NaDiRa short study: Groupthink in the pandemic

Project team:

• Tamara Bogatzki
• Julia Stier
• Jana Glaese
• Julia Forke

- - -

Project description:

The project investigated two questions: Which groups do people in Germany hold responsible for the spread of the coronavirus? And can we predict which groups a person holds responsible if we know what their attitudes are and what is currently being discussed in the media? To answer all this, we used data from an ongoing representative survey conducted by the Migration and Diversity Research Unit of the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB). The survey contains the open question which three groups are mainly responsible for the pandemic in the view of the participants.

Results:

Our results suggest that the pandemic did temporarily influence which ethnic groups people disassociate themselves from. But overall, the pandemic does not seem to have changed social demarcation patterns much. Instead, a right-wing political orientation is the most statistically reliable predictor of whether a person names an ethnic group as a pandemic culprit.

This is most evident when AfD supporters are contrasted with those of other parties. Between April 2020 and April 2021, the proportion of people who associate the pandemic with an ethnic group decreases steadily among voters of other parties. This follows the media debate, which only focused on China and people of Asian origin at the beginning of the pandemic. Among AfD supporters, on the other hand, the proportion of people blaming ethnic groups remains high: respondents who support the AfD are almost 75 percent more likely to blame ethnic groups for the spread of the virus.

People who were already prejudiced before the pandemic are also more likely to blame ethnic groups for the spread of Covid-19. For example, AfD supporters generally name people of non-German origin as the ones spreading the coronavirus in Germany - and not specifically the group of "Chinese", as is sometimes the case in the media. AfD supporters thus use categories such as "refugees" and "immigrants", which already played a central role in AfD rhetoric before 2020.

Surprising insights:

Due to the open-ended question, it was also possible for us to capture new developments in the course of the pandemic. One example is that since the first demonstrations against the measures to contain the pandemic, "coronacritics*" have increasingly been mentioned as a group spreading the coronavirus in Germany.

Significance for practice:

Our results indicate that people with right-wing political attitudes are significantly more likely to blame ethnic groups for negative developments than other people, even during the pandemic. Therefore, it is advisable to particularly address people with right-wing attitudes as a target group in the field of anti-racism and anti-discrimination measures in order to reduce prejudices.

Short studies to prepare the Racism Monitor:

In order to prepare a comprehensive Racism Monitor, DeZIM called on academics* from the DeZIM research community in 2020 to develop innovative study ideas. These should extend existing research projects, pursue new and innovative approaches or build an infrastructure to research racism. By 2021, more than 120 researchers at the six locations of the DeZIM research community had conducted a total of 34 short studies. These are divided into six thematic priorities:

• Health system
• Education system and labour market
• Institutional racism
• Dealing with experiences of racism
• Participation and the media
• Racist ideologies and attitudes