CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2019
| Author | Meliukhina, Elena |
|---|---|
| Title | The Russian-speaking Minority in Germany: a Stronghold for 'Alternative for Germany'? |
| Summary | In the recent years, the Russian-speaking minority in Germany has become a subject of close attention by scholars and journalists. The reason for that is that in the context of electoral success of new far-right party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) on the last parliamentary elections many experts note that there are a lot of Russian-Germans among the supporters of this party. However, the precise level of support of AfD by Russian-Germans is unclear. In this thesis I analyze profiles of Russian-Germans in social media networks and complement these data by the analysis of the GLES 2017 dataset. This research reveals that there is a quite small group among Russian-Germans (primarily men of 50 years and above) who support the anti-immigrant sentiments of AfD. The share of this group constitutes approximately 11%, that is close to the country’s average result of AfD. Thus, the support of AfD by Russian-Germans is not overwhelming as media outlets present. To reveal reasons of such media bias I conduct a comparative analysis of media publications. This analysis shows that different media outlets may have different motives to publish news about a tendency of Russian-Germans to vote for AfD, namely: indirect critique of the Kremlin (the Russian non-state media), promoting of AfD (the pro-Kremlin media), and transferring of responsibility (the Western media). At the same time, such explanations as media bias resulting from the search for a memorable story and the lack of valid information can be further motives for all three categories of media outlets. |
| Supervisor | Toka, Gabor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2019/meliukhina_elena.pdf |
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