Die mediale Darstellung von Großwohnsiedlungen – Wie Musik und Fernsehen das Image von Halle-Neustadt prägen

Neighborhoods with a predominance of large housing units, especially those built during the GDR, often face stigmatization and negative reporting in media. Coverage of these neighborhoods mainly focuses on such as empty buildings, violence or crime. In this paper, we look at the ways in which the neighborhood of Halle-Neustadt is being shown and reported about in TV documentaries by public and private broadcasters, as well as hip-hop songs and their music videos. For this purpose, the visual representation, the coverage of certain topics and the moderation of six documentaries about Halle-Neustadt and the visuals and lyrics of hip-hop songs about the city of Halle (Saale) were examined. In the analysis we locate different patterns of how Halle (Saale) and Halle-Neustadt are represented: the showing of imagery with negative connotation, the judgmental ways of naming facts, and the references to change in the neighborhood. Combined with material from qualitative interviews with residents and data from a citizen survey in Halle from 1993-2017, we conclude that the portrayal of Halle-Neustadt in TV documentaries, hip-hop songs and videos is often limited to stereotypical images. This produces a negative image of Halle-Neustadt which influences people’s attitudes within and towards the neighborhood.