Der CDU-Parteispendenskandal: Medienberichterstattung und Bevölkerungsreaktion

The general assumption about political scandals is that they have mostly negative consequences. One of the most important negative effects seems to be that the scandalized parties and politicians loose electoral support (e.g. measured by voting intentions). Unfortunately, current empirical studies analyzing the link between political scandals and electoral reactions only found limited support for this simple causal relationship — especially if they focus on individual attitudes and behavior. Using content analysis and survey data on the party financing scandal of the CDU (one of the biggest political scandals in the history of post-war Germany), this article analyzes the connection between media coverage of the scandal and public reactions on both the aggregate and the individual level. While a strong media effect on public opinion exists on the aggregate level, such a relationship does not appear on the individual level. This again raises the question of whether political scandals do affect public opinion as postulated.     

Skandalberichterstattung in den Medien und die Folgen für die Demokratie

The worry that political scandals harm democracy is increasingly discussed whenever political affairs create public clamor. As people mostly learn about scandals by way of the media, the question arises whether intense coverage of scandals will have a detrimental effect on attitudes toward the legitimacy of the democratic system. Using survey and content analysis data, this research tests whether an influence of coverage on attitudes to the democratic system can be ascertained. It turns out that, aside from other factors, the use of certain newspapers and the use of informative media content with few political subjects negatively affect attitudes to the democratic system. Negative effects of scandal coverage were not found, though. Further analyses, however, revealed that the perception and evaluation of news coverage did have a clear effect on attitudes toward the legitimacy of democracy. Perception and evaluation of news coverage, the conception of politics, and attitudes to the political system form a complex cognitive texture that turns out to be rather delicate.     

Politische Skandalberichterstattung: ein Forschungsüberblick und Systematisierungsversuch

Political scandals are a frequent feature of political communication around the world nowadays. Scandals serve important societal functions, e.?g., public discussion and reformation of norms in a society; holding political actors accountable for certain (political) behaviors. Scholars have argued that the news media are increasingly reporting about norm violations of political candidates. Surprisingly, no review of international research dealing with the dissemination and media coverage of political scandals is available. Thus, in the current paper the state-of-the-art in research on political scandals is systematically reviewed. Based on an extensive literature research a total of 20 relevant studies (published in German and English language) could be found. These studies were selected and examined in depth. The results revealed that – within the last two decades – there is an increasing number of political scandals around the world (data from 31 countries were examined). Besides increases in news reports about political scandals in Germany and the United States these studies show, for example, that there is a steep increase of political scandals in northern European countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden), and therefore in countries that used to be considered as rather “scandal-free” in the past. Furthermore, the results indicate that in specific countries (e.?g., United States, UK) political news are increasingly presented in a scandalizing way. Based on these findings, the number of political scandals (the number of individual cases published by the news media) has to be analytically separated from scandalization in political communication more generally (e.?g., the expression of public anger, the use of language of escalation, or the public condemnation of a behavior in political communication). Moreover, the results reveal that particular ownership structures, partisanship of a news organization, and the competitive context tend to influence news coverage about political scandals. The results also show that the definition and operationalization of political scandals – partially – remains unclear. More precisely, definitions used in previous research are either too unspecific and broad and thus do not allow for a precise operationalization and measurement of political scandals. In contrast, other definitions used in previous studies are too specific and needlessly restrict the measurement of political scandals. Thus, quite relevant cases are not accounted for. Therefore, an improved definition and operationalization of political scandals is proposed. According to that, scandals are defined as follows:Political scandals refer to real or conjectured norm transgressions of political actors or institutions. A particular norm transgression may occur in the context of political processes or in a politician’s private life and may or may not have legal consequences (e.?g., official investigation by the office of the district attorney). National scandals have to be repeatedly covered by two or more independent media organizations (e.?g., The New York Times and CNN in the U.S.). Regional scandals have to be repeatedly covered by two or more independent regional media organizations (however, the above-mentioned criterion for national scandals does not have to be fulfilled). News coverage about an alleged norm transgression must be framed as scandalous (scandal frame) and the scandalous behavior has to be unambiguously condemned.Based on the review, several research gaps are identified and a model for predicting the intensity of political scandal news coverage is introduced. The model comprises four central dimensions to predict the intensity of scandal news coverage (intensity is defined as duration, frequency, thematization, extent, and valence of coverage). The first dimension relates to the features of a particular scandal. Cases relating solely to verbal norm transgressions (talk scandals) are differentiated from cases involving other forms of scandalous behavior. Furthermore, cases with/without official investigations are differentiated and cases high/low in moral reprehensibility are distinguished. The second dimension relates to specific features of a particular politician (e.?g., type of position, popularity, if he or she has made moralizing/hypocritical statements in the past). As a third dimension, the model takes the particular reaction of a politician to scandal allegations into account (reaction appropriate/inappropriate). Finally, the fourth dimension takes the general context into consideration (e.?g., the particular media agenda, political leaning of a news outlet, social/cultural/economic context). Based on these four dimensions, as is argued, the intensity of scandal news coverage can be predicted and – in line with the model – specific assumptions are formulated that may be tested in future research. For instance, it is assumed that the news media will cover a case intensively when a political candidate is accused of transgressing a norm (e.?g., corruption) that engenders an official investigation (e.?g., state’s attorney) and is high in moral reprehensibility. Furthermore, the model predicts that the coverage will be intense when a politician’s popularity is rather low (compared to high), when a candidate made moralizing/hypocritical statements in the past (compared to no such comments), when he or she holds a high office (e.?g., president, minister compared to a back-bencher), and when he or she reacts inappropriate (e.?g., unconfident, contradictory, incredible statements) to an allegation (compared to more appropriate reactions). Finally, the model predicts that the news coverage of a political scandal will be more intense, when there are no other important topics (e.?g., terror attack, disaster) on the news agenda and when a potential norm violation is culturally especially relevant in a particular society (e.?g., sex scandals in the United States).     

