Intermediation Environments of West German and East German Voters: Interpersonal Communication and Mass Communication During the First All-German Election Campaign

Abstract

The networks of interpersonal communication and the system of mass communication can be seen as intermediation environments that provide individual voters with links to the distant world of politics. This paper argues that, in order to gain an adequate impression of voters' relevant communication relationships during election campaigns, both intermediation environments must be studied simultaneously. Taking the example of the first all-German general election of 2 December 1990, the intermediation environments of East and West German voters are analysed in terms of the degree of exposure and the nature of the political messages to which voters are subjected through the two channels. Through interpersonal communication, voters mainly establish contact with persons sharing their own party preferences, whereas the mass media are perceived as neutral mediators by the majority of the voters. If a political bias of media reporting is detected, however, it tends to contradict voters' own party preferences. From a comparative perspective, it becomes evident that in the year of German unification West German voters had more in common with American voters than with the citizens of the former German Democratic Republic. The East-West differences are in particular due to the very high level of politicization of East Germans' daily life-world and to the lower degree of structuration of their communication relationships in terms of political attachment.