Media and Polarization- cross-country perspectives on Media and its impact on politics between the US and Germany
written 20.06.2022 by Quintin Gay, Charlotte Kuberka, and Susan Webb
When comparing the US and Germany one can easily find several striking differences in the structure and composition of both nations. One difference that has been especially of interest is the media systems in both countries as they have derived from very distinct historical and societal circumstances. Several studies have focused on the impact of media (systems) on societal polarization.¹ It has been found that countries with falling polarization spend a lot more money on public broadcasting per capita.² Hence, there is a definitive relation between the media system and polarization within a society. Therefore, this project wants to focus on the differences in the media systems between the US and Germany. Whereas the first chapter will give a general overview in comparing both countries, the second chapter will dive into local newspapers and the issue of trust in media. Lastly, the third chapter will investigate the impact of social media on politician’s behavior using a case example of a German MP.
1. Comparison of the media systems in Germany and the US-
by Quintin Gay
Political polarization and trust in the media are two common topics of discussion in the United States. Oftentimes they revolve around how the media landscape has evolved, and include accusations of bias as well as of blatant delivery of misinformation. One place that these conversations rarely go, however, is towards discussion of public media, and the role it plays in polarization and trust.
While polarization has increased in the United States, polarization in Germany has declined over the past decades. Given that many people in the US place blame on the media system for creating polarization and lack of trust, looking at media in Germany and specifically how it differs from media in the United States offers insights into how media in the United States could evolve or be structured differently to reduce polarization.
One of the most immediate of the differences between these media systems is the role of public media in consumption, and well as the history of public media in each country. In the United States, public media was initially distributed through colleges and universities, until the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 ³, which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. From this, National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service distribute radio and television service respectively at federal and local levels. Initially, advocates for public broadcasting and educational television pushed for public broadcasting to be funded through a tax on TV and radio sets, but funding is now provided by the federal government. This has led to many attacks on public broadcasting, with notable politicians, most recently Donald Trump, attempting to reduce or eliminate funding.
In Germany, public media was first created in West Germany after 1945. In 1950, regional radio stations evolved into a federal structure, with regional broadcasters under the national public broadcaster ARD.⁴ ARD is very successful to this day in Germany — anecdotally it is much more popular than public media in the US, and statistics reflect this. Roughly 12% of all Germans tune into ARD’s daily programming, compared to 3% of Americans who tune into the most popular programming in the United States. In Germany, public media is funded at a much higher level than in the United States. Funding is provided by a tax on households that is roughly 20 euros per month, so is less susceptible to political whims. This leads to $135 per capita in public funding and $157 per capita in total funding. In the United States, funding checks in at $3 per capita from the government, and $9 per capita total.⁵
While we do not know that strong public media is what creates declining polarization in Germany in comparison to the United State’s increasing polarization, it is worth considering whether investing in or reshaping public media could improve the health of America’s democracy. However, it is important to consider that the United State’s political and media environments are not the same as those of Germany. Funding plays a role, but so does the media oversight structure, the educational tasks required by law, and when private media was introduced in comparison to public media. With conservative politicians often accusing public media of catering to liberals, it is hard to believe that there would be bilateral support for increasing funding, or that increased funding would be seen as moving towards an increase of trust and decrease in polarization. However, Germany still offers a valuable lesson to the United States media that we do not only have one option for how our media operates and interacts with society — we have many options to explore, and many models to learn from.
2. Local media and newspapers and the trust in media sources-
by Susie Webb
Accusations of “fake news” are anything but uncommon in the United States. Across the country there is widespread distrust in the news media systems from people with all different backgrounds. This disenfranchisement with news media systems has proven dangerous to modern-day democracy. In Germany, however, that same distrust is not as widely prevalent. In October, 2020, a survey by Statista Research Department found that 67 percent of respondents believed information from the German news media to be credible.⁶ Another survey on behalf of Westdeutscher Rundfunk found that in Germany there are high trust values of greater than 80 percent.⁷
Why then is trust in journalism much more widespread in Germany than in the United States? A lot of it comes down to the foundational differences in structure of the two respecting news media systems. The loss of local news has been hurting the United States for a long time. Across the country, more and more local news deserts have been emerging as small town papers struggle to stay afloat. Economics plays a large role in this. It is difficult to run a sustainable local news business in today’s media era. Print papers are expensive, and though the flexibility of online news offers an appealing solution to this, it’s hard to sustain consistent readership online without making certain quality sacrifices.
