ABSTRACT
The television networks of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) were an example par excellence of a state European broadcasting system whose political leadership strove to spread fear of a notional enemy among its audience. However, the situation in which this television regime found itself was unique—not least when considering the media's role in projecting social fears—because the television audience as well as programme makers were in an unusual position. In addition to their own domestic television service, many citizens of the GDR were able to receive so-called Western television. Each evening, most East Germans were spoilt for choice whether to watch their own country's television service or the programmes broadcast from the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). One service was ostensibly ‘socialist’ and broadcast as part of the Communist bloc; the other was democratic and representative of the Western alliance. But both were ‘German television’, produced in the same language, and drawing on the same cultural background.