Wider die Symbiose

The analysis deals with the presentation of hunger and related emergencies in the mass media. It focuses on problems and structures of journalistic production processes and symbiotic relationships between the media and the aid industry. Mass media often create the impression that ??hunger?? occurs unexpectedly and abruptly. In this way media and journalists produce their own news value, which they need for selling the topic. Bad weather, climate change and natural disasters fit into the concept of mass media, their news selection processes as well as their production structures much better than the fact that hunger is a political phenomenon mostly, at heart, a major political scandal. Such scandals require profound analysis, investigation and a high level of journalistic independence and know-how. In the field of disaster relief, development organizations professionalize their public relations efforts more and more. The dynamic and transactional interactions between the aid industry and journalists play an increasingly important role in disaster reporting. In Germany the networks of relief organizations stretch deeply into editorial offices. The relief industry has a tight media network in Germany. In their communications efforts, fear and pity, two of the strongest individual and socio-psychological emotions, play a central role.     

Zeitungsberichte im Alltagsgespräch

The article analyses media use and media effects in the Wilhelmine empire. Based on secret police reports covering conversations in pubs, it tackles the question if and how the working and lower middle classes talked about newspaper stories. An analysis of conversations about selected scandals complements this focus, which is also discussed in relation to various theories of media effects. The study highlights the strong influence of the media in the decades around 1900. People in pubs quickly and extensively picked up topics covered in the press and used them in political conversations. All of the selected scandals were also debated in pubs. Newspaper readers had an astonishingly detailed knowledge even of events unrelated to their everyday life. Workers in particular often adopted the arguments presented in the Social Democratic press. However, they appropriated news quite often in a self-willed and unconventional way. News reports were connected with personal experiences, twisted in a playful and humorous way, or loaded with emotional exaggerations.     

Die These der Negativitätsumkehrung

The article explores the effects of negativity bias in political coverage on cognitions, emotions and attitudes. Starting from psychological considerations on cognition and emotion as well as from the assimilation-contrast-effect, the article develops a hypothesis of ‘negativity inversion’. This postulates that cumulative media criticism that politicians are unable to solve political problems does not only shape a negative image of politicians, but also establishes the impression that many political problems remain unsolved. This impression is the backdrop for judgments on specific political solutions which appear more positively and find more approval among recipients than without such a contrasting background. Results from an experiment manipulating (1) media images of politicians’ capability to solve problems and (2) media images of a regional political problem support the hypothesis of negativity inversion.     

