R1: To what extent was Hizb ut-Tahrir newsworthy in Germany, Great Britain and Kyrgyzstan between 2002 and 2007? and Kyrgyzstan between 2002 and 2007?

III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

III.1 R1: To what extent was Hizb ut-Tahrir newsworthy in Germany, Great Britain and Kyrgyzstan between 2002 and 2007? and Kyrgyzstan between 2002 and 2007?

III.1.1 Germany

III.1.1.1 Testing the first main hypothesis with sixteen sub-hypotheses

The quantitative findings on the sixteen sub-hypotheses testing the first Germany-specific hypothesis that HT did not present much interest to the public in Germany in 2002-2007 are based on descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests of independence of relevant variables.

Thus, SH-1, that the number of articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT will make less than 50% of all articles, was supported: Of 226 articles in five German newspapers, 62 (27.4%) were ‘highly relevant’, 41 (18.1%) were ‘relevant’ and 123 (54.4%) were ‘irrelevant’

to HT. The cross tabulation of the variables ‘HT relevance’ and ‘Year’, as well as a statistically significant relation between them, χ²(10, N=226)=37.25, p<0.001, lent support to SH-2 that the number of HT-irrelevant articles will grow over time. SH-3, that the number of articles attributed to news agencies will be higher than those attributed to journalists, was not supported: Of 226 examined articles, 175 (77.4%) were attributed to journalists, 27 (11.9%) to press agencies, five (2.2%) to journalists and press agencies, four (1.8%) to neither journalists nor press agencies, and 15 (6.6%) were not attributed. Lack of support for SH-3 did not lend support to the first Germany-specific hypothesis. SH-4, that there will be a small number of articles published on the front page, was supported: Of 226 articles, only 17 (7.5%) were published on front pages and 209 (92.5%) were published on other pages. SH-5, that few articles will contain references to HT in the headlines or leads, was also supported: Of 226 articles only 15 (6.6%) contained references to HT in headlines or leads. The cross tabulation of the variables ‘Length of an article’ and the ‘Year’, as well as the statistically significant relation between these variables, χ²(8, N=226)=83.27, p<0.001, lent support to SH-6, that the longer the article, the less likely it will be relevant to HT. SH-7, that few HT ‘highly relevant’

and ‘relevant’ articles will contain visual images, was supported: Of 103 articles ‘highly relevant’ or ‘relevant’ to HT, 16 (15.53%) articles contained visual images and 87 (84.47%) did not.

SH-8, that the majority of HT ‘highly relevant’ articles will appear in the ‘News of the day’ section, was not supported: Of 62 HT ‘highly relevant’ articles, only 15 (24.2%) appeared in the ‘News of the day’ section. SH-9, that the ‘Politics’ section will contain more

HT ‘relevant’ articles than the ‘Themes from Germany’ section, was supported: Of 41 HT

‘relevant’ articles, 16 (39.0%) articles appeared in the ‘Politics’ section and 10 (24.4%) appeared in the ‘Themes from Germany’ section. SH-10, that the ‘Opinion and Discussion’

section will contain mainly HT-irrelevant articles, was supported: Of 12 articles in this section, 10 (83.3%) were irrelevant to HT. See Table III.1

Table III.1. HT relevance*Section cross tabulation (N=226)

HT relevance documents and/or websites or quotes of HT members and/or organization, was supported: Of 226 articles, 182 (80.5%) contained at least one quote of and/or reference to the one or more sources saying something about HT and 44 (19.5%) did not. However, of those 182 articles, only 38 (20.8%) contained quotes of and/or references to an HT member, organization, document and/or a website. The majority of quotes and/or references were from law enforcement officials saying something about HT. See Table III.2.

SH-12, that few articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT will have ‘Germany’ as the main country, was not supported. Although one article could have mentioned several main countries/regions, only a priori defined countries/regions – Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, USA, Afghanistan, Europe, Middle East and/or Central Asia – were taken into account while coding. Of 226 articles, Germany was the main country in 88 (38.94%) articles; of 103 ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT articles, Germany was the main country in 44 (42.3%) articles, which is significantly more than any other country/region. For more information, see Table III.3.

