Österreichbild

The image of Austria among 15- to 16-year-old secondary school students

On 23 April 2018, the project results of the study "The image of Austria among 15- to 16-year-old secondary school students" were presented at the kick-off event of the "Political Education Action Days" in Graz.

The project, funded by the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian National Bank, was carried out between 2014 and 2017 under the direction of Alois Ecker and the staff members Eva Bruckner, Thomas Harbich, Florian Kragolnik, Alexander Sperl and Martin Zusag. It explored the question of the extent to which the image of the then new Austria, constructed in the immediate post-war period and propagated via schools, cinemas and public events, is still present or anchored in the historical consciousness of the current generation of schoolchildren growing up.

The present study represents a first valid empirical survey of trends in the knowledge and free associations of pupils regarding their images of Austria. A total of 310 students aged 15 to 16 from twelve secondary academic schools in Vienna and Graz participated in the study.

The project was based on the thesis that the images of Austria created by the new generation of students during the First and especially the Second Republic are only partially familiar and are replaced by newer, partly ahistorical, partly situationally variable images of "Austria". This raises the question of which facets of the historical image of Austria are familiar to today's 15-16 year-old AHS students and which other images they associate with Austria.

In its investigation, the project group deliberately focused exclusively on the presentation of images of Austria in AV media because, over the past decade, AV media has become the central information medium for the younger generation.