Spitzenkandidaten im Wahlkampf

This articles investigates the degree to which the image of political candidates can experience change during the campaign, by campaigning on the one hand and by the political coverage of the mass media on the other. Empirical analyses of the Northrhine-Westphalian state election of May 14, 2000, are based on longitudinal survey data for the five weeks before the election and a cross-sectional pre-election study representative of Northrhine-Westphalia. For three effect criteria — first the information the population holds about the leading candidates, second the evaluation of various candidate qualities, and third the weight candidate evaluation carries for the voting decision — it is shown that both effects of campaigning and effects of media coverage on political attitudes and the voting decision can be identified.     

Publizistische Chancengleichheit in der Wahlkampfberichterstattung?

A true democracy is based on political competition. Political parties set up programmes and suggest solutions which the electorate is then asked to choose between. Competition for tomorrow??s leadership positions can only be fair if today there are equal opportunities for all parties. The German legislative body passed several laws which are meant to guarantee equal opportunities in this contest. In times of an ever increasing importance of the mass media for political communication, this paper is meant to answer the question of whether??besides equal political opportunities??there is something like equal media opportunities, and if so, which indicators can be used to measure them. After a broad theoretical examination, an empirical analysis of the media coverage prior to the general elections in 1998, 2002 and 2009 follows. It reveals that??from a quantitative point of view??there certainly are equal media opportunities for the political parties sitting in the German Bundestag. The chances for media coverage are, especially for smaller parties, better than the gradation of equal chances by formal regulations.     

Frames in der medienpolitischen ?ffentlichkeit

This study sheds light on the media in their role as political actors and analyzes how the media cover political processes that involve their own interests. How far are the media able to fulfill, in such cases, quality demands such as diversity? The press coverage on the 12th amendment of the Interstate Treaty on Broadcasting and Online Media in Germany served as an example to study this problem. The assumption is that publishing houses had a strong economic interest in regulating the online activities of public service broadcasting. By means of a qualitative content analysis the frames used by five national print media were identified and their diversity was discussed. The findings show that the press tried to narrow down opinion formation on this topic. Frames with a negative evaluation of public service online activities prevailed regardless of the media??s political orientations, and alternative frames only occurred fragmentarily and sporadically.     

Synchronisation von Nachricht und Werbung

Advertiser pressure has always been seen as a potential source of bias in the coverage of ad-financed media. The effects of advertiser pressure, however, have seldom been subject to systematic empirical research. Content analyses on the subject are particularly rare. This study for the first time scrutinizes on how the representation of firms by the leading German political weeklies Der Spiegel und Focus correlates with the amount of advertising by those firms. For this purpose all ads and the full news coverage on selected firms during the year of 2011 were analyzed. Central findings show that firms will receive more coverage, friendlier coverage and a larger share of product coverage, the higher their volume of advertising both in Der Spiegel and in Focus.     

Lassen sich mit dem Internet Wählerstimmen gewinnen?

The internet is widely used by political parties and candidates as an instrument in election campaigns in Germany. Voters’ use of the internet for political information is, however, still at a low level. Studies yield mixed results regarding the impact of online campaigning on candidates’ electoral performance but there is some evidence for such an impact. However, the mechanism behind it remains unclear. Can positive effects be attributed to persuasion or mobilization? An analysis addressing this question is lacking for German election campaigns. Based on three candidate surveys during local, state and national election campaigns in Germany, this article presents new results regarding the question of whether the internet helps German politicians to win votes, and how these effects can be characterized. Multivariate analysis reveals that, on all three levels, structural characteristics such as party membership and political status are the most significant predictors of a candidate’s electoral performance. The use of online media as a campaign technique has an effect during the national elections only. This effect is only significant for Web 1.0 applications and not for the more interactive Web 2.0.     

Wer z?hlt die Toten, kennt die Orte

Results of news research generally show that, apart from the countries?? status, regionalism is the most dominant factor in foreign reporting. Such results are usually based on studies that exclude the effect the characteristics of events can have on news coverage. Therefore, the relevance of these results is limited because they do not allow comparing the influence of country characteristics and event characteristics. Our study takes a different path by attempting to isolate the effect of event characteristics from that of country characteristics. To this end we analyzed the coverage on earthquakes in three leading German news media. The results show: The effect of event characteristics heavily outweighs the effect of country characteristics. Nevertheless, the latter also proved to be relevant, especially for television, sometimes disassociated and sometimes interacting with event characteristics to manifest their effect.     

Schaffen wir das?

