., “Des expériences du surnaturel”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 145 (2009), pp. 9-14.Amanat A. y Bernhardsson, M. T. (eds.), Imagining the End. Visions of Apocalypsis from the Ancient Middle East to Modern America, London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 2002.Angelier, F. y Langlois, C. 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The role of Russia in the Middle East region has been increasing since the start of operation in Syria. This forces not only Russia, but also the Middle East countries including Saudi Arabia to adjust their politics according to the current situation. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia actively use military technical cooperation to develop relations with other countries, so it is essential that in their interstate relations this instrument should be applied. In this article, the military technical cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia is under consideration. The article aims to determine the dependence of military technical cooperation between the countries on politics. There is a lack of literature on the issue; the main part of it covers military technical cooperation between Russia and the Middle East countries and also the interstate relations with them in general. Due to the specific character of the arms trade sphere, the volume of sources is also insufficient. However, it is possible to carry out an analysis that allows forming the general image of the military technical cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia and its reason on the basis of related mass media publications and SIPRI data. The analysis of the Russia-Saudi Arabia military technical cooperation development shows that its expansion is in correlation with the growing role of Russia in the Middle East. In the middle of the 2010s, a number of contracts were concluded and performed. The following reasons of this expansion can be mentioned: problems in interstate relations between Saudi Arabia and the Western countries caused by the conflict in Yemen and Jamal Khashoggi's killing, the Arms Trade Treaty limitations for trade with Saudi Arabia for Western countries, Saudi Arabia's diversification of arms suppliers, search of Russia for new arms markets, etc. Nevertheless, these reasons cannot be assumed as reasons of crucial importance: the Western countries maintain their positions on the Saudi Arabia arms market despite all the limitations and issues in interstate relations, Saudi Arabia is not the key arms market for Russia; moreover, the integration of Russian arms systems into Saudi Arabia's armed forces formed by the Western military standard is quite complicated. Taking into account all the limitations related to the military technical cooperation between the countries, it can be stated that neither Russia nor Saudi Arabia has crucial economical or technical reasons for its start. Therefore, the following conclusion can be made: military technical cooperation between these countries is not a single process; it is caused by a whole direction of interstate relations, and it is only an instrument to boost them.

As a part of the geographical knowledge introduced by Matteo Ricci from the West into China at the beginning of the 17th century, the concept of “Asia” had undergone a cool reception for over three hundred years and did not become a common idea of world geography until the early 20th century when it was publicized by textbooks and other mass media. As the author points out, Asia is not merely a geographical concept, but also refers to history, culture, and politics. Although early Western missionaries and Chinese scholar-officials like Wei Yuan endowed Asia with a positive meaning as the origin of world civilization, from the mid-19th century on, Chinese intellectuals, out of a sense of crisis caused by the European invasion of Asia, tended to describe Asia as a backward continent subjugated by the white people. In the 1910s, against the background of Japan’s annexation of Korea, Asia was divided into two opposing parts, “the country invading other countries” (Japan) and “the countries being invaded by other countries” (India, Korea, and China). Along with the occupation of other Asian countries by Japan in the name of “the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” in the 1930s and 1940s, the concept of Asia also lost its charm among Chinese nationals.

This research examines the rise of Islamic populism in Indonesia and understands it as an instrument to clear a new pathway for populism movement into popular culture. Ummi magazine is one of the religious media used to be political vehicles of stablishing constituencies, especially for the Tarbiyah movement in the Soeharto era to the current tendency to popularize the Tarbiyah identity as a new lifestyle. Historically, The Tarbiyah movement in Indonesia is a social and political movement among Indonesian Muslimah students, especially activists in the Suharto period. Muslim middle class entrepreneurs launched a campaign of ‘economic jihad. This research uses a qualitative approach by interpreting and studying the data contained in Ummi Magazine. Media studies were carried out in the January 2017 to 2018 editions. The data obtained were described and associated with the magazine's transformation as an ideological medium and Muslim women's lifestyle today. The result shows that the magazine's transformation from ideology magazine to lifestyle magazine can influence readers because there are more new readers. Whether Ummi as a media for da'wah and a women's magazine, it is still perceived by the readers to apply ideological coercion or simply provide an alternative lifestyle or consumption where religious independence is the main characteristic of the magazine. We argue that Islamic populism is mainly a medium for coercion ideology to gain tracks to power, while the poor remain as ‘floating mass’, and entrapped in many so-called 'empowerment' projects. Populism can be interpreted as a communication style in which a group of politicians considers themselves to represent the people’s interests contrasted with elite interests. Nevertheless, the populism approach is gaining momentum. Abdullah, I. (1996). Tubuh, Kesehatan, dan Struktur yang Melemahkan Wanita. Kumpulan Makalah Seminar Bulanan. Pusat Penelitian Kependudukan UGM.Al-Abani, S. M. 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This paper aims to understand the role of Xi Jinping's ideas and perceptions about China's rise in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It released by Xi Jinping in 2013 as the one of ambitious policy to drive China's rise as the world power. He has a strong position in Chinese politics. In addition to leading the government, Xi is the military's commander-in-chief and has the potential to serve as president for three terms. His thoughts have even entered into the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi's accumulation of power began to be juxtaposed with Mao's power who had a sacred position in society. Using constructivist approach, this paper attempts to analyze the role of non-material factor, such as the ideas of leader, in determining the direction of Chinese foreign policy. As the qualitative research, primary data obtained from the analysis of official government documents related to Xi Jinping's speech, the Chinese constitution, BRI, as well as official websites. Meanwhile, mass media news, scientific publications as well as other research reports consider as secondary data. It examines the practice of China's foreign policy is controlled and shaped by Xi Jinping's idea of China's rise. As a result, his ideas have played a role in changing the ways of diplomacy and the use of power that see BRI as China's global strategy, especially in China's relations with the US at the global level and cooperation with Southeast Asian and East Asian countries in order to streamline the BRI project.