A Loner, But Not Alone: Analyzing the Hanau Terror Attack in German News Media

Abstract: This thesis analyzes how the German news media depicted the terrorist attack in Hanau, which killed 10 people on 19th February 2020. This is done by conducting a thematic analysis in two major German newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine. The coverage of the attack and the perpetrator is found to be focused on the perpetrator as an individual and centering his alleged mental illness. The depiction portrayed the attack as conducted by a lone-actor, and the racist and far-right ideology as a form of the perpetrator’s mental illness. This functioned as a way of depoliticizing the terror attack. I challenge the non-visibility of the categories of whiteness and masculinity and show how they influence the popular ‘lone-wolf’ narrative surrounding far-right perpetrators. Moreover, I argue that the intersection of these categories can result in viewing far-right perpetrators as individuals and thus influences the perception of these kinds of attacks as conducted by lone-actors.