The project investigates whether and how the communication of mayors today is challenged by “populist” rage, quantifying public evaluation regimes and the demand for increased par-ticipation and to what extent their institutional use of language reacts to or resists such de-velopments. Empirically, public images as well as communicative practices of mayors in four municipalities (Siegen, Dresden, Ladenburg, Viernheim) will be examined with the help of computer-assisted media discourse and image analysis, multimodal text communication and interaction research.