In 2015, Germany sheltered about 900,000 refugees—more than ever before. This development led to political and public discussions in the country which changed between creating a culture of welcome for refugees and the danger of foreign infiltration through refugees. On the one hand, this article investigates, if patterns could be identified in the public debate about the so-called refugee crisis in the regional press in Germany in 2015. On the other hand, it concentrates on the solution orientation of the regional news coverage concerning this topic. The reporting pattern of solutions journalism supposes this kind of journalistic reporting and it is strongly discussed in communication sciences and journalism at the moment.The two aims of this study are based on four theoretical aspects: the responsibility of journalism, the reporting pattern of solutions journalism, the state of research concerning the image of migration and immigrants in the German media and the concept of framing. The responsibility of journalism roots in its function of information and its ethical foundation. In carrying out their work, journalists have to balance ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility: Providing full information about a topic and the (ethical) consequences of this full information is the field of conflict in which journalism lies. In the case of media coverage about the so-called refugee crisis, it is not easy to report and not proliferating prejudice and resentments against immigrants.Generally, negative reasons of reporting are often picked up by the media. In contrast to this trend, the reporting pattern of solutions journalism focusses solutions for negative reasons of reporting. Not only the problems are discussed in this reporting pattern, also solutions are presented which should encourage the recipients to act. The journalist is accredited with the role of a mediator in public debates in the pattern of solutions journalism. This role is discussed critically in journalism and communications science.Regarding the image of migration and immigrants in the German media, communication studies do not describe this coverage in a positive way. Media reports often connect immigrants to crime, foreign infiltration or describe them as an expense factor. Also, terror and Islamic faith are topics appearing since 2011 in the German media linked with immigration. Concerning the so-called refugee crisis, the few existing studies show that this situation is described as threat. In its coverage the regional press follows the argumentation of the national press and concentrates on politics when reporting about this topic.This state of research leads to the assumption that negative patterns will dominate in the regional press concerning the so-called refugee crisis, although this topic could be the chance to implement some characteristics of solutions journalism. This hypothesis was investigated in this study by a quantitative content analysis of the regional press in Germany concerning the topic of the refugee crisis. The concept of framing was used in the methodological design of this article. To frame means to extract several aspects of reality and to emphasize some of them more than others. A frame consists of a problem definition of a topic, a causal interpretation, a moral evaluation, and a treatment recommendation. Based on this definition, frames can be seen as clusters of about four elements. To identify frames, this study uses an approach considering frames as clusters of these elements. In a quantitative content analysis these single elements were operationalized and after data collection investigated by hierarchical cluster analyses to create groups of elements which often appear together. For the content analysis, a stratified sample of eight regional newspapers in seven federal states in Germany was drawn to analyze the coverage of the year 2015. Altogether, the final sample consisted of 1231 articles.The results of this analysis show that the biggest frame in the regional press is the one of “social challenge” of the so-called refugee crisis. It deals with the social and cultural problems the so-called refugee crisis causes and replaces the dominant topic of crime in the then current state of research. Further frames are the ones of “integration”, “capacity”, “demonstration” and “solution”. The frame “integration” concentrates in a positive way on the chance of integration and is astonishingly quite equally sized in comparison to the one of “social challenge”. The frame “capacity” is smaller. It deals with the problem of accommodation of refugees. The frames of “demonstration” and “solution” appear not very often and focus the problems of protest against refugees and their supporters or political solutions for the so-called refugee crisis.But not only the widely spread frame of integration in the regional press is surprising, also its significant dominance in the coverage of the regional newspapers in East Germany is noteworthy. As more hostility against refugees can be observed in the eastern parts of Germany in 2015, it is an astonishing fact, that the regional press accents the frame of integration. Maybe the newspapers wanted to be the public counterpart to the hostile atmosphere in this region.Solution orientation as it is focused by solutions journalism could be identified in this analysis by the frame element of treatment recommendation. In sum, only few treatment recommendations exist in the regional press coverage: The widely spread frames “social challenge” and “integration” are the ones which provide the fewest treatment recommendations. The small frames “capacity” and “demonstration” are those which show the largest solution orientation. The solution proposals are oriented towards politics. These findings show that the solution orientation in the regional press coverage is not very strong, but the widely spread frame of integration demonstrates that the regional press reports in a more positive way than expected—especially in Eastern Germany.     

