Master of Arts Thesis

Master of Arts Thesis

Euroculture

University of Göttingen (Home) University of Uppsala (Host)

August 2016

The Refugee Discourse in German Media

An analysis of the changes provoked by the events of New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne

Submitted by:

Anika Braun-Klöpper Matrikelnummer: 21434765 Student ID Uppsala: 9752238221672325 +49 15789560922 / anika.braun.kloepper@gmail.com

Supervised by:

Andreaz Wasniowski Prof. Dr. Samuel Salzborn

Place, date

MA Programme Euroculture Declaration

I, Anika Braun-Klöpper, hereby declare that this thesis, entitled “The Refugee Discourse in German Media - An analysis of the changes provoked by the events of New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne”, submitted as partial requirement for the MA Programme Euroculture, is my own original work and expressed in my own words. Any use made within this text of works of other authors in any form (e.g. ideas, figures, texts, tables, etc.) are properly acknowledged in the text as well as in the bibliography.

I hereby also acknowledge that I was informed about the regulations pertaining to the assessment of the MA thesis Euroculture and about the general completion rules for the Master of Arts Programme Euroculture.

Signed ...

Date ...

16.08.2016

“Fear has never been a good adviser, neither in our personal lives nor in our society.” ¹ Angela Merkel

1 “TIME Person of the Year 2015: Angela Merkel,” TIME.com, accessed July 23, 2016, http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2015-angela-merkel/.

2 “Migrant Men and European Women,” The Economist, accessed January 31,

I Table of content

I TABLE OF CONTENT ... IV II TABLE OF FIGURES ... V

1 INTRODUCTION ... 1

2 THEMATIC BACKGROUND ... 4

2.1 THE REFUGEE CRISIS AND NEW YEAR’S EVE 2015 IN COLOGNE ... 4

2.2 LÜGENPRESSE ... 6

3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ... 11

4 STATE OF THE ART ... 13

5 METHODOLOGY ... 16

6 APPROACH – DATA COLLECTION ... 19

7 DATA ANALYSIS ... 22

7.1 PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS ... 22

7.2 MAIN ANALYSIS ... 26

7.2.1 QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS ... 27

7.2.2 QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS ... 30

7.2.2.1 Threat of the foreign male ... 31

7.2.2.2 The integration of Muslim refugees ... 37

7.2.2.3 Right-Wing Extremism ... 41

7.2.2.4 Fear and Insecurity ... 43

7.2.2.5 The politische Mitte ... 46

7.2.2.6 Concerned Citizens ... 47

7.2.2.7 Solutions offered ... 49

7.2.2.8 Changes provoked by Cologne ... 51

7.3 RESULTS ... 52

8. SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK ... 55

BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 57

ANNEX ... 65

ANNEX 1: COMPLETE LIST OF ANALYSED ARTICLES FOR THE PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS ... 65

ANNEX 2: COMPLETE LIST OF ANALYSED ARTICLES FOR THE MAIN ANALYSIS ... 67

II Table of Figures

Figure 1: Topics brought into connection with NYE in articles from January 1-9 ... 23

Figure 2: Quantitative results of the SZ ... 28

Figure 3: Quantitative results of the FAZ ... 28

Figure 4: Quantitative results of Der Spiegel ... 29

Figure 5: Quantitative results of FOCUS ... 29

1 Introduction

Since the summer of 2015, when the refugee crisis became an immediate reality for Germany, the topic of refugees has dominated the print media. The high amount of people entering Germany daily, has wide-ranging affects on the country. Repercussions could also be felt on EU-level, where the Schengen Agreement was put to a test and evermore EU-countries reintroduced border controls. In the international press, Germany became portrayed as one of the main European actors in the search for humanitarian solutions to the refugee crisis. The political engagement, especially the commitment of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the civic commitment that was shown by helpers all over the country received international attention and praise.

In early January 2016 reports about sexual gang assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities became public. As the culprits were reported to be large groups of immigrant men, Germany’s handling of the refugee crisis became re-evaluated as a whole in the international news. Concerns were expressed that the country had lost control over the situation, and that it was becoming increasingly insecure. Others worried that the renewed assessment of the circumstances would be at the expense of all refugees, who might now be taken under general suspicion.

In Germany, the happenings of NYE triggered a range of political decisions, such as a change in the law governing sexual offences and in the deportation proceedings of Asylum seekers. If similarly drastic changes have also occurred in the refugee discourse is to be assessed in this thesis. While the changes on the political landscape are clear, definable and recorded in writing, a possible change in the general media refugee discourse could have passed without much notice. It would be a subtle change that probably happened subconsciously rather than that it was dictated and decided on. This does not mean that it is of lesser impact. In fact, language can affect the way people feel about things and the presentation of news can influence people’s opinion about the matter. The selection of print media that will be analysed in the scope of this paper consists of mainstream, high-circulation papers and magazines. A relevant share of the German population is thus confronted with the papers’ presentation of refugees and the framing of the crisis. As Germany has a democratic political system, these people can affect the political system. The power of such a discourse design is just indirect and often disguised, which does not mean that it is neglectable. It is

consequently important to inspect possible alterations closely and to render them visible.

The refugee discourse in the print media in particular, is of interest at this point in time. On the one hand, there is the refugee crisis that has had political consequences of significant effect. The shakiness of the Schengen Agreement and the refugee deal made between the EU and Turkey are only two examples that illustrate the implication the situation has on the intra-European relations. Furthermore, an increase in right-wing movement all over Europe and rising numbers of right-wing extremist motivated crimes in Germany can be observed in correlation to the expanding numbers of refugees. On the other hand, the print media make up for a valuable study object at this point in time, as much criticism about the way the German media works has been uttered. Some people, who vociferously declare their distrust for the press at demonstrations, are of the opinion that the press collaborates with the politics and consequently spreads lies in their favour. To look at the refugee discourse from the angle of before and after NYE is significant, as no such large-scheme sexual crime has ever happened before in the Federal Republic. The analysis of such an event thus offers yet inexistent insights.

