Violence committed by "strangers" - Violence against "strangers". Media coverage on violence committed by Kurds and Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) andxenophobic attacks

Recent studies on foreigners and mass media in germany asked if and how med ia contributed to the spread of xenophobic assaults in the early nineties. Most studies dealt with coverage on immigration and asylum matters as well as on racial attacks. Other - more descriptive - research analyzed media im ages of foreigeners in different contexts, such as crimes committed by immi grants. This article integrates both research traditions and deals with med ia effects beyond the "immigration discourse" (Niehr/Boke 2000): Does cover age on violence committed by "strangers" have an impact on real violence ag ainst "strangers"? We applied time series methods on data from content anal yses and on crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Criminal Inverstiga tion (BKA). Our study establishes a strong correlation between negative med ia coverage on Kurds and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on the one and a ttacks against foreigners on the other hand, concerning the time period fro m 1993 to 1996.