Boulevardisierungstrend in deutschen Fernsehnachrichten

Changes in content and presentation styles of TV news are an indicator of the way the public today perceives the political process. ?Tabloidization‘, i. e. an adoption of presentation styles used by tabloid newspapers and magazines, has been introduced as an operational concept to measure these changes. In order to assess whether a long-term process of tabloidization occurred in German TV news, we content-analyzed the political coverage in the main news broadcasts of the four major TV channels four weeks before the German general elections in 1983, 1990, and 1998. The empirical basis of this analysis is 1,241 reports. We found strong tendencies towards tabloidization. They have occurred on all dimensions we investigated, i. e. in content (decrease of policy coverage), form (e. g. more personalization), and style (e. g. shorter sequences). As could be expected, indicators of tabloidization are generally stronger for the commercial than the public TV stations. However, one of the public stations (ZDF) has also shown a sharp increase of tabloidization features, in some cases even surpassing its two commercial competitors.     

Konsonanz 30 Jahre später

Consonant coverage is assumed to be an important prerequisite for media effects to occur. However, empirical evidence for this assumption is largely missing. Focusing on the issue of European integration, this study investigated, in 13 EU member states, whether consonant coverage affected EU citizens’ opinions on the issue. For each country and at the individual level of analysis, the study linked content analyses of the main evening news and the most prestigious newspaper with survey data. Consonant coverage influenced people’s opinions about European integration, while dissonant coverage made no impact. Both EU supporters and EU opponents were susceptible to the effects of consonant coverage, which tentatively suggests that consonant coverage may surmount selective mechanisms. In sum, the study is the first to provide evidence that consonant coverage may indeed enhance media effects.     

Endspurt. Mediales Horse-Racing im Wahlkampf

The habit of presenting the candidates in a political election like horses in a race ensures drama and excitement and has therefore proven popular with the media especially during a campaign. For several years, communication and political science have been criticizing the media’s election coverage for not emphasizing the issues but focusing instead on the candidates’ relative standing in the polls. This horse race journalism is said to replace content by entertainment. The assumption that this format has increased over the past years and also grows within a single election year as the election approaches has now been reassessed empirically. A comparison of the two major German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of the years 1976 and 2005 revealed surprising findings: the share of the horse-racing format in election campaign coverage is considerably lower than expected and has increased only a little within the past three decades. Quantity has apparently been overestimated, at least considering high-quality newspapers. Therefore it has to be asked whether the newsworthiness of horse racing leads to exceeding consumption and in consequence to a biased perception by its critics.     

Die Fernsehberichterstattung über die Arbeitslosigkeit und ihr Einfluss auf wahlrelevante Vorstellungen der Bevölkerung — eine Zeitreihenanalyse 1994–1998

There is a considerable amount of evidence suggesting that voters’ political preferences are influenced by domestic economic conditions. This paper examines the assumption that the connection between a specific economic development — unemployment — and the public’s voting preferences are mediated by the way in which television news cover unemployment. Using a time series analysis approach (August 1994–September 1998), it is shown that the media follow negative conditions in the labor market more closely than they follow positive conditions. Although television coverage fails to exert a direct effect on voting preferences for mainstream and radical parties, it does affect voting intentions independently and indirectly through its impact on the public’s perceptions of candidates, party competences and the perceived importance of unemployment as a national problem.     

Politiker-Homepages zwischen Politik-PR und Bürgerpartizipation

More than half of politicians on the federal level and almost a third on the state level in Germany offered their own website in 2002. Websites typically present politicians’ political work and their personality and provide citizens with interactive channels, such as electronic guestbook, online forum and email address. Politicians’ homepages as a new format of online communication are subject to critical coverage in the mass media. One fourth of internet users visit such pages more or less regularly. This article summarizes research on politicians’ homepages and focusses on two perspectives so far neglected: use and effects. Statements on current political issues and personal information are among the most widely used content elements in politicians’ homepages. Interactive components have so far only seldom been used. They contain a participatory potential, which, however, will only come to be realized if politicians keep up a transparent communication management that makes the uses of taking part evident to more citizens. Discrepancies between the citizens’ expectations for politicians’ homepages on the one hand, and people’s online behavior on the other, are discussed.     