The aim of this thesis is to identify the potential changes in the refugee discourse after NYE. This will be done by looking at the discourse before and after NYE and comparing the ways of reporting in a qualitative manner. The changes in the discourse will be presented and their link to NYE will be evaluated. In order to present a more wholesome picture, a short quantitative analysis will be created to further underpin the findings. While the main goal of the thesis is the definition of shifts in the discourse, the analysis is also designed to assert if the criticism of the press has been substantiate.

The analysis will be based upon the four before named papers that are all looked at in the same time frame around NYE. The scope of the study does not allow a specific analysis of the refugee discourse as a whole, as this is a discourse of an immense size due to its significance for various sectors (internal politics, security, international relations, real estate, education…). Hence, certain parts of the discourse will be sought out in a preliminary analysis that will then be used as a basis for the main research.

Seen as there were changes provoked in other areas, such as the political one, an influence of NYE on the refugee discourse can be expected. One assumption is that the impact was mostly negative and that it has lead to an increasingly negative portrayal of immigrants. A positive affect on the discourse cannot be expected, as the behaviour of the involved men at NYE was openly antagonistic as well as radical and cannot be

expected to be framed in a positive way. Quotes like this one from the Economist support the suspicion that NYE triggered changes in the refugee debate:

After Cologne, when Europeans think of refugees, many no longer picture persecuted families or toddlers. Instead they see menacing young men imbued with the sexism that is all too common across the Middle East and North Africa.² The analysis is based on both newspapers as well as magazines. To facilitate the reading of the analysis the sum of both was regularly referred to as ‘papers.’ As all original texts used for the analysis were in German language, the author, an English translation of all quotes used was done by the author. To avoid hard reading, only the short quotes can be found in both English and German in the main text. Longer quotes are used in the English version only in the main text. The original quote can be found in the respective footnote.

2 “Migrant Men and European Women,” The Economist, accessed January 31,

http://discover.economist.com/?a=21688397&cid1=d/soc/Facebook/dyn/21688397/20160120- 00:00am/paid/social-LA/BR-PO/BRPII/n/subs/DE/BR-LIT&cid3=UM.

2 Thematic Background

In order to understand the dimensions of the evening of 31^st December 2015 and the often referred to Lügenpresse, the first part of the thesis will be giving a thematic introduction into the issues.

2.1 The Refugee Crisis and New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne

According to the UNHCR there were more than 60 million people fleeing in 2015, either cross borders or within their own country.³ The war in Syria is one of the main reasons for the massive movement of people, but also conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as expulsion, persecution and poverty in various regions have lead to a great augmentation of refugee numbers. Catastrophic conditions in refugee camps along the border have lead to massive waves of people attempting to enter Europe. In the night between September 4^th and 5^th German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the German border to let thousands of refugees - who were stranded in Hungary under catastrophic conditions - into Germany. An article in FOCUS later referred to this night as “historischer Wendepunkt” (a historic turning point), another article nominated September 4^th the day of the year 2015.⁴ Trains from Hungary arrived with thousands of refugees who were greeted enthusiastically by local helpers. It is the day that marked the beginning of the refugee crisis in the German consciousness. FOCUS author van Ackeren goes so far as to claim that this decision and the wave of refugees that it entailed permanently changed Germany.⁵ Having made the decision to open the borders, Merkel became a symbolic figure in the fight for the human rights of the refugees. As advocate for the open-door-policy and firm believer in the humanitarian imperative, she was named person of the year by the TIME magazine, which also gave her the title

“chancellor of the free world.”⁶ These politics, just as much as the pictures of refugees being welcomed in Germany became known world-wide as an example of the establishment of a welcome culture for refugees.

3 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Global Forced Displacement Hits Record High,”

UNHCR, accessed July 22, 2016, http://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2016/6/5763b65a4/global-forced- displacement-hits-record-high.html.

4 Margarete van Ackeren, Daniel Goffart, and Gregor Mayer, “Der Tag, Der Deutschland Veränderte,”

FOCUS, December 19, 2015, 24; Ulrich Reitz, “Die Hundertjährigen, Die ...,” FOCUS, December 19, 2015, 3.

5 van Ackeren, Goffart, and Mayer, “Der Tag, Der Deutschland Veränderte.”

6 “TIME Person of the Year 2015.”

This welcome culture was challenged when the assaults at the end of the year became public knowledge. During the night of the 31^st December 2015 to the 1^st of January 2016 many German cities experienced violence in a dimension that was yet unknown to them: large groups of men of Arabic and Northern African decent gathered on public squares and sexually harassed women while often also stealing their phones and wallets. More than 1200 women became victims of over 2000 men.⁷ Comparable crimes executed in similar ways, though on a much smaller scale, happened in various cities in Germany and other countries, like Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria the same night.⁸ The extent of the attacks in Cologne (650 reported cases) was the reason that the incidents in this city received the most media attention. About half on the men are assumed to have come to Germany less than a year ago and a correlation between the refugee crisis and the events of NYE can thus be made.⁹ The men who are believed to be the culprits are for the most part from Maghreb, Morocco and Algeria.¹⁰ Cologne became internationally used as a symbol for failed refugee politics.

The news from Cologne created a counter-image of Germany’s relation with the refugees. The potential danger that was suddenly connected with the uncontrolled wave of incoming people was presented as a negative antithesis to Merkel’s famous exclamation “Wir schaffen das!” (We can handle this!). The solution-oriented and welcoming attitude received deep cracks from the events of NYE. It was not just what happened that night, but also the reactions of the police and the press that shed a negative light on the German refugee politics.

The magnitude of the attacks on women in Cologne stayed mostly unknown until Monday afternoon, four days after the attacks had taken place. Apart from in local newspapers in Cologne, which interviewed victims early on, there was little press coverage. The press conference given by Lord Mayor, Henriette Reker, and Chief of

7 Georg Mascolo and Britta von der Heide, “BKA-Bilanz: 1200 Frauen wurden Opfer von Silvester- Gewalt,” sueddeutsche.de, July 10, 2016, sec. politik, http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/uebergriffe-in- koeln-frauen-wurden-opfer-von-silvester-gewalt-1.3072064.