Table III.2. Frequency by quotes/references related to HT, multiple responses (N=226) Responses Quotes/references related to HT N Percent

(N=183)

Percent (N=226) Political figures and/ or institutions 49 26.8% 21.7%

Law enforcement officials and/or institutions 113 61.7% 50.0%

NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany) 17 9.3% 7.5%

HT member, organization, document, website 38 20.8% 16.8%

Religious scholars and/or activists 14 7.7% 6.2%

Human rights organizations 14 7.7% 6.2%

Mass media reports 22 12.0% 9.7%

Ordinary people 7 3.8% 3.1%

Other people and/or organizations 34 18.6% 15.0%

Total 324 177.0% 143.4%

Table III.3. Frequency by main country/region of an article, multiple responses (N=226) Responses

Main

countries/regions N Percent (N=226) N Percent

(N=103)

SH-13, that few articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT will have ‘Germany’ as the sub-country, was also not supported. Of 226 articles, Germany was the sub-country in 61 (27.0%); of 103 articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT, Germany was the sub-country in 27 (26.2%) articles, which is considerably more often than any other country/region with the exception of the Middle Eastern region that was the sub-country in 66 (29.2%) articles of the total sample and in 39 (37.9%) of the sample of ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ articles.

See Table III.4. SH-14, that HT ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ articles with ‘Germany’ as the main country will appear mainly in 2003, was supported. Of 88 articles with Germany as the main country, 19 (21.6%) articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT appeared in 2003, the year when HT was officially banned in Germany. See Figure III.1.

Table III.4. Frequency by sub-country/region of articles, multiple responses (N=226) Responses

Sub-countries/regions N Percent

(N=226) N

Percent (N=103)

Germany 61 27.0% 27 26.2%

Great Britain 19 8.4% 8 7.8%

Denmark 4 1.8% 1 1.0%

Turkey 24 10.6% 5 4.9%

Uzbekistan 8 3.5% 4 3.9%

Kyrgyzstan 19 8.4% 2 1.9%

Russia 12 5.3% 2 1.9%

USA 29 12.8% 8 7.8%

Afghanistan 34 15.0% 8 7.8%

Europe 32 14.2% 10 9.7%

The Middle East 66 29.2% 39 37.9%

Central Asia 37 16.4% 13 12.6%

Total 161 71.2% 63 61.25%

Figure III.1. Cross tabulation of articles with ‘Germany’ as the main country and different degrees of relevance to HT over years (N=88)

5 10 15 20

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Highly relevant (80-100%) Relevant (50-79%) Irrelevant

SH-15, that articles will rarely contain information on ideology, goals and activities of HT, was partially supported. Of 226 articles, 104 (46.0%) contained information on the ideology of HT, 95 (42.0%) contained information on its goals and 94 (41.6%) contained information on its activities; 43 (19.0%) contained information on the ideology, goals and activities of HT in one article. See Table III.5. While articles often contained at least one point about its ideology, goals or activities, they rarely contained all three elements in one article. Partial support for this hypothesis lent partial support to the first main hypothesis.

Since there were only six journalists identified, who wrote between five and eight articles about HT during 2002-2007, SH-16, that there will be a few journalists regularly reporting about HT, was supported.

Table III.5. Ideology, goals and activities of HT (N=226)

Ideology Goals Activities

Ideology, goals and activities in

one article

Count 104 95 94 43

Yes

% 46.0% 42.0% 41.6% 19.0%

Count 122 131 132 183

% 54.0% 58.0% 58.4% 81.0%

Total Count 226 226 226 226

To summarize, of sixteen sub-hypotheses, four did not lend support to the first main hypothesis that HT would not present much interest to the public in Germany in 2002-2007.

Those sub-hypotheses were: SH-3 that the number of articles attributed to news agencies will be higher than those attributed to journalists; SH-8 that the majority of HT ‘highly relevant’

articles will appear in the ‘News of the day’ section; SH-12 that few articles ‘highly relevant’

and ‘relevant’ to HT will have ‘Germany’ as the main country; SH-13 that few articles ‘highly relevant’ and ‘relevant’ to HT will have ‘Germany’ as the sub-country. Quantitative data on sixteen sub-hypotheses to measure how much interest HT presented to the press in Germany revealed that while the amount, intensity and priority of HT coverage in five German quality newspapers were rather low, the articles were mainly journalists’ by-lines rather than routine press agencies’ reports; they often had Germany either as the main or the sub-country; but, they provided only some information on HT’s ideology, goals and activities. Based on this information HT did not present much interest to the press in Germany in 2002-2007.

III.1.1.2 Testing the first main hypothesis with latent class analysis

To further support the previous findings I conducted a first order latent class analysis of the ‘Overarching variables’ and ‘Countries/regions of the articles’ and then a second order latent class analysis of six sets of variables – ‘Overarching variables’, ‘Prosecutions’,

‘Origin’, ‘Length’, ‘HT relevance’ and ‘Countries/regions of the articles.

