Mediated populism: The US-image under Trump in German media

This paper aims to analyze how the phenomenon of mediated populism has affected the US-Image in Germany. Due to political, economic, and cultural proximity, the United States, considered a reliable partner hitherto, has enjoyed so far a positive image in the country. Nevertheless, with the upsurge of the right-wing populism, personified in the figure of President Donald Trump, we will argue that the depiction of the US is increasingly captured in a negative frame as in conflict-oriented foreign reporting. Thus, we intend to investigate how the medial overemphasis of right-wing populism, sharply criticized in the literature, is correlated with the media logic of foreign reporting and the US-image’s metamorphosis. Within this theoretical background, we are going to combine for the first time both research strands – mediated populism with foreign news and image formation – and apply it empirically in the case of Der Spiegel, the leading German national weekly. The political periodical is a great thermometer to investigate the US-image. One classifies the publication among the quality-leading and prestigious press since the German elites and decision-makers read it recurrently We selected every article published by the weekly from January 2016 until October 2019 in which the name of the US President appeared in the title or the introduction of the text, totaling 360 news items. We appointed Der Spiegel mainly due to its influential role as an intra-media agenda-setter. We concluded that the current US-image in Germany, as reflected in the coverage of Trump’s presidency, is indeed captured and overshadowed by the demagoguery of the President’s sensationalist staged politics. Since the more negative coverage a state obtains, the higher are the odds that the audience will think negative about that country (Wanta, Golan, & Lee, 2004), it is not surprising that 73% of German interviewees judge the US-German relationship as bad (Pew Research Center, 2019). The negative effect of Trump is manifested in 65.6 % of the coverage, across different areas. Besides, the reporting of US domestic politics concentrates mostly on elections (29.3%), personalized profiles of flamboyant figures (18%), and political scandals (15.8%). Thus, we do not get much information about the deepest structures of US-American politics and society. In the era Trump, news factors such as personification, controversy, crisis, and polemic play a vital role in the US coverage. As our frames analysis indicates, the magazine was extremely critical to the upsurge of US right-wing populism. However, by reproducing and echoing (39 % of the articles) Trump’s controversial statements – even with a critical twist – the publication might be helping to set his agenda and spread his populist messages and provocative political posture in Germany. To appear in: Cazzamatta, R., & Hafez, K. (2021). Mediated Populism: The US-Image under Trump in German Media. In Y. R. Kamalipour (Ed.), Global Perceptions of the United States and Trump. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538142417/Global-Media-Perceptions-of-the-United-States-The-Trump-Effect