We were happy to conduct the workshop titled “Alternative Platforms/Platform Alternatives: Comparisons and Transnational Flows” on October 20th and 21st at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin in collaboration with the Free University of Berlin!
The workshop gathered approximately 20 international researchers, creating an intimate and relaxed atmosphere that fostered networking and great knowledge exchange. The meeting was about how challengers use alternative digital media platforms to contest the political status quo, focused on comparing less studied platforms and media systems outside the Global North. The participants benefited from learning about cross-country and cross-platform comparisons, questions of study designs, units of analysis, methods, and the cultural conditions under which challengers can be more or less successful.
The workshop was hosted by Annett Heft (Free University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute), Barbara Pfetsch (Free University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute) and Ralph Schroeder (Oxford Internet Institute). Our PhD student Baoning Gong (Free University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute) also presented her work “Comparing German far-right social movement networks and communities across platforms” discussing the importance but also challenges of platform-comparative research.
The participants left the workshop with fresh ideas for their projects and strengthened networking with young scientists.
We thank all participants for their valuable insights that will inspire future collaborations!
