Hurka, Steffen, Stefanie Rueß, Mike Cowburn, and Constantin Kaplaner. 2025. "Laws as Blades: A Conceptual Framework of Legislative Design". Policy Sciences (Online first).
Rueß, Stefanie, Gerald Schneider, and Jan P. Vogler. 2025. "Illiberal Norms, Media Reporting, and Bureaucratic Discrimination: Evidence from State-Citizen Interactions in Germany". Comparative Political Studies (Online first).
Schneider, Gerald, Maren Lüdecke, and Stefanie Rueß. 2024. "Zur falschen Zeit am falschen Ort? Administrative Ungleichbehandlung in der deutschen Justiz und Verwaltung". Policy paper. Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” and “Das Progressive Zentrum”.
Rueß, Stefanie. 2025. "Biased by the Media? The Occurrence and Mitigation of Discrimination in German Welfare Offices". University of Konstanz.
In June 2025, I defended my dissertation at the University of Konstanz.
What motivated this research? Everyday interactions with public administrators—renewing an ID, registering as a jobseeker, applying for childcare—shape how we, as the residents, experience the state. These officials are often referred to as street-level bureaucrats, a term famously coined by Lipsky (1980). But this discretion can be a double-edged sword: while it allows for flexibility, it also opens the door to bias and discriminatory treatment, especially when stereotypes shape decision-making.
One powerful source of those stereotypes? The media. News coverage often conveys a selective version of reality to the public, subtly activating stereotypes. This has profound societal implications: misperceptions of political and social problems, and, potentially, unequal treatment of marginalized groups. However, the media as a source of those stereotypes is quite unexplored in public administration research—and, also, what can be done against media influences in professional decision-making.
That is why I developed the media-driven discrimination cycle. The cycle examines how immigration-related news coverage influences caseworkers’ decisions in welfare offices:
Activation stage: In Chapter 3, I argue that immigration discourses in regional news outlets activate stereotypes and make them cognitively accessible, subconsciously feeding into decisions of street-level bureaucrats.
Reinforcement stage: Chapter 4 (co-authored with Gerald Schneider and Jan Vogler) shows that illiberal norms, especially anti-immigrant sentiments, influence how strongly negative media reporting affects bureaucratic-decision-making due to selective information processing. (See the published article in CPS).
Disruption stage: Since the media and social context form a self-reinforcing cycle of biases, I argue in Chapter 5 that media literacy interventions can target the psychological mechanisms underlying media-driven biases.
The main takeaway? Media coverage fuels discrimination in public administration, depending on the dominant media narratives, regional context, and who the beneficiaries are. But it doesn’t have to: Media literacy training shows real potential in reducing bias by sharpening critical media skills among frontline officials. Thus, with thoughtfully designed anti-discrimination measures, we can foster fairness in welfare states.