8 “Sex-Übergriffe Zu Silvester Auch in Schweiz Und Österreich,” Http://www.hna.de, January 7, 2016, http://www.hna.de/welt/sex-uebergriffe-silvester-auch-stuttgart-oesterreich-zr-6014642.html;

“Silvesternacht in Finnland: Auch in Finnland Und Schweden Gab Es Übergriffe Auf Frauen,” accessed July 25, 2016, http://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/silvesternacht-in-finnland-auch-in- finnland-und-schweden-gab-es-uebergriffe-auf-frauen/12807022.html.

9 Mascolo and Heide, “BKA-Bilanz.”

10 Caroline Fetscher, “Ist Es Angst? Wirklich Angst?,” Tagesspiegel, April 9, 2016,

http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/100-tage-nach-den-uebergriffen-von-koeln-ist-es-angst-wirklich- angst/13425324.html.

Police, Wolfgang Albers, on Monday afternoon made the extend of the attacks clear and finally triggered national as well as international reporting.¹¹

The initial press release of the Cologne police force stated that the festivities had been mostly peaceful.¹² This was a clear misrepresentation of the actual circumstances.

The systematic concealment of the offenders’ nationality was considered to be a mishandling of the situation.¹³ As a consequence of this, Chief of Police Albers was moved to early retirement on the morning of Friday January the 8^th. After the information about the full extend of the attacks of New Years Eve became public, the media in Germany received a lot of criticism and the Tagespresse called the night of New Year’s Eve “the best propaganda present the AfD¹⁴ has received until now.”¹⁵ The fact that the reports about the event were published with a significant delay made people believe that the press wanted to hide the events as best as possible from becoming known and fuelled the movement of Lügenpresse.

2.2 Lügenpresse

The phenomenon of Lügenpresse will be discussed as the counter discourse to the mainstream media. It is a term used by people who have lost their respect for and believe in the German press. The term means as much as “Lying press” or “press of lies” and is supposed to describe the press by accusing it of presenting wrong facts or changing realities.

The term stems from the nineteenth century and has since then been repeatedly used for radical right purposes. Joseph Goebbels used it systematically during the Second World War to denounce his critics.¹⁶ The term has peaked again in 2015 as a more mainstream term in the context of the refugee crisis. The term has been used especially much in the discourse of Pegida demonstrations, where it is used as a political catchword that undermines the authority of the press. It also came up in a tight entanglement with an anti-Merkel discourse and has become increasingly aggressive.

Attacks on journalists have happened in the form of aggressive verbal confrontations,

11 Jan Bielicki, “Der Weg Zum Skandal,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 8, 2016.

12 Bernd Dörries and Kristiana Ludwig, “Nicht Zu Fassen,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 7, 2016.

13 Bernd Dörries, “Sturz Eines Pannen-Präsidenten,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 9, 2016.

14 Note by the author: AfD is the abbreviation for ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ (an alternative for Germany), a populist party founded in early 2013 that has received increasing attention for the utterance of racists comments and could assemble a growing voter ship through protest attitude they have towards mainstream politics.

15 Fetscher, “Ist Es Angst? Wirklich Angst?”

16 Sonja Vogel, “Die Kleine Wortkunde: „Lügenpresse“,” Die Tageszeitung, Spring 2015, sec. Alltag, http://www.taz.de/!5023884/.

deathly threats and physical attacks that ended with hospitalisation.¹⁷ The Managing Editor for BILD in Eastern Germany, Thomas Liebenberg, says that they are only ever attending demonstrations like Pegida with at least two journalists anymore, as reporting from such events has become dangerous.

The loud voices of protests have directed a lot of attention to the relationship between the people and the mainstream media. Studies and surveys have been carried out to understand how much of the trust in the media has been lost. A study of the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach shows that the numbers of sceptical people is relatively high, but that it is not higher than in other years, despite the feeling the protests might transmit. 39 per cent of the adult population of Germany in general and 44 per cent of the adult population in the Eastern parts believe that there is something to the allegation of calling the press Lügenpresse, meaning they believe that media twists certain facts and cover up others.¹⁸ As parts of the population are now so vocal about their disapproval it is easy to overlook the fact that that the general feeling towards the media has improved: the percentage of people who are generally content with the coverage of the media has risen by 5 per cent in the last six years to 52 per cent.¹⁹ The refugee crisis though, is seen more critical than the average reporting: Only 42% of the people state that that they are happy with the coverage in this field.²⁰ Things that are being criticised are, for instance, that too many families are shown on the pictures, while it’s mostly men who arrive, that there is not much information on the risks of the mass immigration and that critical voices are largely ignored.²¹ The criticism often implies that this is not a choice the media make for themselves. The term

“Systemmedien” (system media) is used like a synonym to Lügenpresse and often claims that the press, just as other institutions, are underlying the rules of the governing politics. A common belief is that there is an agreement between journalists and the politicians in Berlin not to report about the negative consequences of the refugee crisis.²² The assumed control of the media is often described as coming “von oben”

(somewhere from the top).²³

17 Markus Brauck et al., “Die Vertrauensfrage,” Der Spiegel, February 13, 2016, 58–64.

18 Renate Dr. Köcher, “Vertrauen Und Skepsis - Bürger Und Medien,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, n.d.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Uwe Buse et al., “Angespannt,” Der Spiegel, December 12, 2015, 29–34.

22 Brauck et al., “Die Vertrauensfrage.”

23 Ibid.

The late appearance of the information about NYE and the reluctance to publish the men’s nationalities fuelled the accusations anew. Those people already critical of the press felt reassured in their assumption. As a consequence of the lack of trust, the Internet has been increasingly used as a platform to exchange the information that is believed is be held back by the authorities. In comparison to the mainstream media, which often present resembling views of the same events, the Internet shows a great variety of opinions. The World Wide Web provides content that people can add and alter at an incredible speed. While print journalists might need to take some time to research and cover a certain story adequately, people can already exchange their personal version of what happened online. The general participation online has allowed the creation and spreading of obscene and fake stories about refugees. The discrepancies between the reports in the print media and the accounts online has created more distrust and thus strengthened the protest movements further.

