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”.

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)

 

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.

¹ 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

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 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.

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.