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Author: Johanna Klapproth

6/6 – DemoRESILdigital at the #ICA21

6/6 – DemoRESILdigital at the #ICA21

The junior research group will be part of this year’s “Annual International Communication Conference” (ICA21): With five accepted papers and one talk in a panel organized together with Edda Humprecht from the university of Zurich (out of six submissions; see list of submissions below),  Lena Frischlich, Lena Clever and Tim Schatto-Eckrodt will provide various insights into their research. The International Communication Association (ICA) is an international academic association related to communication and mass media with more than 6000 members in over 80 countries. Its flagship event is the annual conference, which will be held as a virtual conference in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

List of submissions:

  • Frischlich, L., Klapproth, J.K., Kleineidam, T. & Schatto-Eckrodt, T. (2021, May). Entertained by Extremists— Staging and Effects of Eudaimonic Instagram Propaganda. Paper to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA).
  • Frischlich, L, Hellmann, J., Brinkschulte, F., Becker, M. & Back, M, (2021, May). Sowing distrust on a fertile ground – How distorted alternative news fuel negative attitudes towards political candidates amongst susceptible recipients. Paper to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA).
  • Frischlich, L., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., Kuhfeldt, L, & Clever, L. (2021, May). Fueling the information disorder? Alternative news media in the COVID-19 crisis. Paper to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA).
  • Humprecht, E., & Frischlich, L. (2021, May). Spirals of Distrust: Vulnerabilities to Disinformation Across Countries, Citizens, and Time. Panel to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA).
  • Schatto-Eckrodt, T., Clever, L. & Frischlich, L. (2021, May). The seed of doubt: The role of alternative and established news media in the early moments of a new conspiracy theory. Paper to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA).
  • Wintterlin, F., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., Frischlich, L., Boberg, S., Reer, F., & Quandt, T. (2021, May). Why do people spread distorted information online? An examination of predictors based on the theory of collective action. Paper to be presented at the 71st Annual Conference of the ICA, Virtual Conference (originally to be held in Denver, CO, USA)

 

Unce upon a time, there lived two sisters…

Unce upon a time, there lived two sisters…

Lena Frischlich gave insight into some of her and her colleagues’ latest research activities on the role of alternative news media during the corona crisis. On the research day of the “Young College” of the “North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts“, she won the College’s science slam by retelling the development of the corona crisis so far and explaining how alternative news media “contribute to a contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview”1 . The entire presentation was held in the form of a fairy tale and found a happy ending by offering ways to encounter dis- and misinformation about the corona crisis online.
Lena Frischlich became a member of the “Young College” of  the “North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts” in January 2020. The aim of the College is to promote young researchers and to support their interdisciplinary cooperation.

Boberg, S., Quandt, T., Schatto-Eckrodt, T., & Frischlich, L. (2020). Pandemic Populism: Facebook pages of alternative news media and the corona crisis—A computational content analysis. ArXiv Preprint. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.02566

Lena Frischlich interviewed by “Quarks” – democratic resilience against mis- and disinformation

Lena Frischlich interviewed by “Quarks” – democratic resilience against mis- and disinformation

Which factors make a democracy vulnerable? And how can a society’s resilience be strengthened?

In a recent article published on quarks.de, Lena Frischlich explained the role of mis- and disinformation on the Internet for democratic discourse. Especially during elections, democracys are more likely to be influenced by such forms of communication – manipulating a public discourse and possibly even increasing individuals’ levels of alienation and cynism. In the US presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, the country’s high level of political polarization as well as the lack of a common media system for societal exchange opened the door to the influence of mis- and disinformation and hate speech on the Internet. In Germany, too, misinformation have played a role during elections but so far to a smaller degree. In order to further protect our society from such attacks, it is essential to strengthen and improve civil courage online – ways to do this as well as further information can be found in the article.

