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Which factors shape citizen-generated populism? A computational analysis of comment sections during COVID-19 in seven European countries

Citizen-generated populist content is flourishing in the comments sections of online news. The factors that shape the extent of such populist communication from below are still under-researched. The recent publication of Daniel Thiele (Freie Universität Berlin & Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin) focuses on the COVID-19 crisis to examine how contextual and media-related factors are related to […]

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Publication

Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics

On February 11, 2024, the final version of the article titled “Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics,” authored by Annett Heft (Freie University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute), Tim Ramsland, and Eva Mayerhöffer (both Roskilde University), was published by Taylor & Francis. The article investigates how right-wing alternative […]

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Pandemic Protesters on Telegram: How Platform Affordances and Information Ecosystems Shape Digital Counterpublics

Kilian Buehling and Annett Heft (both Freie University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute) published an article on the Pandemic Protesters on Telegram: How Platform Affordances and Information Ecosystems Shape Digital Counterpublics in Social Media + Society.  Their research investigates the role of platform affordances, their adoption by movement actors, and the strategic use of information ecosystems in […]

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Publication

Cross-Border Journalism Content: Status Quo and Perspectives

Journalism has been crossing borders since news media and nation-states co-emerged in the seventeenth century. Still, the internet era has further advanced and expanded the border-transcending production, dissemination, and reception of news. The rise of cross-border journalism reflects the “increasing connectedness, boundarylessness, and mobility in the world” (Berglez, 2008, p. 855). The new “The Palgrave […]

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Publication

Politicization and Right-Wing Normalization on Youtube: A Topic-Based Analysis of the “Alternative Influence Network”

Curd Benjamin Knüpfer (Free University of Berlin), Carsten Schwemmer (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich) and Annett Heft (Free University of Berlin/Weizenbaum Institute) published an article on the Politicization and Right-Wing Normalization on Youtube: A Topic-Based Analysis of the “Alternative Influence Network” in the  International Journal of Communication. The study addresses a  gap in current research on YouTube’s […]

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Mapping a Dark Space: Challenges in Sampling and Classifying Non-Institutionalized Actors on Telegram

November 14th a collaborative article Mapping a Dark Space: Challenges in Sampling and Classifying Non-Institutionalized Actors on Telegram with two members of our team was published in the journal Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft!  Written by Pablo Jost (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich), Annett Heft (Free University of Berlin), Kilian Buehling (Free University of Berlin), Maximilian Zehring (Ilmenau Technical University), […]

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NEOVEX Publication

How well can conspiracy theory content be measured on social media? It’s a matter of time!

Many civil society and academic projects are engaged in documenting and analyzing conspiracy theory, anti-democratic or racist discourse on social media. Kilian Buehling has investigated to what extent the results of these efforts are influenced by the time of data collection. In this article, he summarizes the results of a recently published study. A bizarre […]

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Publication

Jay Blumler Best Article Award 2022 for Annett Heft and Co-Authors

Annett Heft, head of the research group Digitalization and the Transnational Public Sphere at the Weizenbaum Institut for the Networked Society and the Free University Berlin, together with co-authors Curd Knüpfer, Susanne Reinhardt and Eva Mayerhöffer (Roskilde University), have been awarded The International Journal of Press/Politics Jay Blumler Best Article Award 2022 for their study […]

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Publication

Mobilization and support structures in radical right party networks

Whether a radical right party is in opposition or in government significantly influences the digital communication of its actors and supporters. This is a central finding of the latest publication “Mobilization and support structures in radical right party networks. Digital political communication ecologies in the 2019 European parliament elections” by Annett Heft, Susanne Reinhardt and […]