First order latent class analysis of the ‘Overarching variables’

‘Overarching variables’ indicate whether at least one of the categories of the variables

‘Legal status of HT’, ‘Quotes/references related to HT’, ‘Terms used to describe HT’,

‘Ideology of HT’, ‘Goals of HT’ and ‘Activities of HT’ was mentioned in an article. The lowest value of the AIC-Index established that the three latent classes best describe the data.

The overall distribution of these variables and the goodness of fit statistics are presented in Table III.6 and Table III.7 respectively.

Table III.6. Overall distribution of overarching variables (N=226)

Relative category frequencies

Variables Stdev

0 1

Legal status of HT 0.49 0.398 0.602

Quotes/references related to HT 0.39 0.190 0.810 Terms used to describe HT 0.32 0.119 0.881

Ideology of HT 0.50 0.540 0.460

Goals of HT 0.49 0.580 0.420

Activities of HT 0.49 0.584 0.416

Table III.7. Goodness of fit statistics for overarching variables (N=226) N of information on HT’s activities (74.9%). They usually contained some terms used in relation to HT (86.5%); relatively often they contained quotes/references in relation to HT (77.3%) and mentioned its legal status (55.9%). See Table III.8 and Figure III.2.

Table III.8. Overarching variables. Class 1 – not informative articles – 52.52%.

Categories Variables

No Yes

Legal status of HT 0.441 0.559 Quotes/references related to HT 0.227 0.773 Terms used to describe HT 0.135 0.865

Ideology of HT 0.806 0.194

Goals of HT 0.975 0.025

Activities of HT 0.749 0.251

Figure III.2. Overarching variables. Class 1 – not informative articles – 52.52%.

The second class with 32.53% was characterised by articles that as a rule contained information on the legal status of HT (90.4%) and quotes/references about HT (96.3%). They always contained terms describing HT (99.8%). Such articles very often contained information on HT’s ideology (85.3%), goals (79.5%) and activities (72.5%). See Table III.9 and Figure III.3.

Table III.9. Overarching variables. Class 2 – very informative articles – 32.53%.

Categories Variables

No Yes

Legal status of HT 0.096 0.904

Quotes/references related to HT 0.037 0.963 Terms used to describe HT 0.002 0.998

Ideology of HT 0.147 0.853

Goals of HT 0.205 0.795

Activities of HT 0.275 0.725

Figure III.3. Overarching variables. Class 2 – very informative articles – 32.53%.

0 describing HT’s ideology (54.1%). Such articles always contained information on HT’s goals (99.4%) and sometimes HT’s activities (32.4%). See Table III.10 and Figure III.4.

Table III.10. Overarching variables. Class 3 – informative articles – 14.95%.

Categories Variables

No Yes

Legal status of HT 0.904 0.096 Quotes/references related to HT 0.396 0.604 Terms used to describe HT 0.320 0.680

Ideology of HT 0.459 0.541

Goals of HT 0.006 0.994

Activities of HT 0.676 0.324

Figure III.4. Overarching variables. Class 3 – informative articles – 14.95%.

To summarize, the LCA of the six overarching variables revealed three latent classes of data: (1) not informative articles (52.52%), (2) very informative articles (32.53%) and (3) informative articles (14.95%).

First order latent class analysis of the variables ‘Main countries/regions’

The first order latent class analysis of twelve binary variables related to the main countries/regions of articles was conducted to identify the groups of countries and how often they appeared as the main countries/regions of articles. The lowest value of the AIC-Index established that the three latent classes best describe the data. See Table III.11 and Table III.12.

Table III.11. Overall distribution of variables related to countries/regions of the articles (N=226)

Category Category Table III.12. Goodness of fit statistics for variables related to the topics of the articles (N=226)

N of classes (h)

The first class with 50.99% was characterised by articles in which Germany was often the main country (66.0%) and the Middle East relatively often as the main region (21.7%).

Other countries/regions were never the main ones. See Table III.13 and Figure III.5.

Table III.13. Countries/regions. Class 1 – Germany and the Middle East – 50.99%.

Category Category Figure III.5. Countries/regions. Class 1 – Germany and the Middle East – 50.99%.