In order to get more clicks, some local newspapers in the United States have resorted to publishing sensationalized headlines. While the natural tendency of people is to click on these headlines — thereby bringing in more readership and more money to these papers — this sensationalism can also lead to alienation and more distrust. But, the newspapers that don’t publish sensationalized headlines struggle to find readers and often are forced to close their doors. This helps no one.
As local news continues to be underfunded, journalists flock to national newspapers. No one goes into journalism school with hopes of working for a local newspaper — most emerging journalists set their starry eyes on papers like The New York Times and Washington Post. This focus on national news, though, means that the smaller stories that actually affect people in their own backyards go unreported. Some of the most important news stories are on the actions of local governing and school boards. These are the representatives who hold the most impact on people’s day-to-day lives. National newspapers like The New York Times don’t adequately cover all of these small community stories. When no one is in the room — especially local board rooms — the doors are open for corruption to emerge.
Because of these factors, the average American isn’t properly exposed to the good work and powerful impacts strong journalism can have on their community. It is easier to accuse a national newspaper that never writes about your community of spreading “fake news” when you don’t feel represented in its coverage.
It’s important to note too that the dearth of local journalism isn’t the sole problem fueling distrust in America’s news media system. Partisanship among national newspapers and poor journalism ethics are widespread. Still, that lack of trustworthy local journalism and the structure of news in the United States does play a large role.
Germany’s news media structure is far different from that of the United States. In Germany, there is a public media network that is widely respected. With different regional branches, it is able to better cover local news stories. Radio and television dominate the German news media system with a largely decentralized broadcast system in place.8 With that said, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an anti-news movement in Germany. With the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of pushback against mainstream news coverage that contributed to the rise of Querdenken, an anti-COVID-19 lockdown movement. This mirrors the emergence of many calls of fake news that emerged in the United States because of COVID-19 restrictions.
That lack of trust in the press is dangerous. It can fuel violent acts of terrorism like the January 6 insurrection in the United States. That insurrection came in part from ignorance, hate, and white supremacy being distributed through corrupt, alternative news sources. Those news sources, though, wouldn’t exist as strongly if there was trust in the national newspaper system. Furthermore, that ignorance is also fueled by the lack of news consumption. An uneducated public can lead to a dangerous public.
In all, a faithful press and trust in the press is key in ensuring the preservation of democracy. While the United States and Germany have both faced backlash to the news media, the United States is unique in its sheer mass of “fake news” protests. With trust in the press and a free press as crucial lynchpins to democratic freedoms, the United States must adopt a better news media system. The German public media model may not be an ideal solution to all the problems in the United States, but it presents a good option to pull from for combatting that distrust in the press.
3. “The Case Lauterbach” and the role of social media in nowadays politics- Are we going into a more personalized way of politics?
by Charlotte Kuberka
With the emergence of social media (especially twitter and Instagram) many legislators have started to communicate with their electorate within these means of media. In the following text, I will focus on the case of a German MP from the district Köln in the West of Germany and try to use it as an example in illustrating how social media is being increasingly used as a tool for the own personalized electoral campaign offside the field of the party. To do so, I will firstly describe the differences in the party system in Germany compared to the US before discussing the case of Karl Lauterbach and his rise into a ministerial mandate due to his use of social media in the last election in Germany in 2021.
Germany has always been a party- dominated system and within the party power structures most of the MPs had to subordinate themselves to the party line. Hence, party discipline or party constraints were always dominant for those MPs in parliament.⁹ So it was common sense, that if you wanted to gain success and a mandate within your party that you better behaved and communicated in line with the party or you would not get set up for a position. This party-based system in Germany has always differed to the American system of personalized politics in which not the party but its candidate was the dominant player in the election campaign.
