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Are Campaigns Getting Uglier, and Who Is to Blame? Negativity, Dramatization and Populism on Facebook in the 2014 and 2019 EP Election Campaigns
Get PDFRelating to theories of dissonant public spheres and affective publics, we study negativity, dramatization, and populist content in political party Facebook posts across 12 countries during the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Election campaigns. A quantitative content analysis of 14,293 posts from 111 (2014) and 116 (2019) political parties shows that negative emotion, negative campaigning, dramatization, and populist content has increased over this time. We show that political parties sought to evoke more negative emotions and generate more dramatization, engaged more in negative campaigning, and included more populist content in their Facebook posts in the 2019 EP election than in 2014. Further, we show that posts evoking negative emotions and dramatization and involving negative campaigning yield higher user engagement than other posts, while populist content also led to more user reactions in 2014, but not in 2019. Negative, exaggerated, and sensationalized messaging therefore makes sense from a strategic perspective, because the increased frequencies of likes, shares, and comments make parties’ messages travel farther and deeper in social networks, thereby reaching a wider audience. It seems that the rise in affective and dissonant communication has not emerged unintentionally, but is also a result of strategic campaigning.Research for this project was partially conducted and financially supported by the research group on “News, Campaigns, and the Rationality of Public Discourse” at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin and by the grant ReCitCom from Audencia Foundation at the Audencia Business School, Nantes
Growing Open Science with the Combined Potential of Citizen Science and Auto Science
No full textIn this paper, we present our ideas on how to best support researchers in every phase of the research process when dealing with their research data. We propose a Research Data Portal as the central data infrastructure. With the help of this portal, a researcher can easily manage and update his or her research data, share it with collaborators, and reach out to the public. We further propose a Citizen Science Portal, which includes some new and innovative concepts and methods. In this portal, Citizen Science and Auto Science concepts are applied, and support to bring together the best of both worlds is provided. Citizen Science promises to entail the individual (scientists and hobby scientists) to help with research. Auto Science is meant to help analyze research data, e.g., to help publish the data and to help improve its quality, by applying methods from artificial intelligence.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Digidem Digest - Issue 18 (September 2019)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Digidem Digest - Issue 13 (April 2019)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Big Data: Inequality by Design?
Get PDFThis paper proposes to tackle the problem of digital inequality by introducing digital technologies of knowledge generation and decision-making to a feminist critique of rationality that is informed by discourse theory and intersectional perspectives on gender and gendered relations of inequality. Therefore, it takes a closer look at the epistemological foundations of Big Data as one prominent representation of digital technologies. While Big Data and Big Data-based results and decisions are generally believed to be objective and neutral, numeral cases of algorithmic discrimination have lately begged to differ. This paper argues that algorithmic discrimination is neither random nor accidental; on the contrary, it is - amongst others - the result of the epistemological foundation of Big Data - namely: data fundamentalism, post-explanatory anticipatory pragmatics, and anti-political solutionism. As a consequence, a critical engagement with the concepts and premises that become materialized in the design of digital technologies is needed, if they are not to silently (re)produce social inequalities.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Digidem Digest - Issue 20 (November 2019)
No full textThe Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter
Der digitale Wandel der Wissensordnung. Theorierahmen für die Analyse von Wahrheit, Wissen und Rationalität in der öffentlichen Kommunikation
Get PDFPopuläre Krisendiagnosen zur Verbreitung von Falschinformationen, zur Erosion einer gemeinsamen Wissensbasis und zur Infragestellung epistemischer Autoritäten haben in den letzten Jahren nicht nur Sorgen um die Wissensordnung in liberalen Demokratien ausgelöst, sondern auch zu erheblichen Forschungsaktivitäten in der Kommunikationswissenschaft geführt. Allerdings steht eine Integration der empirischen Befunde zu den zahlreichen Einzelaspekten in einen Theorierahmen noch aus. Der Zweck eines solchen Rahmens besteht darin, den digitalen Wandel der Genese, Prüfung, Distribution und Aneignung von Wissen in der medienöffentlichen Kommunikation systematisch zu beschreiben und zu erklären. Ausgehend von den Grundbegriffen Wahrheit, Wissen und Rationalität wird ein Modell der Wissensordnung entwickelt, das Phasen, Kontexte, Hierarchiestufen und Rollen unterscheidet. Das Internet tendiert zur Auflösung der bisherigen Wissensordnung, d. h. zu einem Kollaps der Kontexte, zur Nivellierung der epistemischen Hierarchie, zur Auflösung der Phasenfolge des Wissensprozesses, zum offenen Zugang zu bislang exklusiven Rollen und zur Entstehung von Hybridrollen. Es wird demonstriert, wie das Modell zur Aufarbeitung des Forschungsstands, zur Ableitung einer Forschungsagenda und für Gestaltungsempfehlungen eingesetzt werden kan
Supplementary Material for “Transnational issue agendas of the radical right? Parties’ Facebook campaign communication in six countries during the 2019 European Parliament election”
Get PDFSupplemental online material. Appendix 1: Party backgrounds. Appendix 2: Summary statistics for candidate models with varying
The Fairwork Foundation. Strategies for Improving Platform Work
Get PDFThis paper introduces the Fairwork Foundation, a research initiative that is also developing an intervention around the quality of work on digital labour platforms. Lacking the ability to collectively bargain, many of these workers have little ability to negotiate wages or working conditions with their employers who are often on the other side of the world. As a result of this new global market for work, many workers have jobs characterized by long and irregular hours, low income, and high stress. Across India and South Africa, there are challenges for workers across a range of issues, including: pay, conditions, contracts, management, and representation. The results of the fieldwork are being used to rank and compare platforms as part of the ongoing ‘work in progress’ of the Fairwork project, a research initiative that is developing an intervention to improve the quality of work on digital platforms.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“