Germany Great Britain Denmark Turkey Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan Russia USA Afghanistan Europe Middle East Central Asia

0 1

The second class with 32.27% was characterised by articles, in which Uzbekistan (60.3%) was often the main country and Russia relatively often the main country (38.2%). In such articles, Central Asia (20.5%) was relatively often the main region and Kyrgyzstan (16.4%) and USA (14.2%) were sometimes the main countries. Other countries/regions were either never or very rarely the main countries. See Table III.14 and Figure III.6.

Table III.14. Countries/regions. Class 2 – Uzbekistan and Russia – 32.27%.

Category Category

Figure III.6. Countries/regions. Class 2 – Uzbekistan and Russia – 32.27%.

Germany Great Britain Denmark Turkey Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan Russia USA Afghanistan Europe Middle East Central Asia

0 1

The third class with 16.75% was characterised by articles in which Europe (99.8%) was always the main region and Great Britain (68.6%) was often the main country. The Middle East (26.3%) and USA (20.7%) were relatively often the main region/country. See Table III.15 and Figure III.7.

Table III.15. Countries/regions. Class 3 – Europe/Great Britain and the Middle East – 16.75%.

Category Category Figure III.7. Countries/regions. Class 3 – Europe/Great Britain and the Middle East – 16.75%.

Germany Great Britain Denmark Turkey Uzbekistan Kyrgyzstan Russia USA Afghanistan Europe Middle East Central Asia

0 1

To summarize, the LCA of twelve variables related to the countries/regions of articles revealed three latent classes of data: (1) Germany and the Middle East (50.99%), (2) Uzbekistan and Russia (32.27%), and (3) Europe/Great Britain and the Middle East (16.75%).

Second order latent class analysis testing the first main Germany specific hypothesis

Six sets of variables – ‘Overarching’, ‘Prosecutions’, ‘Origin’, ‘Length’, ‘HT relevance’ and ‘Countries/regions of the articles’ – were analysed together to test the first main Germany-specific hypothesis. The categories of the ‘Overarching’ and

‘Countries/regions’ variables are represented by the classes revealed by the first order latent class analysis. For graphic presentation of the categories of these variables and their overall distribution, see Table III.16 and Table III.17. The lowest value of the AIC-Index established that the four latent classes best describe the data. See Table III.18.

Table III.16. Variables related to the first main hypothesis and the categories (N=226) Categories

Variables

0 1 2 3 4

Overarching variables

Not informative Very informative Informative *** ***

Prosecutions Not mentioned Mentioned *** *** ***

Origin Not mentioned Mentioned *** *** ***

Length 1-300 301-600 601-900 901-1200 1201 -

HT relevance Highly relevant Relevant Irrelevant *** ***

Countries Germany & the

Table III.17. Overall distribution of variables related to the first main hypothesis (N=226) Categories

Table III.18. Goodness of fit statistics for variables related to the first main hypothesis (N=226)

N of classes informative (100%) and mainly ‘irrelevant’ to HT (83.8%). ‘Germany and the Middle East’

(56.2%) were often the main country/region of such articles; ‘Europe/Great Britain and the

Middle East’ (23.6%) and ‘Uzbekistan and Russia’ (20.2%) were relatively often the main countries/regions as well. See Table III.19 and Figure III.8.

Table III.19. Hypothesis 1. Class 1 – not informative, HT irrelevant often with Germany and the Middle East as main country/region – 32.66%

Figure III.8. Hypothesis 1. Class 1 – not informative, HT irrelevant often with Germany and the Middle East as main country/region – 32.66%

The second class with 27.75% was characterised by articles that were often informative (44.6%) or very informative (40.3%) but as a rule ‘irrelevant’ to HT (89.2%). Such articles often had ‘Uzbekistan and Russia’ as the main countries (54.3%). See Table III.20 and Figure III.9.

Table III.20. Hypothesis 1. Class 2 –informative, HT irrelevant often with Uzbekistan and Russia as main countries –27.75%

Figure III.9. Hypothesis 1. Class 2 –informative, HT irrelevant often with Uzbekistan and Russia as main

The third class of articles with 26.51% was characterised by articles that were often not informative (59.9%), relatively often very informative (31.7%) and very often either HT

‘highly relevant’ (66.7%) or ‘relevant’ (24.7%). Such articles often had ‘Germany and the Middle East’ (77.5%) and relatively often ‘Uzbekistan and Russia’ (22.5%) as the main countries. See Table III.21 and Figure III.10.

Table III.21. Hypothesis 1. Class 3 – relatively often informative, always HT relevant with ‘Germany and the Middle East’ as the main country/region – 26.51%