The Lügenpresse discourse can be seen as a conspiracy theory. It is fuelled by the right and populist forces, which also use the rumours to gain more popularity. The discourse was shaped to a significant part at Pegida demonstrations as well as is discussion of the AfD. One example is the creation of the word “Pinocchiopresse”

(Pinocchio press) which is used as a synonym for Lügenpresse, but moves the word away out of the right corner. Apart from the scepticism of the press, slowly growing scorn for democracy and a quickly growing movement of xenophobia have been taken place in Germany.²⁴

According to French writer Houellebecq dropping the publication of critical reports about Muslims, out of fear that these will be seen as xenophobic, results in movements like Pegida.²⁵ And he seems to be right: Accounts like the one of criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, who was a guest at a political talk show and was asked not to mention refugees in correlation with sexual attacks on women, play into the hands of people from the Right.²⁶ Just as much as the request made in an internal document by the police of North-Rhine Westphalia that asked to avoid the word

“refugee” and to use “immigrant” instead and by that changes the reality slightly.²⁷ It

24 Melanie Amann, Maik Baumgärtner, Markus Feldkirchen, et al., “Aufstand Der Ängstlichen,” Der Spiegel, no. 51 (December 12, 2015): 19.

25 Karin Beier and Edgar Selge, Reiz der sanften Diktatur, Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 6, 2016.

26 miha., “Regieführung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 9, 2016.

27 Jan-Philip Hein et al., “Das Schweige - Kartell,” FOCUS, January 16, 2016.

thus seems as if the right has been able to profit from the avoidance of certain topics in the mainstream press.

The debates about Lügenpresse and the obvious misinformation after NYE raised much awareness and resulted in various attempts of the press to regain trust among the people. In some cases, high ranked news operators reacted to the accusation by admitting mistakes. ZDF Chief editor Elmar Theveßen publicly declared the omission of the report about NYE in the 7 pm news show on January 5^th an error of judgement.²⁸ Other media operators referred to the German press codex, a voluntarily set of rules for self-control for journalists, which states that the belonging to the respective ethnic, social, religion or national group shall only be named if they are relevant to the case.²⁹ This rule serves especially the protection of minorities, and cannot be considered a general restraint. In the case of NYE, it would have been correct for the media to report that the offenders were from Northern Africa if the police and the victims were of such an impression, said Lutz Tillmanns, General Manager of the Presserat.³⁰ Other reactions have been increasing attempts of the press to work transparently and to explain their work and their challenges to their doubters. One example is the creation of the domain www.Lügenpresse.de, a page where journalists shed light on their point of view of the Lügenpresse reproaches.

In the scope of trying to regain trust, the mentioning of the nationality of people involved in a crime has been discussed widely among politicians, journalists and society. If a problem can only be solved once it has been addressed, it is important to do so, even if this means to tell the public that the majorities of rapists in Cologne are of Turkish decent claims Alice Schwarzer.³¹ Also Minister of Internal Affairs, Thomas de Maizière, warned not to blame refugees as a whole group, but if refugees were among the culprits this is a fact that can be addressed.³² Social worker Ercan Yasaroglu claims that making migration a taboo would entail negative consequences for all migrants, as they would all be taken into account for what few of them had done.³³

28 Elmar Theveßen, “Warum Die Heute 19 Uhr-Sendung Am Montag Nicht Über Köln Berichtete.,”

January 5, 2016,

https://m.facebook.com/ZDFheute/photos/a.275406990679.144521.112784955679/10153865883565680/

. 29 Presserat, PUBLIZISTISCHE GRUNDSÄTZE (PRESSEKODEX), n.d.

30 Heribert Prantl, “Wann Schweigen Geboten Ist,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 19, 2016.

31 Alice Schwarzer and Anne Wizorek, Ich möchte nicht deine Erbin sein, Der Spiegel, January 16, 2016, 32. 32 “Köln: De Maizière Kritisiert Polizeieinsatz,” Die Zeit, January 6, 2016,

http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2016-01/koeln-silvester-uebergriffe-polizei-thomas-de-maiziere.

33 Julian Kutzim, “Köln Passiert Hier Täglich,” FOCUS, January 23, 2016, 30.

It seems like the German media needs a new way of dealing with mistakes. If mistakes occur they need to be addressed and corrected after. A bigger diversity of information, and showing issues from different sides might contribute to an increase in trust again. The negative way that media is now talked about can create a negative spiral. Brinkbäumer argues how it is dangerous if established media is talked about in a negative way, as this negative way to speak eventually creates distrust.³⁴

The discussions that started after Cologne might help the media to restructure their culture and regain trust again. It might be a chance for everybody involved in the process to start having more transparent processes again. What should not happen though, is what some people witness: that Cologne is misused as an excuse to voice all negative thoughts about immigrants in vulgar ways.³⁵ Danish Journalists Ulrik Haagerup knows that negative headlines are easier to sell, but showing different sides of the same story will enhance credibility.³⁶ It is not the task of the media to protect the reader from the truth, so naming the nationality of the delinquent is acceptable to do, as long as the freedom of press is not used to systematically mark a certain group of people.³⁷ It is vital that the media doesn’t take over the job of politicians; their reporting should show all sides of the issue and not just reproduce the goings-on of the politics.

To wonder about the origin of the culprits and to ask about the influence their cultural had on them and their behaviour must not be deemed racist.³⁸

34 Klaus Brinkbäumer, “Das Jahr Der Flüchtlinge,” Der Spiegel, December 12, 2015, 10.

35 Beier and Selge, Reiz der sanften Diktatur.

36 “HORIZONT:Dänischer Journalist Soll ORF-Redakteure Inspirieren,” HORIZONT, accessed July 22, 2016, http://www.horizont.at/home/news/detail/daenischer-journalist-soll-orf-redakteure-inspirieren.html.

