Lena Frischlich and Edda Humprecht from the University of Zurich worked together on a paper for the Israel Public Policy Institute (IPPI) which has now been published. The paper focuses on trust, disinformation and resilience before the so-called “infodemic” and during the last year.
More specifically, it introduces the idea of a “spiral of distrust”: Trust declines on multiple levels (democratic institutions, media, outgroups, individual conspiracy mentality) increase the vulnerability to mis- and disinformation and consuming mis-& disinformation can fuel distrust – a vicious circle. Predictors of declining trust as well as an overview about the state of trust before the global Covid-19 pandemic are provided and it is shown how the pandemic has affected the different components of the “spiral of distrust”. Finally, potential measures to foster democratic resilience are derived.

The Israel Public Policy Institute is an independent non-profit think and do tank based in Tel Aviv with representations in Berlin and New York.  The paper series is published as part of the broader project “Fostering Democratic Resilience in the Digital Age”, conceptualized and executed by the IPPI in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Foundation Tel Aviv.

What is ethics? And how does it come into play in the field of data analytics?

Lena Clever gave a speech on “Insights into Ethical Questions in Data Analytics” at the online coding bootcamp “#codeathome“.  She addressed ethical challenges in organisations and in research and explained basic questions regarding the connection between ethics, data and algorithms.

The bootcamp is organised by the Münster-based non-profit organisation “TechLabs“. It aims to offer free courses to participants from all over the world who are interested in learning programming skills within two months. Events and speeches accompanying the bootcamp help the participants to relise their projects and provide diverse insights into the tech universe.

By bringing the communication science perspective to the analysis of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society, Lena Frischlich and Tim Schatto-Eckrodt are part of a book chapter in the second edition of “COVID-19 – A virus takes hold of our psyche” (“COVID-19 – Ein Virus nimmt Einfluss auf unsere Psyche”, edited by Dr. Charles Benoy).
Specifically, the chapter is about media use as well as media effects during the global pandemic and was written in collaboration with André Melzer, Elisabeth Holl and Miriam-Linnea Hale from the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Luxembourg.

The book will be published by Kohlhammer publishing this March.

 

 

     

Tim Schatto-Eckrodt was invited to hold a keynote speech at the “2nd International Week of Semiotics” at the University of Potsdam on the 10th of February. In his speech, he addressed lies, fakes and conspiracy theories distributed online and showed empirical evidence for their effects during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thereby, he explained the persuasive power of such misinformation.

The “Week of Semiotics” is organised by the University of Potsdam and aims to offer the master students enrolled in the Master’s programme “Applied cultural science and cultural semiotics” various insights into the use of semiotic analyses as well as fruitful contacts with experts. The concrete topics change every day, on the 10th the presentors were invited to talk about “All Fake? Media, populism and protests”.