Partisanship, Propaganda, and Misinformation During Peak COVID-19: A Comparative Study Between the United States and Germany

Abstract

In the context of the elite-driven, media-state nexus of Western democracies, the functioning of today’s propaganda plays out in the fold-lines of national media ecosystems, social traditions, and political institutions. Over the past few decades, the public conversation about political issues has largely migrated online, more specifically to the social-media sphere, which has drastically altered the incentive structures of media outlets as well as the shape of information flows. Benkler, et al. (2018) identified the inner functioning of the alternative-reality dimension of the U.S. media ecosystem, which he termed the “propaganda feedback loop.” They attributed the emergence of this mechanism to the specificities of the American ecosystem and social norms. Building on the work by Benkler, et al., I hypothesize that this dynamic is universal amongst Western democracies. The hypothesis was tested with a mixed-method approach by comparing the functioning of media ecosystems in the United States and Germany during a specified interval of time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate that inter-societal differences in learned behaviors, national political institutions, and/or specificities of media ecosystems do not alter the essential functioning of these systems. However, such distinctions govern significant differences in the scale, scope, and levels of influence of such systems.