37 Heribert Prantl, “Maulkörbe, Selbstgemacht?,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 16, 2016.

38 Christiane Hoffmann, “Misere Und Machismo,” Der Spiegel, January 9, 2016, 20.

3 Theoretical Framework

There are various theoretical frameworks that help understand the struggles triggered in a society by the arrival of large amounts of people from a different part of the world. It is first of all the way that humans define themselves as differently from others that needs to be understood. The first theory that will be introduced is therefore the one of

‘Imagined communities’ by Benedict Anderson. It clarifies the creation of nations and the separation of groups of people into “Us” and “Them,” or the in- and the out-group, as they will be also referred to in this thesis. The specificity of the out-group that will be in the centre of this thesis will then be clarified by the theory of ‘Orientalism’ by Edward Said.

Anderson calls nation-ness and nationalism “artefacts of a particular kind” that have “profound emotional legitimacy.”³⁹ He describes a nation as an imagined (as both limited and sovereign) political community. It is imagined because the people in the community will, to a large extend, never know the majority of the people who they are in the community with and even though the distinction between one community to another is made up, it is still there, as the nations have borders and boundaries. The people within one group feel a sense of belonging to each other, “a deep horizontal, comradeship” as Anderson calls it.⁴⁰ To illustrate how deep this devotion to the society as such is, he names the commitment of fighting for ones nation, and thus showing the willingness to kill and die for a group of people that is largely unknown to oneself. As everybody in the modern world is expected to have a nation, as Anderson stresses, identification with the nation can be expected to happen to some degree.

The separation into certain groups requires the definition of the Other as opposite and demarcation to the own group.

Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself.⁴¹

The construction of one certain Other, namely people from the Orient and Muslim people, has been described by Edward Said in 1979. In his book ‘Orientalism’ Said

39 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006), 4.

40 Ibid., 7.

41 Simon de Beauvoir, “The Second Sex,” in Understanding Inequality: The Intersection of Race/ethnicity, Class, and Gender (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 75–84.

talks about the creation of the concept ‘Orient’ by the West and thereby touches upon the Western misconception about the East. The goal of the explanations of the Orient was to defeat and dominate the region, not the aspiration to live peacefully together.⁴² Western societies have been prone to call the Orient “lamentably underhumanised, antidemocratic, backward, barbaric.”⁴³ This superior and patronising attitude of the West towards the Orient can be seen today, in the political interference of the Western powers in the Middle East.

Even though the concept is not new, it is still relevant today and it is particularly interesting in the scope of the refugee crisis in which Western people come face to face with those who they describe as oriental. Fear and hostility towards the Orient and its people can still be felt today, when Muslim people are increasingly identified as the Other. Islamist terror has exacerbated this idea. The Western discourse about Muslims is still described as a “chronically one-sided dialog that Muslims are invited to join but not change” and thus as a discourse that creates an image about Muslims while simultaneously excluding them from its creation.⁴⁴

For the framing of Muslims two components come together, as there is both a racial as well as a cultural Otherness that creates fear.⁴⁵

Whether the controversy is over veiling, cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel-Palestine, or protests about the knighthood given to Salman Rushdie, Muslims appear always as a problematic presence, troubling those values of individualism and freedom said to define Western nations.⁴⁶

42 Edward W Said, Orientalism, 1979, xix,

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=842875.

43 Ibid., 150.

44 Peter Morey and Amina Yaqin, Framing Muslims (Harvard University Press, 2011), 2.

45 Ibid., 55.

46 Ibid., 1.

4 State of the Art

Teun van Dijk, a renown scholar in the field of text linguistic, once clarified that most media – especially mainstream media – will avoid any extremism or racism, but that the media exacerbate racism.⁴⁷ Some of the problems that van Dijk identifies with the mass media discourse, is the one-sided reporting and the continuous definition of groups into

“Us” and “Them.” What the in-group do wrong, is of little interest.⁴⁸ Since communism as common enemy of the Western world was defeated, people from Muslim countries and Arabic States have been increasingly defined as the Other that is associated with danger and the idea that it must be fought.⁴⁹

Portraying Muslims as the Other has consequences for a great amount of people in Germany. A study by the BAMF (Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees) of 2008 estimated the number of Muslim population in Germany to be between 3.8 and 4.3 million people, thus accounting for 4.6 to 5.2 per cent of the population.⁵⁰ Numbers are hard to specify as no such thing as a church tax (as it exists for Christian people) exists, and thus doesn’t allows the state to estimate the numbers more clearly. With the high percentage of refugees coming to Germany in the scope of the refugee crisis being Muslims, this number can be expected to grow within the next years.

While few studies can be found about the perception of refugees in Germany, much research has been done about the attitudes towards Islam. The image German people have of Islam, as a religion is predominantly negative: A majority of the people from all compared countries consider Islam to be a misogynist (80 per cent agreement), radical (70 per cent agreement) and violent (60 per cent agreement) religion. 70 per cent of Germans are of the opinion that religious diversity will lead to conflicts. Since October 2014 this widespread scepticism has been channelled within the Pegida (German acronym for “patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the occident) movement.

Comparative studies have shown that the acceptance of Muslims and the willingness to provide them and their religion with the same rights as Christians is much

47 Teun A. van Dijk, “The Mass Media Today. Discourses of Domination or Diversity?,” Javnost/The Public, 1995, 28.

48 Ibid., 29.

49 Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (Fully Revised Edition) (Random House, 2008), XIX.

50 Sonja Haug, Stephanie Müssig, and Anja Stichs, Muslimisches Leben in Deutschland, 1st ed, Research Report 6 (Nürnberg, Germany: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, 2009), 11.

lower in Germany than in other European countries.⁵¹ The resistance towards Muslims is higher in the East of Germany than it is in the West, a phenomenon that can also be seen with xenophobic attitudes. Stereotypes and negative perceptions of the Other can often be reduced by establishing or increasing contact between the in- and the out- group. In relation to this it could be shown that the contact between Muslim people and the rest of the population is more limited in Germany than it is in the other countries.

