Technology, Democracy & Power

Core themes: Technology, democracy, and power – How emerging ICTs shape electoral campaigns, political discourse and representation, as well as power dynamics.

Methods: Social media analytics, Natural Language Processing (e.g., stance detection, sentiment analysis, hate speech/toxicity classifiers, dictionary approaches), network analysis, and statistical analysis of survey data.

Impact of ICTs on Electoral Campaigns:

• Monitoring and nowcasting electoral campaigns on social media platforms (X, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram).

• Analyzing how political actors are perceived, the issues they address (i.e., issue competition), and their strategies (e.g., negative campaigning).

Political Discourse & Representation:

• The evolution, radicalization, and politicization of digital discourses in times of polycrisis (e.g., Covid-19, Russo-Ukrainian War, Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

• Individual and contextual factors enabling (online) political participation and digital expression across countries.

• Interaction and alienation between political actors and voters on social media.

• Dynamics of intraparty conflict and public deviations from the party line in digital spaces.

• The rise of extreme right parties as digital frontrunners.

Power & Digital Influence:

• Ideological positioning and worldviews of political and economic elites (e.g., Tech Elite, Members of the European Parliament, party members) through their social media and website publications.

• The power of social media corporations: Methodological challenges in researching digital platforms, including limited data access (costly APIs, bureaucratic barriers) and concerns about data security and protection.