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Fellow Talk on Fringe Dynamics: Studying Anti-Democratic Movements at the Margins of Platform Ecosystems

The year of 2025 began with an engaging fellow talk by Dr. Daniela Mahl on January 14th at the Weizenbaum Institute, where she presented her work on Fringe Dynamics: Studying Anti-Democratic Movements at the Margins of Platform Ecosystems. Her talk was inspired by the growing uncertainty surrounding the epistemic standards by which reality is approached […]

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Publication

Veiled conspiracism: Particularities and convergence in the styles and functions of conspiracy-related communication across digital platforms.

At the beginning of this year, Dr. Kilian Buehling, Prof. Dr. Annett Heft, and Xixuan Zhang (all from the Weizenbaum Institute and Freie Universität Berlin) published their paper Veiled conspiracism: Particularities and convergence in the styles and functions of conspiracy-related communication across digital platforms in New Media & Society. Their research explores how digital communication […]

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NEOVEX Presentation

Affording Conspiracism. Particularities of Conspiracy-Related Communication Across Platforms

The international symposium “Indicators of Social Cohesion in Social Media and Online Media,” hosted by the Social Media Observatory (SMO) at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research, took place from April 24 to 26, 2024. It explored the pivotal role of social and online media in uniting and dividing communities, from supporting democratic movements to fostering […]

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NEOVEX

Der Ton macht die Musik – Die sprachlichen Finessen von Verschwörungserzählungen auf digitalen Plattformen

Digital forums like 4chan and Reddit, along with social media platforms such as Twitter (now known as “X”), play a crucial role in the narration and spread of conspiracy theories. These platforms can serve as both a protected breeding ground for conspiracy theories, offering unmoderated, (semi-)public digital spaces to radicalized users, and as the primary […]

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Publication

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 […]