Alienation between the people, media and politics? Media and political cynicism from an audience and elite perspective

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nayla Fawzi
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462543548

The established media and political elites currently find themselves exposed to fundamental public criticism. They are called "traitors to the people" and the "lying press" - accusations that are often expressed in one context. Social media in particular are considered to be a breeding ground for such anti-elite statements; the current structural change in the media, but also in the political system, and the emergence of new actors such as so-called alternative media or populist parties poses great challenges for political and media institutions. These new opportunity structures fundamentally changed communication and the relationship within and between politics, media and the people. It seems that a growing proportion of the population feels excluded or marginalized from the political public sphere, since entire groups feel neither represented by established media nor by politics and are turning away from it in a disenchanted manner. However, such alienation and gaps in representation of certain social groups is problematic from a democracy-theoretical perspective in many respects, among other things because they endanger the common public sphere in which political and social issues are negotiated. Against this background, this project is dedicated to the interplay, causes, and consequences of both media and political disenchantment based on an innovative multi-method design. The first project answers the question of the causal relationship between media and political disenchantment from a long-term perspective. Based on this, the project will investigate the extent of alienation of political and media elites in different population groups, the causes and consequences of both media and political disenchantment, and the characteristics of their relationship. A 4-wave panel survey and a mobile experience sampling study will be conducted. The latter aims to gain a deeper insight into the content of public criticism of elites with which recipients come into contact or which they themselves express. The second project will also use a panel survey as well as qualitative interviews to investigate how the political and media elite themselves perceive the disenchantement of the population and other actors and what effects this has on their actions. In the third project, a content analysis will investigate the elements of media criticism and hostility in the coverage of the established and alternative media as well as in user-generated content on the Internet.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups