Effects of Linguistic Abstractness in the Mass Media - Hogrefe eContent

D. Geschke Journal et al.:ofLinguistic Media Psychology Abstractness © 2010 2010;in Hogrefe Vol. the 22(3):99–104 Mass Publishing Media

Original Article

Effects of Linguistic Abstractness in the Mass Media How Newspaper Articles Shape Readers’ Attitudes Toward Migrants Daniel Geschke1, Kai Sassenberg2, Georg Ruhrmann1, and Denise Sommer3 1

Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany, 2Knowledge Media Research Center, Tübingen, Germany, 3University of Leipzig, Germany

Abstract. Media coverage contributes to the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudice. So far, research has focused on biased content rather than style in reporting about minorities. One such stylistic dimension is the so-called linguistic intergroup bias: The tendency to describe positive behavior of members of one’s own group and negative behavior of other groups’ members in a more abstract way (compared to the same behavior of the respective other group). Recipients of communication biased in this way judge the described individuals in line with abstract descriptions (i.e., own-group members more positively than members of other groups). The current study demonstrates that linguistically biased news reports about minorities lead to higher levels of prejudice. Hence, media coverage does not only affect attitudes about minorities by what is reported, but also by how it is presented. Keywords: news, linguistic abstractness, migrants, prejudice

News reports are supposed to be unbiased, and journalists claim to describe events in such a fashion (Donsbach & Klett, 1993). However, current media coverage concerning migrants and other minorities is still biased by stereotypes. Migrants, for instance, are overrepresented as perpetrators of crime, seen in relation to their actual crime rates, which contributes to the stereotype that migrants are criminal (Dixon & Linz, 2000; Esser, Scheufele, & Brosius, 2002). This biased information selection affects the audiences’ attitudes toward the described social groups (Persson & Musher-Eizenman, 2005), contributes to the perpetuation of social stereotypes (Dixon, 2008; Dixon & Azocar, 2007), and thereby increases the likelihood of prejudiced behavior. Social psychological research has shown that not only what is reported about people (i.e., the content), but also how they are presented (i.e., stylistic features) affects audiences’ attitudes and behavior toward them. Among other stylistic elements, linguistic abstractness influences readers’ impressions about and attitudes toward the described people or groups. Therefore, stylistically biased communication about minorities potentially contributes to the persistence of stereotypes, as shown in research on the socalled linguistic intergroup bias (LIB, Wigboldus & Douglas, 2007). So far, research on the impact of LIB has been © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

conducted in laboratory experiments which focused on LIB-effects on judgments about the described persons rather than on the perpetuation of stereotypes. Therefore, it is not yet clear whether LIB affects stereotypes and prejudice or only the perception of described target persons. This question is highly relevant as LIB is not limited to everyday communication but also occurs in media coverage about migrants and other phenomena involving groups (Maass, Corvino, & Arcuri, 1994). Hence, we analyze the effects of LIB in newspaper articles on readers’ attitudes toward migrants in the current study.

Linguistic Abstractness and Linguistic Intergroup Bias The Linguistic Category Model (LCM, Semin & Fiedler, 1991) systematically connects differences in the linguistic abstractness of information with their effects on its recipients. The same event or behavior can be described on different levels of abstractness ranging from descriptive action verbs (e.g., kick), which are most concrete, via interpretive action verbs (e.g., attack), state action verbs (e.g., Journal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104 DOI: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000014

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D. Geschke et al.: Linguistic Abstractness in the Mass Media

anger), and state verbs (e.g., hate) to the most abstract category adjectives (e.g., aggressive). Recently, Carnaghi and colleagues (2008) added nouns (e.g., aggressor) as an even more abstract category to the LCM. In spontaneous communication, positive behavior of members of the sender’s own group and negative behavior of members of other groups are described in a more abstract fashion than the same behavior of the respective other agents. Both effects together form the LIB. LIB is not only restricted to informal communication, but also occurs in newspaper coverage about sports (Maass et al., 1994) and – even more important for the current context – about crime among migrants (Ruhrmann & Sommer, 2008). LIB is relevant to media studies, as an audience’s impressions about a target critically depend on the level of linguistic abstractness. Abstract wording implies a higher perceived stability and enduringness of the described behavior than concrete wording. It has been predicted that the more abstract the fashion in which a behavior is described, the stronger the audience will attribute the behavior to the actor rather than to the situation (for a summary see Wigboldus & Douglas, 2007). For example, Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin (1989) presented their participants with single sentences generated by participants of an earlier study and found that the more abstract the sentences were, the more information about the protagonist the readers perceived to gain from them. Moreover, abstract sentences led to the impression that the behavior is more likely to be repeated (see also Semin & Fiedler, 1991; Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000). These findings provide clear evidence that the more abstractly a message is worded, the more likely it is for the recipients to believe that the described individual will show the respective behavior in the future, because it is attributed to certain dispositions. In the case of LIB in communication, this implies that recipients’ impression that both negative behavior of other-group members and positive behavior of own-group members are more likely to occur in the future will be reinforced. Unfortunately, research has so far focused on the influence that LIB exerts on the judgment about the described single individuals rather than on stereotypes and prejudice regarding the social groups the described individuals belong to. The latter is of crucial interest regarding the mass media’s impact on intergroup attitudes in real life. Therefore, the present study tested whether abstractly worded news reports (compared to concretely worded reports) about migrants committing crimes result in (a) a stronger expectation that migrants will show criminal behavior in the future and (b) higher levels of prejudice. Two sets of otherwise very similar actual newspaper articles that described migrants committing crimes with different levels of linguistic abstractness were used as stimulus material. After reading one of the sets, participants estimated the likelihood of future criminal behavior among migrants and answered questions about subtle and blatant prejudice toward migrants. We predicted that after reading the abstract article set, participants would expect migrants to show more criminal beJournal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104

havior in the future and they will be more prejudiced toward migrants. As there is a strong norm nowadays in favor of political correctness toward migrants and minorities in general, individuals are unlikely to state their prejudice openly (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1986). Explicit measures of prejudice (such as blatant prejudice) are likely to be heavily affected by the motivation to comply with norms of political correctness (Dunton & Fazio, 1997). Therefore, we expected an impact of the linguistic abstractness on subtle prejudice but were less sure about its effect on blatant prejudice.

Method Participants and Design Thirty-nine German undergraduates (22 female, M = 22.5 years, range 18–46) participated in an experiment with two conditions (abstract vs. concrete descriptions); they received e 3.00 for their participation. A between-participants design was chosen rather than a within-participants one, as past research has rarely been successful in demonstrating changing prejudice as a result of communication. Thus, it seemed very unlikely for us to find evidence for changes in prejudice in two assessments closely following each other.

Procedure The four parts of the study were introduced to the participants as four unrelated studies. The first part (announced as a study about the perception of social groups) assessed the baseline level of participants’ estimates of migrants’ criminal behavior. In the second part (announced as a study about the comprehension of newspaper articles), participants read the newspaper articles that served to implement the manipulation. In the third part, participants completed items from Raven’s (1990) Advanced Progressive Matrices for approximately 15 minutes to avoid details from the articles stored in short-term memory affecting the assessment of the dependent variables. Finally, in the fourth part (announced as a study on the impression of minorities), participants’ predictions of migrants’ future criminal behavior as well as blatant and subtle prejudice were assessed.

Manipulation of Linguistic Abstractness Linguistic abstractness was manipulated by presenting participants with one of two randomly assigned sets of four genuine newspaper articles that systematically varied in linguistic abstractness. Participants were instructed to read the newspaper articles very carefully, as they later would have to “answer some questions about them.” The articles were presented in a fixed order and did not contain any pictures. They were selected from the coverage about © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing


migrants in two German quality newspapers dating from 2003, namely the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (details on the articles used are provided in the Appendix). Given the fact that the study was conducted 4 years later, it is highly unlikely that participants remembered the described events. In order to compose two parallel sets of articles, we focused on articles addressing the topic migrants and crime. From all available articles we selected 8 that were comparable in terms of article type (all articles were news reports rather than commentaries or background stories), general news value (in the sense of Galtung & Ruge, 1965), and severity of the crime. The content and layout of the news items were left as in the original newspapers. The linguistic abstractness of the news articles and other characteristics (see below) were coded by two independent raters. They used a revised coding procedure that includes the LCM categories as well as nouns. Moreover, nouns and adjectives were differentiated by their breadth of reference (Hampson, Goldberg, & John, 1987), leading to 8 categories (Ruhrmann, Sommer, & Sassenberg, 2007). The linguistic abstractness score ranged from 1 (lowest abstractness) to 8 (highest abstractness). Rater agreement was 100%. Based on this coding, the articles were combined into a rather concrete and a rather abstract set. The four concretely worded newspaper articles had a linguistic abstractness of M = 4.57 (SD = .10), whereas the four abstractly worded newspaper articles’ linguistic abstractness was M = 5.70 (SD = .57). The difference found between the means of these two experimental conditions is not very large. However, this is not particularly surprising as journalists are usually skilled language users and thus employ a wide range of stylistic features rather than exclusively concrete or abstract terms. To ascertain that we experimentally assess effects of the different linguistic abstractness of the two sets of articles, we had to make sure there were no other substantial differences between the sets. Regarding the more subjective criteria, the articles were rated by two independent coders. These ratings were averaged. The degree of controversy described was rated on a 3-point scale ranging from 0 (no controversy) to 2 (substantial controversy), while the aggression described was assessed on a 4point scale ranging from 0 (no aggression) to 3 (strong aggression). Coder agreement for these dimensions was 76%. Furthermore, the two coders also evaluated several stylistic dimensions of the articles on 5-point scales with an agreement of 71%, namely: boring (1) vs. thrilling (5), superficial (1) vs. detailed (5), and generalizing (1) vs. differentiating (5). Table 1 provides an overview of the subjective and objective features of the two sets of articles. Effect sizes rather than test statistics are reported as the former can hardly be computed based on 8 articles (units of analyses). As indicated by the effect sizes, the sets of articles are rather similar. Finally, in order to provide further evidence beyond © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

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Table 1. Means (standard deviations) of the features of the two article sets and effect size of the difference concrete

abstract

η2

122.25 (50.04)

110.50 (47.00)

.019

59.00 (21.49)

57.00 (20.49)

.003

7.30 (3.11)

7.75 (1.26)

.004

Controversy (0–2)

1.50 (1.00)

1.50 (1.00)

.000

Aggression (0–3)

1.00 (0.82)

1.25 (0.96)

.026

Thrilling (1–5)

4.00 (.00)

4.25 (0.96)

.043

Detailed (1–5)

2.25 (.96)

2.00 (0.82)

.026

Differentiating (1–5)

3.00 (.82)

2.50 (1.29)

.067

Interesting (1–7)

4.85 (1.60)

4.56 (1.50)

.009

Complicated (1–7)

1.90 (1.17)

1.67 (1.03)

.012

Informative (1–7)

4.55 (1.73)

4.44 (1.46)

.001

Unexpected (1–7)

3.40 (1.64)

2.83 (1.38)

.035

Surprising (1–7)

3.80 (1.82)

3.39 (1.65)

.014

Exciting (1–7)

3.70 (1.59)

4.00 (1.61)

.009

Lurid (1–7)

3.70 (1.34)

3.78 (1.56)

.001

Objective features Length (words) 2

Size of text (cm ) Size of headline (cm2) Rater data

Participant data

the criteria described above that the articles do not differ on a dimension other than linguistic abstractness, participants answered several questions about the articles. These questions assessed how interesting, complicated, informative, unexpected, surprising, exciting, and lurid participants found the articles. A MANOVA with the between-subject factor Linguistic Abstractness (low vs. high) and the 7 questions as dependent variables was computed. As expected, the factor Article Set had neither a multivariate nor an univariate effect, all Fs(1, 36) < 1.5, all ps > .2, all η2part < .04 (see Table 1 for details). Based on these data, we think it is justified to conclude that the two sets of articles were very similar.

Measures Likelihood of criminal behavior was measured with three short, ambivalent scenarios each, before (as baseline) and after the presentation of the news articles (to assess effects of linguistic abstractness). Participants were to judge whether the migrant actors in these scenarios would break the law or not. The scenarios described migrants in situations where it would have been plausible that they break the law. The scenarios were formulated in an ambivalent way to allow for maximum impact of participants’ prejudice. The three baseline scenarios involved a) a migrant who has no tram ticket and might dodge the fare, b) a migrant who is lingering in a shop and might steal something, and c) a traffic light turning red and a migrant in a hurry who might ignore it and drive on. The three scenarJournal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104

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ios presented after the manipulation described a) a migrant’s drunk driving (or taking the bus) after a company party, b) a migrant possibly breaking into a house (or not), and c) a migrant possibly leaving a coffee shop with or without paying the bill. Participants were asked how likely they thought each of these events was on scales from 0% to 100%. The three responses to the scenarios of the baseline measure (assessed before the presentation of the news articles, α = .13) and the three answers to the scenarios assessed after the manipulation (α = .70) were averaged into two separate scales. Due to the low internal consistency of the scale assessed before the manipulation, we computed all analyses below including this scale (a) with the average score of the 3 items and (b) with the 3 separate items. The results do not differ substantially in any of the analyses. Hence, only the analyses with the scale are reported even though the internal consistency is low. Higher values indicate that criminal behavior was expected to be more likely. Prejudice was measured using items from Pettigrew and Meertens’ (1995) Subtle and Blatant Prejudice Scale. For subtle prejudice, the 4 items from the Exaggeration of Cultural Differences subscale were adapted (“How different do you think migrants living in Germany are to other Germans . . . a) in the values they teach their children, b) in their religious beliefs and practices, c) in their sexual values or sexual practices, and d) in the language that they speak?”, α = .63). Blatant prejudice was measured with 10 items from both Blatant Prejudice subscales (e.g., “Migrants have jobs the Germans should have,” “Germans and migrants can never be really comfortable with each other, even if they are close friends,” α = .88). All these items were to be rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 7 = totally agree. Items from both scales were partly recoded and then averaged, so that higher values indicated higher subtle or blatant prejudice.

Results We predicted that abstract news articles would lead to higher estimates of migrants’ criminal behavior and to stronger subtle prejudice. No clear prediction was derived for blatant prejudice. Separate ANCOVAs for estimates of migrants’ criminal behavior after reading the articles, subtle and blatant prejudice with Linguistic Abstractness (low vs. high) as between-subjects factor, and the initial expectation of criminal behavior as a covariate were computed. In line with the prediction, linguistically abstract news articles led to higher estimates of criminal behavior (M = 39.18%, SD = 17.40) than linguistically concrete articles (M = 32.14%, SD = 20.12), F(1, 36) = 3.10, p < .05, onetailed, η2part = .08. Furthermore, after reading linguistically abstract articles, participants also had higher levels of subtle prejudice (M = 5.75, SD = .60) than after reading Journal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104

linguistically concrete articles (M = 5.32, SD = .96), F(1, 36) = 4.53, p < .05, η2part = .11. Blatant prejudice was not affected by the manipulation (F < 1.5, p = .24). In all cases, the covariate predicted a significant amount of variance, all Fs > 9, all ps < .005, all η2part > .20. Taken together, the results support our predictions. Abstractly worded news articles led to larger estimates of criminal behavior and stronger subtle (but not blatant) prejudice than concretely worded articles.

Discussion This study was designed to test the effect of linguistic bias in newspaper articles about minorities on recipients’ attitudes to the respective minority, that is, in our case, migrants. For this purpose, actual newspaper articles describing migrants committing a crime with different levels of linguistic abstractness were presented to participants. The effects of two sets of authentic newspaper articles differing in linguistic abstractness on readers’ estimates of migrants’ future criminal behavior and readers’ subtle and blatant prejudice toward migrants were studied. In line with the hypotheses it was found that abstractly worded news articles led to higher estimates of future criminal behavior than concretely worded ones. Furthermore, abstractly worded articles led to higher levels of subtle prejudice in terms of perceived cultural differences than concretely worded articles. Finally, blatant prejudice was unaffected by the linguistic abstractness of the news articles. Taken together, the degree of linguistic abstractness of these authentic news items influenced readers’ stereotypes and prejudice. It might be argued that the effects of linguistic abstractness are not very severe, as merely subtle but not blatant prejudice was elevated by abstractly worded newspaper articles. However, blatant prejudice scales can be strongly affected by political correctness norms. Therefore, the somewhat covert subtle prejudice measures actually provide a more valid assessment of participants’ actual prejudice. Furthermore, subtle forms of prejudice at times have even more severe effects on victims than blatant prejudice (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005). But this is not to say that there are generally no effects of news items on overt forms of prejudice. The continuous consumption of mass-mediated news items (as in real life) may affect reader’s blatant attitudes in the long run. The current research focused on testing the causal effect of linguistically biased media coverage, but did not address the long-term consequences. At the same time, the differences in linguistic abstractness between conditions were not very strong. Larger differences in linguistic abstractness might also yield immediate effects on blatant prejudice. A strength of this study lies in its use of actual newspaper articles rather than articles with manipulated linguistic abstractness. Given that earlier research demonstrated the effect of linguistic abstractness on the audience with very © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing


brief materials (e.g., Maass et al., 1989; Wigboldus et al., 2000), it was our goal to show that unaltered original news items can have similar effects. To exclude the possible alternative explanation that the effects reported might be due to different content of the news pieces, the sets of articles were chosen in a way that ensured they were as similar as possible (e.g., severity of crimes, article length, etc.). In addition, we provided sound empirical evidence that the participants and the two coders judged these articles as similar on several other dimensions. In this study we focused on the effects of linguistic abstractness of negative outgroup descriptions, partly due to limited availability of comparable newspaper articles. However, for future research it would be valuable to assess the full LIB effect on the audience by comparing abstract vs. concrete descriptions of positive vs. negative behaviors of ingroup vs. outgroup members. Finally, the current study adds to past research insofar as the linguistic abstractness of newspaper articles influences readers’ attitudes toward the social group to which a target belongs. This corroborates the importance of the subtle stylistic dimension of linguistic abstractness. In terms of practical implications, this means that journalists need to be aware that not only the content, but also the style of their reports (i.e., the linguistic abstractness) can influence readers’ attitudes and therefore, eventually, the quality of intergroup relations. To achieve truly neutral coverage, not only the content of the news but also its style needs to be monitored.

Acknowledgments This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Ru 467/5–1). We thank Johann Jacoby for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and Kim Heinemann, Manuela Richter, Bettina Binder, and Julia Metag for their help during data collection.

References Barreto, M., & Ellemers, N. (2005). The perils of political correctness: Men’s and women’s responses to old-fashioned and modern sexist views. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68, 75–88. Carnaghi, A., Maass, A., Gresta, S., Bianchi, M., Cadinu, M., & Arcuri, L. (2008). Nomina sunt omina: On the inductive potential of nouns and adjectives in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 839–859. Dixon, T. L. (2008). Crime news and racialized beliefs: Understanding the relationship between local news viewing and perceptions of African Americans and crime. Journal of Communication, 58, 106–125. Dixon, T. L., & Azocar, C. L. (2007). Priming crime and activating Blackness: Understanding the psychological impact of the © 2010 Hogrefe Publishing

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overrepresentation of Blacks as lawbreakers on television news. Journal of Communication, 57, 229–253. Dixon, T. L., & Linz, D. (2000). Race and the misrepresentation of victimization on local television news. Communication Research, 27, 547–573. Donsbach, W., & Klett, B. (1993). Subjective objectivity. How journalists in four countries define a key term of their profession. Gazette, 51, 53–83. Dovidio, J. F., & Gaertner, S. L. (1986). Prejudice, discrimination, and racism. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Dunton, B. C., & Fazio, R. H. (1997). An individual difference measure of motivation to control prejudiced reactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 316–326. Esser, F., Scheufele, B., & Brosius, H.-B. (2002). Fremdenfeindlichkeit als Medienthema und Medienwirkung. Deutschland im internationalen Scheinwerferlicht [Xenophobia as media topic and the impact of the media. Spot lights on Germany]. Wiesbaden, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag. Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. H. (1965). The structure of foreign news. The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crisis in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 1, 64–91. Hampson, S. E., Goldberg, L. R., & John, O. P. (1987). Category breadth and social desirability – values for 573 personality terms. European Journal of Personality, 1, 241–258. Maass, A., Corvino, G., & Arcuri, L. (1994). Linguistic intergroup bias and the mass media. Revue de Psychologie Sociale, 1, 31–43. Maass, A., Salvi, D., Arcuri, L., & Semin, G. R. (1989). Language use in intergroup contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 981–993. Persson, A. V., & Musher-Eizenman, D. R. (2005). College students’ attitudes toward Blacks and Arabs following a terrorist attack as a function of varying levels of media exposure. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 1879–1893. Pettigrew, T. F., & Meertens, R. W. (1995). Subtle and blatant prejudice in Western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 57–75. Raven, J. C. (1990). Advanced Progressive Matrices. Set II. Oxford, UK: Oxford Psychology Press. Ruhrmann, G., & Sommer, D. (2008). Linguistic bias in press coverage about Germans and immigrants. Unpublished Manuscript, University of Jena (Germany). Ruhrmann, G., Sommer, D., & Sassenberg, K. (2007, May). Intergroup bias in mass media: From semantic to pragmatic dimensions – A research agenda. Paper presented at the 57th Annual conference of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA, USA. Semin, G. R., & Fiedler, K. (1991). The Linguistic Category Model, its bases, applications and range. European Review of Social Psychology, 2, 1–30. Wigboldus, D. H. J., & Douglas, K. (2007). Language, stereotypes, and intergroup relations. In K. Fiedler (Ed.), Social communication (pp. 79–106). New York: Psychology Press. Wigboldus, D. H. J., Semin, G. R., & Spears, R. (2000). How do we communicate stereotypes? Linguistic bases and inferential consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 5–18.

Date of acceptance: November 26, 2009 Journal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104

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Daniel Geschke received his PhD in Social Psychology from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, in 2007. Since then, he has been working in several research groups at the university, investigating the effects of linguistic biases. He is currently a research associate in the Department of Communication Psychology at the Institute of Communication Research. His research interests are in the fields of migration and intergroup relations and include topics such as acculturation, prejudice, discrimination, media effects, and linguistic biases. Daniel Geschke Department of Communication Psychology Ernst-Abbe-Platz 8 07743 Jena Germany Tel +49 3641 945279 Fax +49 3641 945282 E-mail [email protected] Kai Sassenberg received a PhD in psychology from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1999. Since October 2007, he is a professor at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and head of the Social Processes Lab at the Knowledge Media Research Center. His research is located at the crossroads of social, organizational, and media psychology. He has conducted research on the impact of selfregulation processes on social interaction and intergroup behavior and is particularly interested in the impact of computer-mediated communication on these phenomena.

Georg Ruhrmann is Chair for Communication and Media Effects at the Institute for Communication Research at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany. His research interests are in the fields of television news, content analysis, migration and media, and science communication. Since 1986, he has conducted social research on migrants in press, social campaigns, and TV news. In 1995, the Schader Foundation awarded the “Social Science in Practice” prize to him. Since 2008, he has been in cooperation with the Herbert Quandt Foundation on the program “Trialogue of Cultures.” Denise Sommer is a research associate in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Leipzig, Germany. She studied Psychology at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, and received her Diploma (MSc) in 2002. In 2007, she was awarded her PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Jena, Germany, where she worked in different projects on mass media and migration between 2002 and 2008. In her dissertation she investigated the characteristics and effects of interpersonal communication about TV news. Her research interests include interpersonal communication, attitudes and communication processes, media and migration, and communication theories.

Appendix Articles included in the two sets:

Concrete

Abstract

Geiselnahme in Hamburg: Drei Verletzte nach Polizeiaktion [Hamburg hostage taking: Three injured following police action]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 13, 2003, p. 7. Ausweisung rechtens [Expulsion is legal]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 21, 2003, p. 6. Mann erschießt Ehefrau und zwei Ärzte [Man shoots wife and two doctors to death]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 16, 2003, p. 1. Streit über Hintergründe der Bremer Busentführung [Controversy over background to Bremen bus hijacking]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 28, 2003, p. 2.

Teltge-Morde: Plädoyer für lebenslang [Teltge murders: Call for life sentence]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 26, 2003, p. 10. Erste Abschiebung nach Afghanistan seit 1980 [First expulsion to Afghanistan since 1980]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 20, 2003, p. 7. Grenzschützer heben Schleuserbande aus [Border guards uncover illegal immigration racket]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 25, 2003, p. 6. Verurteilter Türke zündet sich an [Sentenced Turkish man sets himself on fire]. Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 1, 2003, p. 6.

Journal of Media Psychology 2010; Vol. 22(3):99–104

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