One other reason for the deficiency of acceptance brought forward by the study was the lack of debate about the Islam and integration.⁵²

Without any existing contacts or limited interaction between the groups, it is often the media that takes part in the creation of the image of the Other. Research has shown that the word choices picked by newspapers to describe certain phenomena are often able to “create or confirm prejudicial attitudes“ and can thus take part in the creation and strengthening of racist ideologies.⁵³ Discursive strategies that have been used by foremost the conservative media usually aim at affecting the way of thinking of the audience by creating a polarisation between the in- and the out-group and attributing various problems such as social and cultural ones to the out-group. In contrast to this, the liberal press has sometimes presented the out-group as victims as well and thereby shown a different side of the story.⁵⁴ Dijk reminds his reader to keep in mind that “the media are profit seeking cooperations and therefore, quite understandably, have an interest in promoting some images of reality rather than others.”⁵⁵

In Germany, people recognize media to be both a very powerful and important tool, but the general perception is also that the media represent migrants rather negatively and that they take part in the creation and reinforcement of negative stereotypes.⁵⁶ The study by the Eurobarometer that was carried out in 2011 showed that Germans believe the portrayal of migrants to be scare mongering, mostly inaccurate and that a more positive media representation would help to improve the public understanding of migrants.⁵⁷ It could also be shown that “sexist attitudes and behaviours

51 Exzellenzcluster „Religion und Politik“, “„Deutsche Sind Viel Weniger Tolerant Gegenüber Muslimen“” (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, December 2, 2010).

52 Ibid.nen

53 van Dijk, “The Mass Media Today. Discourses of Domination or Diversity?,” 32.

54 Ibid., 38.

55 Said, Covering Islam, 49.

56 European Commission, “Qualitative Eurobarometer - Migrant Integration,” May 2011, 6.

57 Ibid., 28.

are attributed to immigrants.”⁵⁸ The position of the woman in Western societies is, on the other hand, largely ignored by Western media.⁵⁹

Even though there is a general understanding that the media discourse is mostly negative and not completely realistic, migrants were still associated with crime, the bad treatment of women and religious preconceptions. Many of the negative connotations are made in relation to Islam: the percentage of people who feel threatened by the Islam in Germany rose from 53 per cent in 2012 to 57 per cent in January 2015. 61 per cent of the German population don’t believe that the Islam fits into the Western World (in comparison to 52 per cent in 2012). ⁶⁰ The religion is instead often described with the term “Backwardness.” The entanglement between the discourse of people from the Middle East and crime, violence, terrorism, ethnic conflicts and fundamentalism has been shown to be clearly visible.⁶¹

In contrast to these numbers from 2011, a study from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) that was carried out in 2015, has shown that the image of refugees shown in German press was in many categories much more positive than it was in Spain, Italy, and the UK. The portrayal of refugees as a cultural threat or as a threat to national security or to community cohesion was discussed much more seldom in the German press.⁶² Many times the refugee crisis was framed as having a positive affect on Germany, its demographics and its labour market.⁶³ Figures recorded by the Eurobarometer in 2009 showed that the majority (52 per cent) of Germans did not believe that immigration would have a beneficial affect on the age structure of the country.⁶⁴

58 Siegfried Jäger and Florentine Maier, “Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Faucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis,” in Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (SAGE, 2009), 47. 59 van Dijk, “The Mass Media Today. Discourses of Domination or Diversity?,” 30.

60 Bertelsmann Stiftung, “Muslime in Deutschland Mit Staat Und Gesellschaft Eng Verbunden,” January 8, 2015, https://www.bertelsmann-

stiftung.de/de/presse/pressemitteilungen/pressemitteilung/pid/muslime-in-deutschland-mit-staat-und- gesellschaft-eng-verbunden/.

61 van Dijk, “The Mass Media Today. Discourses of Domination or Diversity?,” 29.

62 UNHCR, “Press Coverage of the Refugee and Migrant Crisis in the EU: A Content Analysis of Five European Countries,” December 2015, 8, http://www.unhcr.org/protection/operations/56bb369c9/press- coverage-refugee-migrant-crisis-eu-content-analysis-five-european.html.

63 Institut für Arbeitsmarkt und Berufsforschung, “Mehr Chnacen Als Risiken Durch Zuwanderung,”

January 2015.

64 European Commission, “Eurobarometer 71 - Future of Europe” (European Comission, January 2010), 55.

5 Methodology

Discourse describes the way in which a certain topic is talked about by a certain group of people at a specific point in time. It determines what is accepted to say and what is not. Discourses have a “normalisierende Wirklung”⁶⁵, a normalising effect, on society.

Not following the discourse, so the accepted and normalised way of speaking about a specific theme, may entail negative consequences for the speaker.

Discourses are institutionalised and thereby exercise power.⁶⁶ This power is critical and can affect society on a large scheme, as humans use knowledge to shape their reality and interpret their environment.

People derive this knowledge from the discursive surroundings into which they are born and in which they are enmeshed throughout the rest of their lives.⁶⁷

Discourses create social reality by presenting knowledge in a recursive way and thus shape the societies consciousness.⁶⁸ What behaviour a society accepts and what utterances they tolerate, depends - among other things - on the prevailing discourse.

Discourses alter over time, but no person alone has the power to create this change. All members of society can take part in reproducing certain discourses. The extensive or regular exposure to a certain discourse will most likely provoke acceptance and understanding for this way of speaking. The discourse in the leading media is therefore a very important and sensitive topic, as it is presented to so many different people at the same time and has the potential to influence a big part of the respective society.

Media is an opinion-forming resource that interprets reality for its readers and presents the interpreted version of reality to their audience. Discourse analysis can help to provide a group’s understanding of a topic by analysing in what way reality is presented. The knowledge that is conveyed through the news can affect the opinions and attitudes of their readership, but the readers are also free to choose to disbelieve and reject the given knowledge.⁶⁹ According to van Dijk journalists often know what affect

65 Margarete Jäger and Siegfried Jäger, Deutungskämpfe: Theorie und Praxis kritischer Diskursanalyse, 1. Aufl, Medien - Kultur - Kommunikation (Wiesbaden: VS, Verl. für Sozialwiss, 2007), 19.

66 Ibid.

67 Jäger and Maier, “Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Faucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis,” 31.