Lena Frischlich as guest in “CAISzeit-Podcast”

Lena Frischlich as guest in “CAISzeit-Podcast”

Lena Frischlich was a guest in the first episode of the “CAISzeit-Podcast” of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in cooperation with the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia. The podcast deals with the question in which digital society we want to live. With Dr. Matthias Begenat from CAIS and Silke Offergeld from the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lena Frischlich talks about the extent and effects of disinformation and conspiracy theories during the Corona Pandemic. She also presents her current study “Pandemic Populism”, talks about the scientific community in quarantine times and discusses the role of each individual for the digital public. The podcast can be heard here.

DEMORESILDIGITAL RESEARCH ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PART III: Pandemic News

DEMORESILDIGITAL RESEARCH ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PART III: Pandemic News

Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt and Lena Frischlich published the white paper “Pandemic News: Facebook Pages of Mainstream News Media and the Coronavirus Crisis – a Computational Content Analysis” on the platform arxiv.org.  The study analyzes the Facebook messages of journalistic news media during the early Coronavirus crisis, based on a large German data set from January to March 2020. Using computational content analysis methods, reach and interactions, topical structure, relevant actors, negativity of messages, as well as the coverage of fabricated news and conspiracy theories were examined. The topical structure of the near-time Facebook coverage changed during various stages of the crisis, with just partial support for the claims of critics. The initial stages were somewhat lacking in topical breadth, but later stages offered a broad range of coverage on Corona-related issues and societal concerns. Further, journalistic media covered fake news and conspiracy theories during the crisis, but they consistently contextualized them as what they were and debunked the false claims circulating in public. While some criticism regarding the performance of journalism during the crisis received mild empirical support, the analysis did not find overwhelming signs of systemic dysfunctionalities. Overall, journalistic media did not default to a uniform reaction nor to sprawling, information-poor pandemic news, but they responded with a multi-perspective coverage of the crisis.

DEMORESILDIGITAL RESEARCH ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PART II: Fueling the Infodemic?

DEMORESILDIGITAL RESEARCH ON THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC PART II: Fueling the Infodemic?

In a DemoRESILdigital brief summary report, Lena Frischlich, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt, Lara Kuhlfeldt und Lena Clever present initial data on Germans’ news sources during the early-days of the COVID19 contact restrictions (March 26 – April 9, 2020) and about Germans’ exposure to distorted information during this time based on a random quota survey of the German population (N = 967, representative in terms of age, gender, and federal state). The authors examined Germans’ news sources during the pandemic and examined the relationship between using non-professional and alternative news sources and the self-reported exposure to distorted information about COVID-19. The data was collected as part of a larger, pre-registered project addressing individual risk and resilience factors for encountering and believing misleading information about the pandemic. The DemoRESILdigital brief summary report can be read here.

 

DemoRESILdigital research on the COVID-19 pandemic Part I: Pandemic Populism

DemoRESILdigital research on the COVID-19 pandemic Part I: Pandemic Populism

Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt and Lena Frischlich published the white paper “Pandemic Populism: Facebook Pages of Alternative News Media and the Corona Crisis – a Computational Content Analysis” on the platform arxiv.org. The study analyzes the spreading of disinformation and conspiracy theories in an initial computational content analysis of alternative news media’s output on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic , based on a large German data set from January to the second half of March 2020. Using computational content analysis, methods, reach, interactions, actors, and topics of the messages were examined, as well as the use of fabricated news and conspiracy theories. The analysis revealed that the alternative news media stay true to message patterns and ideological foundations identified in prior research. While they do not spread obvious lies, they are predominantly sharing overly critical, even anti-systemic messages, opposing the view of the mainstream news media and the political establishment. With this pandemic populism, they contribute to a contradictory, menacing, and distrusting worldview. Reviews of the study can be read here.

DEMORESILDIGITAL AT THE DGPUK

DEMORESILDIGITAL AT THE DGPUK

Lena Frischlich and Johanna Klapproth participated in the 65th annual conference of the German Communication Association at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. The conference dealt with the topic “#Media #Human #Society. Questions and answers of communication and media science in times of rapid media change” and the DemoRESILdigital team presented various talks. The conference program can be read here.