The Framing of the Alternative für Deutschland’s Election Result in the German Print Media after the Federal Election 2017 A thesis presented to the faculty of the Scripps College of Communication of Ohio University and the Institute for Communication and Media Studies of Leipzig University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degrees Master of Science in Journalism (Ohio University), Master of Arts in Global Mass Communication (Leipzig University) Lara-Tanita Rust December 2019 © 2019 Lara-Tanita Rust. All Rights Reserved. This thesis titled The Framing of the Alternative für Deutschland’s Election Result in the German Print Media after the Federal Election 2017 by LARA-TANITA RUST has been approved for the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, the Scripps College of Communication, and the Institute for Communication and Media Studies by Alexander Hagen Godulla Professor of Institute for Communication and Media Studies Scott Titsworth Dean, Scripps College of Communication, Ohio University Christian Pieter Hoffman Director, Institute for Communication and Media Studies, Leipzig University ii Abstract RUST, LARA-TANITA, M.S., Journalism; M.A., Global Mass Communication, December 2019 3750188 The Framing of the Alternative für Deutschland’s Election Result in the German Print Media after the Federal Election 2017 Director of Thesis: Alexander Hagen Godulla Committee Members: Christian Pieter Hoffmann, Bernhard Debatin In the German federal election 2017, the party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) enters the Bundestag as the first right-wing populistic party after Nazi Germany. Com- bined with the fact that there is research gap on post-election coverage, this poses several questions. Which frames do German print media use to present the AfD election result, which differences are there between the newspapers and how does the framing develop over time? How negative is the party’s portrayal? To answer these research questions, a quantitative content analysis is used to analyze articles focusing mainly on the AfD’s re- sult in the week after the election in six German newspapers. A descriptive analysis of frame elements identifies five frames. The ratio of the frames among the papers is almost the same, with the conflict frame being used the most. There is a significant difference between the papers regarding their implicit negativity about the AfD and their election re- sult and a focus on issue framing. Apart from that, differences in the news coverage over iii the AfD between the papers are small. This study offers a first contribution to the re- search gap on post-election coverage. iv Table of Contents Page Abstract ....................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................. vii List of Figures ........................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: Theoretical Background ............................................................................. 5 2.1. The Framing Approach ................................................................................... 7 2.2. The Framing Process ...................................................................................... 8 2.3. The Frame Elements ..................................................................................... 10 2.4. Explicit and Implicit Assumptions of the Framing Approach ...................... 11 2.5. Challenges to the Framing Approach ........................................................... 12 2.6. Frames in Political Communication ............................................................. 13 2.6.1. Party framing ....................................................................................... 15 Chapter 3: Literature Review ..................................................................................... 17 3.1. Media as Arenas for Politics ......................................................................... 17 3.2. Politics in the Media ..................................................................................... 19 3.3. Research on Post-Election Coverage ............................................................ 22 3.3.1. The battle for interpreting. ................................................................... 27 3.3.2. Framing as winner or loser. ................................................................. 28 3.4. The Alternative für Deutschland .................................................................. 33 3.4.1. The AfD members and voters. ............................................................. 33 3.4.2. The topics of the AfD. ......................................................................... 37 3.4.3. The political position of the AfD. ........................................................ 39 3.4.4. The AfD in the political and societal context of the German federal election 2017. ................................................................................................. 40 3.4.5. The AfD in the media. ......................................................................... 42 3.5. Summary, Research Questions and Hypotheses ........................................... 48 Chapter 4: The Research Design ............................................................................... 54 4.1. The Sampling Unit ........................................................................................ 55 4.2. Unit of Analysis ............................................................................................ 56 v 4.3. Population and Selection Procedure ............................................................. 57 4.4. Operationalization ......................................................................................... 58 4.5. Pretest ........................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 5: Analysis and Results ................................................................................ 65 5.1. Research Question 1 ..................................................................................... 65 5.1.1. Conflict frame. ..................................................................................... 66 5.1.2. Inequality frame. .................................................................................. 69 5.1.3. Administration critical frame. .............................................................. 73 5.1.4. Right-wing populistic election campaign frame. ................................. 77 5.1.5. Consequences and reactions frame. ..................................................... 82 5.1.6. No identifiable frame. .......................................................................... 85 5.2. Research Question 2 ..................................................................................... 87 5.2.1. Conflict frame. ..................................................................................... 87 5.2.2. Inequality frame. .................................................................................. 88 5.2.3. Administration critical frame. .............................................................. 88 5.2.4. Right-wing populistic election campaign frame. ................................. 89 5.2.5. Consequences and reactions frame. ..................................................... 90 5.3. Hypothesis 1 ................................................................................................. 92 5.4. Hypothesis 2 ................................................................................................. 95 5.5. Hypothesis 3 ................................................................................................. 97 Chapter 6: Discussion and Conclusion .................................................................... 103 References ................................................................................................................ 120 Appendix A: List of Abbreviations ......................................................................... 131 Appendix B: List of Sample Material with Numbering .......................................... 132 Appendix C: Overview of Variables and Labels ..................................................... 140 Appendix D: Codebook ........................................................................................... 142 Appendix E: SPSS Outputs ..................................................................................... 172 vi List of Tables Page Table 1 Cross table newspaper and frame ................................................................. 95 Table 2 Tenor of AfD depending on newspaper ....................................................... 97 vii List of Figures Page Figure 1 Bar chart timeline of frames ...................................................................... 101 viii Chapter 1: Introduction Right-wing parties have been on the rise in various European countries the past years, including Germany (Joffe, 2017; Tartar, 2017). Additionally, the migration crisis in Germany enabled nativist and racial nationalist networks to gain support and manifest themselves parliamentary as the Alternative für Deutschland, hereinafter re- ferred to as the AfD (Appendix A: