Auflistung nach Forschungsgruppen "Digital Citizenship"

Gerade angezeigt 1 - 20 von 27
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    Can Intergroup Contact in Virtual Reality (VR) Reduce Stigmatization Against People with Schizophrenia?
    (2021) Stelzmann, Daniela; Toth, Roland; Schieferdecker, David
    People with mental disorders such as schizophrenia do not only suffer from the symptoms of their disorders but also from the stigma attached to it. Although direct intergroup contact is an effective tool to reduce stigmatization, it is rare in real life and costly to be established in interventions, and the success of traditional media campaigns is debatable. We propose Virtual Reality (VR) as a low-threshold alternative for establishing contact since it involves less barriers for affected and unaffected persons. In a 2 + 1 experiment (n = 114), we compared the effects of encounters with a person with schizophrenia through a VR video with contact through a regular video and no contact at all on anxiety, empathy, social proximity, and benevolence towards people with schizophrenia. We found that contact via VR reduced stigmatization only for participants who liked the person encountered. Our data suggest that it is crucial how participants evaluate the person that they encounter and that stronger perception of spatial presence during reception plays an important role, too. Therefore, we discussvarious boundary conditions that need to be considered in VR interventions and future research on destigmatization towards mental disorders, especially schizophrenia.
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    Challenges and Perspectives of Hate Speech Research
    (Böhland & Schremmer, 2023) Strippel, Christian; Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Emmer, Martin; Trebbe, Joachim
    This book is the result of a conference that could not take place. It is a collection of 26 texts that address and discuss the latest developments in international hate speech research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. This includes case studies from Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Nigeria, and India, theoretical introductions to the concepts of hate speech, dangerous speech, incivility, toxicity, extreme speech, and dark participation, as well as reflections on methodological challenges such as scraping, annotation, datafication, implicity, explainability, and machine learning. As such, it provides a much-needed forum for cross-national and cross-disciplinary conversations in what is currently a very vibrant field of research.
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    Die Digitalisierung von Lebensstilpolitik. Wie Soziale Medien lebensstilpolitisches Engagement prägen
    (2021) Leißner, Laura
    Political participation is fundamentally changing under the influence of digital media. While this dynamic has already been intensively researched for election campaigns and protest movements, alternative forms of political participation embedded in everyday life are rarely the focus of communication studies. This paper theorizes the concept of lifestyle politics as a form of political participation and discusses the interplay between lifestyle politics and social media. It begins with the argument that lifestyle politics is systematically defined along the categories of intention and field of action and then further differentiated along the categories of action strategy and action frame. Along these lines, previous research and other case studies are used to discuss the ways in which social media shape and influence various forms of lifestyle politics. The study shows that on the one hand, social media reduce information and participation costs and, as a consequence, support the engagement in lifestyle politics. On the other hand, social media expand the repertoire of lifestyle politics by affording-unlike ever media forms in the past-the technical infrastructure for the exercise of persuasive and collectively oriented lifestyle politics.
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    “Digital citizenship” revisited: the impact of ICTs on citizens’ political communication beyond the Western state
    (2018) Emmer, Martin; Kunst, Marlene
    The role of ICTs in political participation has been a core topic in political communication research for about two decades. Numerous studies have tested whether the enthusiasm about the mobilizing impact of ICTs holds true. Most have been conducted in Western countries and, therefore, reflect a Western-centric understanding of politics and participation. Although these studies have provided insight into the potential of ICTs for established democracies, political and cultural contexts from developing world regions such as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have thus far been neglected. However, given the rapid dissemination of ICTs (e.g., mobile phones) and their innovative application in everyday life in developing countries, regions like SSA should be of particular interest for research in this field. This article aims to highlight the shortcomings of Western research and to recommend adjustments in future efforts to investigate effects of ICTs, including developing world regions, in order to develop a more robust empirical grounding for theories of participation.
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    Diskursarchitekturen deutscher Nachrichtenseiten
    (DGPuK, 2020) Strippel, Christian; Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Gehrau, Volker; Waldherr, Annie; Scholl, Armin; Deutsche Gesellschaft Für Publizistik- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft E.V.; Gehrau, V., Waldherr, A. & Scholl, A.
