Research question/goal:

The project examined implicit and explicit racism in Germany’s public sphere—across established and alternative outlets—and its effects on racial stereotypes. Combining theoretical and methodological innovation with large-scale empirical approaches, it used content analyses and an experimental study to explore how the media shape social perceptions.

Methodologically, the project employed word embeddings as a tool to measure implicit associations of ethnic groups with specific emotions (fear/admiration) in German media texts. An experimental survey confirmed that participants’ perceptions aligned with embedding-based associations, supporting this method’s semantic validity. Using these tools and Latent Semantic Scaling, analyses of nearly 700,000 articles identified both explicit and subtle stigmatisation. Groups from poorer or culturally more distant countries were most negatively portrayed. Furthermore, Muslim and refugee groups faced strong implicit stigmatisation, even without explicit negativity—revealing underlying social biases in reporting.

An analysis of the five most frequently reported groups in 2022 (Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Britons, Americans, French) revealed that tabloid newspapers reported most positively, followed by quality newspapers, while right-wing alternative media reported most negatively. Only tabloids and quality outlets conveyed positive portrayals on both explicit and implicit levels. A planned follow-up study will use few-shot learning with LLMs to identify outlet-specific variations in reporting on immigrants, majority Muslim countries, and European countries.

A multi-stimulus media effects experiment with 2,139 participants exposed readers to a randomly selected news article out of a larger pre-classified article corpus. It tested the effect of emotional cues on group-related emotions, cognitions and behavioural intentions. Articles associating groups with admiration produced more positive evaluations but did not alter implicit attitudes.

We conclude that racialised groups remain underrepresented in journalism and coverage often focuses on negative topics. Broader reporting and greater inclusion of journalists with migration backgrounds are key to promoting more balanced coverage and reducing prejudice.