The Hartz reforms rank as some of the most contentious political measures of recent years. Hartz IV in particular triggered a wave of protest, especially among the unemployed, whose “Monday demonstrations” in 2004 received wide media coverage. Drawn by this conflict, the authors have taken a look at the political and social disputes surrounding the Hartz reforms. They find that the social and labour market policy measures went ahead despite massive discontent but that the disputes had momentous impact on German politics, especially on the party landscape, by firmly reestablishing the social question as a key issue of political controversy.

Public discourse on unemployment is shaped mainly by politicians, journalists, and representatives of social organizations. Initiative groups of unemployed people are rarely asked for their opinions. Indeed, what they call for is often dismissed as unjustified. The author has analyzed documents and the communication strategies of initiative groups that are trying to anchor their perspectives on unemployment firmly in the public debate.

February 15, 2003, stands for the largest protest in history to date. On that day millions of people the world over demonstrated to ward off a looming war against Iraq. This volume presents a comparative study on the people who took part in these events, the motives and expectations the demonstrators had, and what led to their mobilization. It is based on written surveys of several thousand participants from eight nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany. These countries reflect the gamut of the political positions that western governments took on military intervention, which ranged from active preparation to vehement rejection. They also diverge widely in their protest cultures, public opinion, systems of interest mediation, political institutions, and the strength of their social movements. These disparate points of departure make the differences and similarities between the protesters particularly fascinating. Despite the shared goal underlying the protest, analysis shows that the number people and composition of the groups involved clearly varied country to country, as did the channels of mobilization and the weight that discussion in the domestic presses gave to the arguments for and against the imminent war.

Are the Germans really the "world champion donors" they are sometimes said to be, or do they tend to be reserved about this form of giving? Solid data for a precise answer is scarce, but various surveys and studies do hint that Germans are willing to give donations. This kind of information is of great interest to organizations of civil society, decision-makers, policy-makers, and the research community. Voluntary transfers of money, goods, and services in the public interest say something about a society's behaviours, values, and overall condition. The contributions in this volume afford an overview of the available behavioural data on donations in Germany. The authors analyze findings of the German Federal Statistical Office, results of surveys, and information collected by different institutions. They also ask what basis exist for continual reporting on donations and what methodological structure it would require in order to provide the public with sound scientific information. Creating and expanding such a resource would help increase the transparency of voluntary giving.

The G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June 2007 and the protests directed against it were a media spectacle. Images of pop concerts, Greenpeace activists in dinghies, and protest camps circulated widely, but so did scenes of violent excesses. The meeting's promoters and organizers as well as its critics and opponents all tried to attract audience attention and favor by reaching out in the broadest sense - through PR, with set-piece presentations intended for external consumption, and in battles over interpretations and the power to put them across. As the most important intermediary, the mass media encountered various actors seeking to make their competing positions heard. This volume contains analyses of the publicly visible media response to the happenings associated with the summit. Social scientists, media creators, and activists reconstruct what picture the mass media drew of the protests and what role journalists, official police spokesmen, and protesters had in that process. What influence did they have on the way in which television audiences and newspaper readers perceived what was taking place? The production conditions and self-concept of the journalists are examined, too, as is the manner in which the protest groups dealt with the media and their reporting.

To many people the Internet is an instrument capable of facilitating public debate that encompasses a far broader spectrum of actors and points of view on actual political issues than customary mass media does. The Internet, it is said, can therefore help democratize public discourse and ground it in rational argumentation. The volume presents a quantitative empirical analysis of this assumption in German-speaking regions, with the dispute about the use and dangers of genetically modified foods serving as the focus. The authors conduct both conventional content analysis and a methodologically innovative analysis of hyperlinks and websites. The results show that those users who turn to Google as a search engine see only relatively small differences between the Internet and serious newspapers. Moreover, the Internet seems to contribute to a fragmentation of political communication.

Be it protests against emergency power acts or nuclear power plants, be it campaigns by unions or feminist groups - German history is also a history of social movements and is understandable only if they are examined. It is not simply that social movements have firmly secured a place in the repertoire of civic involvement over the decades, they have come to meet with increasing approval as conventional forms of political participation in political parties and associations. This handbook offers the first extensive overview of the many different social movements in the Federal Republic of German and the German Democratic Republic and places them in their historical context. The first part of the volume covers characteristic phases in German postwar history in chronological order, describing the factors that have shaped and challenged the movements. The 21 chapters of the second part are devoted to individual movements and protest networks focused on particular topic areas. The uniform presentation facilitates comparisons between social and other movements; historical antecedents and points of departure; lines of development, ideologies, and objectives; organizations and networks; strategies and operations; and effects and perspectives. The concluding chapter assesses the theoretical and empirical record.