News media has the potential to reproduce or challenge right-wing narratives about people considered out-groups. One group consistently targeted by far-right actors are LGBTQ+ people. Despite this, we lack understanding about how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in the news in a time of normalisation of right-wing norms. This also applies to Germany, where right-wing populism has been gaining ground for a long time, but where empirical research into the media representation of LGBTQ+ communities has been largely neglected. We therefore ask: How comprehensive are LGBTQ+ people represented in German newspapers, and to what extend are they themselves given a voice?
Drawing from the perspectives of symbolic representation, intersectionality, and solidarity, we argue that good representation of marginalised groups during times of illiberalism must, on the one hand, represent the group in all its diversity and, on the other hand, challenge marginalisation by allowing group members to control their representation in the media and express their needs. We therefore examine three aspects of LGBTQ+ news representation: 1) the visibility of different LGBTQ+ sub-communities and 2) intersectional identities, and 3) how the concerns of LGBTQ+ people are presented and by whom.
We examine these criteria by analysing over 20,000 newspaper articles from broadsheet, tabloid, and regional outlets in Germany from 2012 to 2025. Using network analysis, we examine whether the representation is concentrated on certain LGBTQ+ identities and whether intersectional identities are mentioned. We further analyse the grammatical function of LGBTQ+ mentions using parts-of-speech tags and named entity recognition. Finally, we conduct a content analysis on a random sample of articles to manually code whether LGBTQ+ individuals themselves have a voice and can express their needs.
Our findings indicate that, while more sub-communities are mentioned, certain LGBTQ+ identities receive little to no attention, and intersectionality is rarely covered. The results also indicate that LGBTQ+ individuals are not often given a direct voice and thus lack agency over their representation.
This study illustrates that, while reporting on LGBTQ+ people has improved, it still falls short of meeting the criteria for countering right-wing narratives and remaining steadfast in the face of rising right-wing authoritarianism.