Yet, looking back at the most recent election in September 2021 in Germany, one could ask the question whether or not this has changed also here in Germany.
Especially one case has struck my attention and that is the case Karl Lauterbach. Lauterbach is a politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and has been elected as MP in his constituency for many years. However, as he was always very strong in communicating and emphasizing his own policies and deviations from the party line, he was never considered for any mandate or position of power as most of the Social democratic leaders did not want to deal with deviants as they would jeopardize the unity of the party.
However, during the COVID-19 crisis Lauterbach gained a lot of popularity in his Instagram and twitter channels as he was able to state — due to his background as an epidemiologist — uncomfortable truths about the pandemic and the improper behavior of the previous government, and therewith was deviating strongly from the party line as it is expected from party members to support the government when their party is part of it. Hence, he became very popular and respected as an expert when it came to matters of the COVID-19 pandemic and many people believed in his statements and evaluations of the situation.¹⁰
With the electoral success of the SPD in the national election in 2021, the question arose who was going to get selected for the mandate of the minister of health. And Lauterbach- even though having deviated from the party line a lot- got the position as Minister of Health as the pressure of the public due to its popularity was so big that the SPD leaders decided to choose him. Consequently, it is visible how much the influence of social media on a MPs self- presentation in contrast to the party is affecting the internal power structures of the parties themselves in terms of distributing mandates.¹¹
Moreover, what became visible in the case Lauterbach is his attempt to disconnect himself from the party. While it is common to use uniform election poster and advertisements within one party, Lauterbach created his own poster which differed a lot from the usual SPD election campaign, not only in the color scheme he used and deviated from the typical SPD red.
However, now being elected as minister of health his popularity obviously has declined as he was not able so far to follow his own ideological policies in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, what is striking is that even though his behavior as minister is more in line with the party position, his behavior in the social media remains similar to what it was before to the outsider (without having done an in-depth analysis of social media behavior). Hence, he continues to paint a different picture of himself and his own attitudes, or is justifying his ministerial behavior compared to what he is communicating and doing in his function as minister.
Having depicted the political rise of Karl Lauterbach due to his means of personalized electoral campaigns and social media communication, the question arises if we can find a general trend within the German politics and the political communication or if Karl Lauterbach’s behavior is rather seen as a single case. Future research could focus on how German MPs use their social media accounts to draw attention and gain popularity from their electorate and whether or not social media is being increasingly used as a tool for a more personalized style of politics which would make up a very important change within the German party system.
Citations
¹ Boxell, Levi, Matthew Gentzkow, and Jesse M. Shapiro. Cross-country trends in affective polarization. No. w26669. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020.
² https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/what-germany-can-teach-america-about- polarization/619582/
³ https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/npr--pbs-and-cpb_the-story-of-us-public-media/43877508
⁴ https://www.daserste.de/ard/die-ard/ARD-Broschuere-englisch-100.pdf
⁵ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/what-germany-can-teach-america-about- polarization/619582/
⁶ https://www.statista.com/statistics/968721/credibility-media-germany/
⁷ https://www.kas.de/en/web/balkanmedia/media-news/detail/-/content/wdr-survey-trust-in-the-german- media-has-increased
7 https://www.kas.de/en/web/balkanmedia/media-news/detail/-/content/wdr-survey-trust-in-the-german- media-has-increased
⁸ https://medialandscapes.org/country/germany
⁹ Sieberer, Ulrich, et al. “Roll-call votes in the German Bundestag: A new dataset, 1949–2013.” British journal of political science 50.3 (2020): 1137–1145.
¹⁰ https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/corona-experte-lauterbach-100.html
¹¹ https://www.wuv.de/Archiv/Twitter-w%C3%A4hlt-neuen-Gesundheitsminister
¹² https://www.radioleverkusen.de/artikel/weniger-beschmierte-wahlplakate-1056428.html
