Kumulative Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2017

This dissertation investigates how far the content of provided information can affect people‘s attitudes in the space of current political thinking. Specifically, it examines how opinion formation within political conflicts and state of affairs can be biased through varying visual and narrative representations in times of threat and uncertainty. Instead of using fictional scenarios or post-hoc evaluations, the experimental designs were applied to current political affairs and conducted within time frames where opinion formation was rather unsettled than cast in concrete. In doing so, the possibility was created to gather new insights into the assessments of ongoing political state of affairs and how opinion formation can be biased through the lens of available information.
For example, due to the so-called Ukrainian Crisis a heavily waged dispute emerged in 2014 about how to deal with Russia’s infringement of international law (e.g., annexation of Crimea) ranging from economic sanctions to military action. Although a majority of Germans blamed Russia for this crisis, only a minority favored to provide military aid in this conflict. Empirical evidence was found that one-dimensional and threatening depictions (e.g., in news coverage) can alter people’s military attitudes in this reemerging international conflict (Gebauer, Raab, & Carbon, 2016c). Furthermore, results from two experiments demonstrate how seemingly subtle variations of visualizing the political realities in this conflict can shape the political perception and reinforce stereotypical thinking (Gebauer, Raab, & Carbon, 2016a). Additionally, studies have shown that minimal narrative changes in the context of possible political conspiracies—here, the perceived relations between the US and Russia—can affect the conspiratorial reasoning of conspiracy believers and sceptics (Gebauer, Raab, & Carbon, 2016b). Finally, empirical findings will illustrate that rethinking about political issues beyond current international conflicts might be less suggestible and requires more tangible approaches—like hands-on experience—in order to alter people’s political point of view (Gebauer, Vilimek, Keinath, & Carbon, 2016).
The presented findings, therefore, highlight the susceptibility of opinion formation in (re-)emerging political conflicts and its suggestibility through informational descriptions, but do also point to the contextual limitation of persuasiveness—at least in some areas of political rethinking.