The Same Procedure as Every Year? The Framing of Pro-Government Mobilization in the GDR

• In Event: Information Manipulation in Authoritarian Regimes

Brief Overview

Many authoritarian regimes hold yearly demonstrations to praise their leaders and to legitimize their grip on power. Examples include the May Day demonstrations in Cuba or the Day of the Shining Star in North Korea. Little is known about the role of what is best described as institutionalized or ritualized pro-government mo-bilization. While these events seem to follow the same script every year, we argue that there is considerable variation in their use for propaganda by the regime. We expect that in times of increased political pressure, the size and significance of these events will be more inflated in the regime’s media channels. Empirically, we study the Luxemburg-Liebknecht marches in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), a yearly demonstration in honor of two prominent socialist figures killed by right-wing paramilitaries in 1919. Drawing on digitized versions of three state-controlled news-papers in the GDR, we measure the amount and content of media coverage on the Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration for each year from 1949 to 1989. In our subse-quent quantitative analysis, we investigate how political pressure on the regime affects reporting on these events.

Authors

• Sebastian Hellmeier, University of Gothenburg

• Nils Weidmann, University of Konstanz