Television and protest in East Germany’s revolution, 1989–1990: A mixed-methods analysis

Abstract

This article uses a mixed-methods approach to analyze the relationship between television and protest during East Germany’s revolution. The content of television newscasts, both West German and East German, is analyzed together with protest event data. There are two key findings. First, West German coverage of protests is associated with an increase in protest in the first phase of the revolution. This finding emerges from time series analysis. Second, West German and East German television coverage were interacting, with the latter reacting to the former. This finding emerges from both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

A Spatial Analysis of the Impact of West German Television on Protest Mobilization During the East German Revolution

“…widespread (Kuran 1991;Hirschman 1993;Jarausch 1994;Grix 2000;Grdȇsić Forthcoming). In contrast, our empirical evidence shows that WGTV had no effect on protest activities in East Germany.…”

“…This null result could be due to our focus on the East German revolution in its entirety. If WGTV did have an effect on protest activities, we would expect the effect to decrease over time as East German media became more independent from the East German regime and more able to provide unbiased coverage of the mounting regime crisis (Kern 2011;Grdȇsić Forthcoming). Such a pattern of decreasing WGTV effects would provide strong evidence for the impact of WGTV, perhaps even more convincing than if we had found a positive effect of WGTV throughout the entire East German revolution.…”

The exceptionalism of Romanian socialist television and its implications

“…For example, the Germans in GDR regularly watched the programs of FRG television (Kern / Hainmueller 2009, Kern 2011, Grdešić 2014, while on the other side of the continent Finnish television was introducing Estonians to the colorful world of entertainment and consumerism, teaching them about Western values and…”

A spatial analysis of the impact of West German television on protest mobilization during the East German revolution

“…Most directly related to our research are articles by Kern (2011) and Grdȇsić (2014) that both look at WGTV's role as a coordination device for protest activities during the East German revolution. Kern (2011) compares counties without WGTV to a matched comparison group of counties with WGTV, but does not find any evidence that WGTV affected the speed or depth of protest diffusion.…”

“…Kern (2011) compares counties without WGTV to a matched comparison group of counties with WGTV, but does not find any evidence that WGTV affected the speed or depth of protest diffusion. Grdȇsić (2014) argues, based on vector autoregressions and Granger causality tests, that WGTV news reports about East German protests 'Granger caused' protests in East Germany the following day.…”