68 Jäger and Jäger, Deutungskämpfe, 23/34.

69 Teun A. van Dijk, “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Japanese Discourse, 1995, 22.

their words can have on the public, but few theories of communicative influence deal with the precise affect speech and text can have on the mind of the individual.⁷⁰

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a problem-orientated approach that can be used in various ways, seen as methodology and theory are chosen differently depending on the social problems that are being inspected.⁷¹ What discourse analysis can do is to explore the way knowledge is produced. It can outline how a certain topic is dealt with and spoken about. This includes uncovering the various threads (Diskursstrang) that are part of a discourse and their respective layers, occurrences and fragments.⁷²

The main focus of CDA does not lie on linguistic units, but instead concentrates on complex social phenomena like the power structures of a society.⁷³ Power is a very important concept for critical discourse analysis, as power, despite being (or maybe exactly because it is) invisible, legitimises and controls the dynamics and structures in a society. Structures, power relations, abuses and reinforcements can be made visible by looking at language as a place where power is manifested.

CDA can be defined as being fundamentally interested in analysing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language. In other words, CDA aims to investigate critically social inequality as it is expressed, constituted, legitimized, and so on, by language use (or in discourse).⁷⁴

CDA does not focus on paradigms but on issues or problems.⁷⁵ The social issue this work will concentrate on is the issue of mass immigration through the refugee crisis. According to van Dijk, CDA is both about dealing with the strategies and structures of the elite discourse as well as observing the counter discourse.⁷⁶ The evaluating element that lies within this method makes CDA a less objective way of doing academic work. Van Dijk calls this element “critical adequacy,” a criterion that

“presupposes social norms and values and introduces a political a social ethics (what we find wrong or right) within the scholarly enterprise as such.”⁷⁷ The subject is thus political and the author will interpret the material from her respective socialisation of

70 Ibid., 23.

71 Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology,” in Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (SAGE, 2009), 31.

72 Jäger and Jäger, Deutungskämpfe, 30.

73 Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (SAGE, 2009), 2.

74 Wodak and Meyer, “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory and Methodology,” 10.

75 van Dijk, “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis,” 17.

76 Ibid., 19.

77 Ibid.

social norms and values. O’Halloran describes this subjectivity as problematic when analysts are not among the target audience of the texts they analyse, as the analyst might conclude facts from the texts that the target audience would not derive from it.⁷⁸ The latter is a problem that will not occur in this case, as the author is part of the target audience of all newspapers and magazines that are to be analysed in this paper. Jäger and Maier emphasise that the analysts will never be able to make themself free from discourse, but that their culture and values are embedded in them and will be used as standards for the analysis.⁷⁹

78 Kieran O’Halloran, “Critical Discourse Analysis,” in The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2009), 126.

79 Jäger and Maier, “Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Faucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis,” 36.

6 Approach – Data Collection

This thesis undertakes a diachronic analysis of the discourse about refugees in four German mass and mainstream magazines and newspapers. The analysis was carried out over the time of 9 weeks around the 1^st of January 2016: the three last weeks of 2015 and the first six weeks of 2016. The time frame in 2015 serves as an evaluation of the situation before NYE. As there were no significant changes with regard to the situation of refugees in Germany in the last weeks of 2015, a period of three weeks will provide an adequate presentation of the status quo. In order to be able to portray the discourse after Cologne just as realistically, the analysed time frame is twice as long, in order to see the possible effects of Cologne on the discourse on a longer basis.

The analysis carried out in this paper has the goal to pinpoint the effect the events of Cologne had on the mainstream media discourse in Germany. The analysis shall show potential differences in the reproduction of knowledge, changes of the

“diskursive Sagbarkeitsfelder”⁸⁰ (what is accepted to be said and what isn’t), and shifts in the presentation of refugees.

The study objects were chosen based on both their political orientation and their circulation numbers. The political orientation is crucial in order to present the whole spectrum, the wide circulation is relevant for the influence they have by reaching a large amount of the German population. It is also essential to look at a certain number of newspapers, as the goal of this thesis is not to analyse the possible changes in single texts, but to analyse the current discourse, of which each analysed text is a fragment.

The entirety of texts presents the discourse strand of German mainstream media about refugees of that time.

The four sources the analysis is based on are Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Der Spiegel and FOCUS. The FAZ is a conservative- liberal daily newspaper that publishes international and national news with a special focus on the Frankfurt area. The regional focus leads to the circulation numbers being especially high in the Frankfurt area and higher in general in the South-Western area than in the eastern regions.⁸¹ With a circulation of 253,000 the paper belongs to the top

80 Jäger and Jäger, Deutungskämpfe, 15.

81 Jens Schröder, “Interaktive Deutschland-Karte: Wo Verkauft Sich Die F.A.Z. Am Besten – Und Wo Am Schlechtesten?,” accessed July 14, 2016, http://meedia.de/2016/07/11/interaktive-deutschland-karte- wo-verkauft-sich-die-f-a-z-am-besten-und-wo-am-schlechtesten/.

newspapers of the country.⁸² The FAZ has an archive that holds all newspaper articles in digitalised form. These online archives, which are accessible through certain libraries, were used for the collection of the material for this thesis.

The SZ is a left-liberal daily newspaper with a circulation of 381,844.⁸³ Published in Munich; it has a special focus on Bavaria where the biggest clusters of readers can be found.⁸⁴ The articles of the SZ are often long and detailed and are mostly read by high-educated people with a salary above the average.⁸⁵ According to the information on their website the overlap of readership between the SZ and other over- regional newspapers is very low with about 5 per cent. The online archives of the SZ work similar to the ones of the FAZ and were used to access all print articles online.

Der Spiegel, is a left-liberal weekly magazine with no regional focus. The readership is largely male (68 per cent) and from the northern or western regions of Germany.⁸⁶ The magazine presents lengthy articles about a big variety of topics such as politics, economics and science but also health, culture and sports. The online section of the magazine SPIEGEL ONLINE was disregarded for the data collection, as the digital content varies from the printed version. The printed copies of the magazine were used just as much as the digitalised PDF versions for the analysis.

The bourgeois-liberal weekly magazine FOCUS is part of the Hubert Burda Media group. The weekly magazine presents news in a much shorter form than Der Spiegel. The articles deal with a similar range of topics with a focus on economics. The texts used for the analysis were taken from their online archives that are accessible under http://www.focus.de/magazin/archiv. As these are the official archives of the magazine that show all magazines from 1993 on with their table of content and link to all articles, variations from the printed text are possible but not expected.

