The influence of extremistic violent events on the framing of extremism in online media

Abstract

In this article, we examine the representation of right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism and Islamism in the media-public discourse using the example of SPIEGEL Online, one of the leading German media. We derive four central dimensions for the conceptualization of extremisms: ideological foundation, origin of the actors, position towards society and typical actions. We observe the development of the representation of extremisms at potential breakpoints: We investigate the associative framing of the extremisms before and after a prominent extremism-related violent event, namely 9/11, the publication of the NSU scandal and left-wing extremist activities during the G20 summit. We observe changes in framing motivated by the selected events and compare the resulting framing with the current definitions of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in order to work out possible differences in the conceptualization of extremism variants with potentially different logics of action to be expected from diverging conceptualisations.