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Presentation

Discussions and exciting insights at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (CDDGG), University of Canberra, Australia

The Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance (CDDGG) at the University of Canberra, Australia, is a globally recognized leader in deliberative governance research, dedicated to exploring how inclusive and reflective communication can empower people in political decision-making. The center explores the impact of public deliberation in polarized and post-crisis contexts and advances  theoretical debates […]

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NEOVEX

Podcast: Understanding Conspiracy Theories on Alternative Platforms

In the latest episode of the NEOVEX podcast, Maik Fielitz from the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena, responsible for the area of right-wing extremism and democracy research at the IDZ, sits down with Dr. Kilian Bühling, a researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, working on the researching diffusion dynamics […]

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Training

New Edition of The Research Monitor (fyi 15): Right-Wing Movements and Their Threat to Democracy

The Research Monitor (fyi 15) published on the 4th of June a new edition which compiles seven studies and an interview with Dr. Annett Heft. The publication entails the current state of research on right-wing movements, highlighting why they pose a serious threat to democracy and suggesting which efforts can be made to counteract them. […]

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Workshops

CLOUD-C: Climate, social media and transnational research workshop

On April 18th and 19th, we hosted the workshop “CLOUD-C: Climate, Social Media, and Transnational Research” at the Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin, co-organized with the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH). The Cloud-C Project is an international collaboration developed by the HSSH, focused on analyzing the discourse on climate politics in social media. This […]

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Presentation

The Querdenken Telegram Dataset 2020 – 2022

From March 13th to 15th the University of Erfurt hosted the 69. Annual Conference of the German Society for Journalism and Communication Studies (DGPuK). This year’s theme, “Visions for a Better Life,” aimed to stimulate a debate on the social relevance and future of communication science research. By exploring the roles that communication and media […]

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Publication

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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Events NEOVEX

NEOVEX Meeting in Munich

On February 7 and 8, the NEOVEX subprojects consortium meeting took place at the Munich School of Politics of the Technical University of Munich. The main focus was on exchanging ideas and planning future collaboration. During the one-day workshop, the subproject teams gathered to update the consortium and funding agencies on their current project work. […]

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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 […]

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Events Presentation

Vox Populi(st): Contexts and consequences of populism in user comments on news media Facebook pages

On December 13, 2023, Daniel Thiele (Freie Universität Berlin & Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin) presented his research titled “Vox Populi(st): Contexts and Consequences of Populism in User Comments on News Media Facebook Pages” at the Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarization at the University of Helsinki. The conference was organized by the Helsinki Hub on […]

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Presentation Transfer

Fellow Talk on Pandemic Activism with Prof. Dr. Shelly Boulianne

We were honored to have Prof. Dr. Shelly Boulianne, Professor of Digital Political Communication at the Université Catholique de Lille and currently a Research Fellow in our research group, giving a talk on her latest research on November, 28. In her talk “Pandemic activism in comparative perspective: Exploring the roles of digital media uses, misinformation, […]

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Publication

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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Presentation Workshops

Alternative Platforms/Platform Alternatives: Comparisons and Transnational Flows

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 […]

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Publication

Challenges of and approaches to data collection across platforms and time: Conspiracy-related digital traces as examples of political contention.

In today’s digital landscape, the proliferation of online platforms and the rapid evolution of communication technologies present unique challenges for researchers. A recent study by Dr. Annett Heft, Dr. Kilian Buehling, Xixuan Zhang, Dominik Schindler, and Miriam Milzner (2023) investigates these complexities, focusing on the collection of conspiracy-related communication data across various digital platforms. Published […]

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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 […]