Das Medienbild in der islamistischen Online-Propaganda

Islamic terror attacks can be regarded as an endpoint of radicalization defined as a process that takes place on a cognitive and a behavioral level (Neumann 2013b). The analysis of Islamic online propaganda seems to be important when it comes to explaining radicalization processes, as it can be defined as the “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist” (Jowett and O’Donnell 2012). The arguably most prominent Salafi propagandist in Germany is Pierre Vogel who has about 300,000 Facebook likes and who is said to be an extremely sucessfull missionary on the Internet (Wiedl and Becker 2014). Given Wiktorowicz’s (2006) differentiation of Salafi factions, Vogel belongs to the politicos who emphasize application of the Salafi creed to the political arena, but who do not call for violence. While previous research has analyzed several aspects of propaganda made by politicos and the violent jihadis (e.?g., Payne 2009), the media image Islamic propagandists hold has remained unexplored so far. This is an important deficit, as from the perspective of journalism ethics of responsibility, one can argue that journalists should know how their media coverage is perceived and instrumentalized by Islamists.Against this background, the present paper explores Vogel’s media image by analyzing Facebook posts that explicitly contain references to media. At first, the basic question of the Salafi’s understanding of the media arises, as a more technical view on the media can be distinguished from the perception of media as political actors bound by directives by the state (Neumann and Baugut 2017). Moreover, we were interested in the type of media and distinct media outlets Vogel refers to. Secondly, we wanted to find out in how far hostile media perceptions (Vallone et al. 1985), well-explored in other contexts, also occur among Islamists like Vogel that can be characterized by a considerable degree of cognitive and affective involvement that triggers hostile media perceptions (cf. Hansen and Kim 2011, S. 173–174; Matthes 2013, S. 375–376). Third, we were interested in the Salafi’s assumptions on media impact on third persons (Davison 1983), as previous research has pointed to cultural distance as one among several factors enforcing third person perceptions (Tsfati 2014). Fourth, as the perceptions mentioned above possibly foster radicalization, we were interested in whether Vogel consequently shows extremist tendencies in his statements on the media’s role. Methodologically, we conducted a qualitative content analysis (Mayring 2015) of all of Vogel’s media-related Facebook posts in the years 2014–2016 (N?=?137). In those years, Islamic terrorism became a major issue in consequence of terrorist attacks in Germany and other European countries.At first, our analysis shows that Vogel mostly refers indiscriminately to the media in general, not at least because he perceives journalistic cooorientation. In cases in which distinct media outlets are named, all types of journalistic media ranging from local newspapers to public and private broadcasting stations are concerned. The broad media repertoire suggests that the Salafist scene comes into contact with content of established journalistic media—albeit not always directly, but rather through the Salafist opinion leader Pierre Vogel in the sense of a “two-step flow” (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944).Second, we found strong hostile media perceptions indicating that the media are perceived as political actors “spending millions to fight Islam”. Vogel especially complains about media coverage portraying him in the context of terrorism. He traces this kind of media coverage back to both economic editorial imperatives and the media’s alleged political goal to divide the Muslim community. The public complaints about hostile media on Facebook can be interpreted as a contribution to the victim-narrative that is characteristic of Islamic propaganda (Payne 2009).Third, while Vogel criticizes media coverage in many respects, not at least in terms of credibility, he assumes that the media influence on third parties is relatively strong. For example, discrimination against Muslims in everyday life is ascribed to the media. Journalists are even made responsible for supporting terrorism by portraying non-radicalized individuals in the context of terrorism.Fourth, the occurrence of both hostile media and third person perceptions did not result in extremist statements on the role of the media. For example, we found no crimes such as an explicit verbal threat to journalists. Being aware that his critics might encourage supporters to attack the media which in turn could have legal consequences, Vogel emphasizes that complaints about ostensible lies should be raised in a reasonable way.All in all, this study shows journalists that their media coverage is intensively monitored by Germany’s most prominent Salafi and that hostile media and third person perceptions may at the same time also occur among extremists who use exemplars of media coverage for propaganda purposes. Especially an undifferentiated portrayal of Salafists as terrorists appears as grist to the mills of those who want to mobilize and recruit scene members by means of the victim-narrative. Clearly, this study has limitations. Given the heterogeneity of the Salafi scene (Wiktorowicz 2006), findings from a leading German Salafi cannot be simply transferred to the whole scene. Besides the problem of generalizability, an interview with Vogel is needed to understand the motives behind his analyzed postings and to find out whether his media image explored by a scholarly interview is congruent with his media image presented on Facebook.