@article{THESIS,
      recid = {4071},
      author = {Pekkip, Konrat},
      title = {Diverging Memories: Emotive Representation of East Germany  and its Communist Past in the German Bundestag},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {M.A.},
      address = {2022-08},
      number = {THESIS},
      abstract = {Though formally reunified in 1990, the Federal Republic of  Germany in many ways remains a deeply divided country. East  Germans face higher unemployment rates, lower wages, worse  access to healthcare, and decaying infrastructure among  other challenging circumstances. Significant portions of  the East German population feel alienated from the  political system, with the most established parties –  largely dominated by West German politicians – seemingly  unable to connect with the East German electorate.  Meanwhile, the communist successor party Die Linke and the  right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)  frequently gain pluralities – in some cases even majorities  – of the East German vote in state and federal elections.  In their campaigns, these parties often evoke sentiments of  Ostalgie, nostalgia for the socialist past, and present  themselves as East German Volksparteien, people’s parties.  In this paper, I analyze the rhetoric of members of the  German Bundestag towards the communist German Democratic  Republic (GDR) and East Germany as a region. A sentiment  analysis of all speeches given in the Bundestag between  1990 and 2021 reveals that representatives of PDS/Die Linke  and the AfD are significantly more positive in their  rhetoric towards East Germany and the GDR than their peers  from the established, more centrist parties. Further,  whether or not a representative was born in East Germany  has little effect on their expressed sentiment towards the  region and its communist past. Through natural language  processing, this study contributes empirically to scholarly  conversations around alienation, representation, and  populism in postcommunist East Germany.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/4071},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4071},
}