All four chosen publications are considered good sources to quote from by national and international media in both print and digital, as a five yearlong study of pressemonitor has shown. In the category of weekly publications Der Spiegel is the

82 “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Für Deutschland,” FAZ.media, accessed July 13, 2016, http://www.faz.media/medien/frankfurter-allgemeine-zeitung-fuer-deutschland/.

83 “Süddeutsche Zeitung Media,” SZ-Media, n.d., http://sz-media.sueddeutsche.de/de/service/markt--und- mediastudien-mafo.html.

84 Jens Schröder, “Interaktive Deutschland-Karte: Wo Verkauft Sich Die Süddeutsche Zeitung Am Besten – Und Wo Am Schlechtesten?,” accessed July 14, 2016, http://meedia.de/2016/07/12/interaktive-

deutschland-karte-wo-verkauft-sich-die-sueddeutsche-zeitung-am-besten-und-wo-am-schlechtesten/.

85 “Süddeutsche Zeitung Media.”

86 Jens Schröder, “Print-Analyse: Der Typische Spiegel-Leser,” accessed July 14, 2016, http://meedia.de/2013/01/15/print-analyse-der-typische-spiegel-leser/.

most quoted medium (35 per cent) followed by Bild Am Sonntag (15 per cent) and FOCUS (14 per cent). As for the daily publications, the SZ and the FAZ are on place two and three respectively with 18 and 12 per cent of the quotes, topped only by Bild with 26 per cent.

In all four papers the refugee crisis has received much attention since the summer of 2015 when it became a topic of special interest in Germany. The issue became relevant for a wide range of sectors and contexts (eg. political, economical, social, geographical, cultural, demographical…). Due to the overwhelming amount of articles not all items could be taken into account for the analysis. Instead, the author opted for a precise and narrow focus on just small amount of discourse strings. In order to not choose discourse strings arbitrarily, a preliminary analysis was conducted with the aim to filter out the main discourse threats that dominated the pieces about NYE in Cologne. The database for the main analysis was then created on the results of this first investigation.

For this part of the research the FAZ, the SZ, Der Spiegel and FOCUS were searched for articles about New Year’s Eve in Cologne that were published in the time from January 1^st until January 9^th. The time frame of nine days has been chosen based on the date of publication of Der Spiegel and FOCUS, which both came out on the 9^th of January with their respective first articles about the attacks on women. By analysing the first nine days of 2016, the first wave of reporting of all four papers is being gathered in the preliminary analysis. These articles will not be re-analysed in the main screening.

Examining the articles about New Year’s Eve in a separate analysis from the general research has several advantages: for instance, this analysis allows a closer look at the handling of the media of the event. On top of that, the reporting about Cologne will not distort the main database with the unusually high discursive entanglement between the discourse about refugees and the discourse about sexual crimes. The argument of a falsification of the main database due to the articles about Cologne can thus be pre-empted. In order to avoid cherry picking (“choosing the examples which best fit the assumptions”⁸⁷) the analysis will hold both qualitative and quantitative elements, like it is suggested by Wodak and Meyer.

87 Wodak and Meyer, Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis, 11.

7 Data Analysis

As described, the discourse analysis of this paper will be done in several parts.

The first part is the preliminary analysis that looks at the reporting of NYE and on the basis of which the composition of the database for the main analysis will be determined.

7.1 Preliminary Analysis

In order to be taken into account for the database articles had to mention both the word “Silvester” (New Year’s Eve) and “Köln” (Cologne). The archives of the FAZ and the SZ were searched with the Boolean search with the command “Silvester$ AND Köln” in order to also include articles that mention words starting in “Silvester” as

“Silvesternacht” (the night of New Year’s Eve) or “Silvesterereignisse” (the events of New Year’s Eve). Der Spiegel and FOCUS were searched manually on the basis of the same criteria. In case articles mentioned these words without any relation to what happened on the night of the 31^st December they were disregarded for the sample collection.

In the nine first days of the New Year the scrutinised papers published in total 63 articles about the attacks in Cologne. 23 articles appeared in the SZ, 31 in the FAZ, four in FOCUS and five in Der Spiegel. While there is only a slight difference in the amount of articles in the magazines, the FAZ has printed significantly more articles than its left-liberal counterpart.

The main goal of the majority of articles was to inform about the night in question and to report about the immediate consequences. The first articles published are for the most part reporting facts and describing the situation, resulting in similar accounts for the various papers. The culprits, the victims, the police and the media were the subjects in most. Articles published subsequently are written in a more investigative manner. They tried for instance to provide explanations and interpretations for what happened or they reported about reactions or expected consequences. In these articles, topics that were not immediately visibly connected to the sexual assaults were discussed. These articles were of much interest for this research, as they create entanglements between different discourses. These topics that become linked to the

actions of the men of NYE were filtered out, listed and compared for frequency of occurrence.

The most common topics brought into context with NYE are fear and worry (mentioned in 20 articles), Islam and right-wing extremism (brought up in 13 articles each) and gender equality (referred to in 12 articles). Other discourses that were brought into connection with the events of the night were among others integration, Chancellor Merkel and her politics, and personnel changes. The full list can be seen in Annex 1.

Figure 1: Topics brought into connection with NYE in articles from January 1-9

A closer look at the different topics shows strong discursive entanglements between gender equality and Islam. They are often tied together merely by a chain of association. The connection is created by describing the issue of gender inequality or the problematic view of women in correlation with foreign cultures, that are not clearly identifies as being Muslim, but there are markers that are prone to trigger an association among the target readers, e.g.

What connects the two acts is the ‘problematic view of women’ that is characteristic for groups of perpetrator from Arabic-speaking countries.⁸⁸

88 “Sexuelle Übergriffe Auch in Hamburg Und Stuttgart,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 6, 2016. Original quote: "Was die beiden Taten verbinde, sei das "problematische Frauenbild", das für Tätergruppen aus arabischsprachigen Ländern charakteristisch sei."

Fear, 20

Islam, Right wing 13 Extremism,

13 Gender Equality ,

12 Insecurity,

9

Others, 6