    For some years now, news sites around the world are increasingly confronted with abusive user comments in their respective comment sections and discussion forums. While these spaces were long seen as promising instruments of democratic participation, they now have a reputation as spaces full of insults and hate speech. Since this not only poses a threat to social cohesion but can also compromise the image of a news site, many platforms have taken measures to regulate the comments on their sites since then. Some have published community guidelines, hired moderation teams and implemented monitoring software. As an additional measure, many adapted the technological design and the features of their comment spaces to gain more control over the posted comments. This includes, for example, requiring commenters to register with the site, sorting of comment threads and various degrees of anonymization. Many authors refer to this technological design of comment spaces as “discourse architecture.” The theoretical argument behind this term is that the way comment spaces are “built” influences how commenters behave within them. This perspective is particularly interesting from the point of view of journalism research, since the relationship between editorial staff and audience is manifested in such technological architectures. Several studies have analyzed and compared various discourse architectures in order to investigate possible effects on commenting behavior. However, there is still a lack of a systematic analysis in this field. Apart from individual case studies, there are no findings on the diversity of discourse architectures which provide information on the technical conditions of audience participation on the Internet. On the theoretical basis of the discourse architecture approach, this study investigates two research questions: How are the included discourse architectures designed (RQ1)? And what types of discourse architectures can we identify (RQ2)? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a standardized analysis of 361 German news sites, which produced three key findings. Firstly, with regard to RQ1, we found that 173 of these 361 news sites offer comments sections, whereas only 24 offer discussion forums. In contrast, almost all sites in the sample have an additional Facebook page. Although we have not checked whether these pages actually contain posts and comments, against this background we can nevertheless assume that the discourse architecture of Facebook has become the most important technological infrastructure for commenting news articles in Germany. Acknowledging the low deliberative quality of user discussions on Facebook revealed by earlier studies, this would be quite problematic with regard to social integration. Secondly, the detailed analysis of the comment sections showed that most news sites do not exhaust the possibilities of using technical discourse architectures to gain more control over the discussions of users and users. Overall, the technological design of the comment sections is quite inclusive, not very restrictive and only weakly regulated. The most popular features are required registration, rating of comments, opprtunities to report comments and the restriction of comment sections to certain topics. Thirdly, with regard to RQ2, five distinct types of discourse architectures for comment sections could be identified within the sample. They differ in terms of their combinations of features and as well as in terms of their outreach. Additionally, we found a significant correlation between the outreach of the news sites and the number of features that strengthen editorial control over the comments.
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    Do “Good Citizens” fight hate speech online? Effects of solidarity citizenship norms on user responses to hate comments
    (2021) Kunst, Marlene; Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Emmer, Martin; Eilders, Christiane
    In an effort to counter hate speech, media platforms have increasingly come to rely on ordinary users to fight abusive content. However, little is known about the predictors of this type of user engagement, which we refer to as online civic intervention (OCI). This article presents an experimental inquiry (N = 337) into whether solidarity citizenship norms promote OCI. The results show that users who support solidarity citizenship norms tend to have a greater propensity to flag hate comments and to engage in counterspeech. Overall, this indicates that “good citizens” are more inclined to stand up against hate speech online.
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    “Doing gender” by sharing. Examining the gender gap in the European sharing economy
    (2022) Eichhorn, Thomas; Hoffmann, Christian; Heger, Katharina
    In this study, based on survey data collected from twelve European countries (N=6111), we build on the digital technology access model to examine the role of gender in access to the sharing economy. Applying a “doing gender” perspective, we find that men capitalise on a stronger economic position and a more pronounced orientation to explore new technology to gain access to sharing services, while women rely more on cultural and social capital. We relate our findings to intersectionality theory by discussing how class and gender intersect in facilitating access to the sharing economy.
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    Editorial: Volume 1, Issue 1
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2021) Emmer, Martin; Krasnova, Hanna; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schimmler, Sonja; Ulbricht, Lena; Neuberger, Christoph
    The Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society is an open access journal and could not function any other way, because we see digitalization as a process that changes traditional forms of communication and cooperation, which raises the questions of control of data, information and knowledge anew. We look forward to contributions about the conditions, forms and consequences of the digitalization of society and its sub-sectors such as politics, business, science, labor, the public, civil society, law and culture. The digitalization of society has many facets: the disruptive transformation of the world of work, radical changes in the economic and innovation systems, new forms of learning and the restructuring of educational systems, the transformation of public space through digital media and platforms, changes in the way democracies function, massive challenges for the legal system and the planning and design of technical infrastructures. In light of these developments, the question arises as to how social actors can shape the digital transformation while safeguarding the foundations for individual and societal self-determination.
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    Forschungsinfrastrukturen für die Kommunikations- und Medienforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum. Initiativen, Bedarfe und Perspektiven
    (2021) Strippel, Christian
    Trotz ihrer hohen Professionalisierung hat es die Kommunikationswissenschaft im deutschsprachigen Raum bislang weitgehend versäumt, Forschungsinfrastrukturen aufzubauen, die den besonderen Anforderungen der Kommunikations- und Medienforschung im Fach gerecht werden. Es fehlen Langzeitstudien zur kontinuierlichen Beobachtung des Medienwandels, eine systematische Erhebung und einfache Bereitstellung von Untersuchungsmaterial sowie eine koordinierte Methodenentwicklung. Im Vergleich zu anderen sozialwissenschaftlichen Fächern, für die solche Infrastrukturen bereits seit Längerem existieren, büßt die kommunikationswissenschaftliche Forschung dadurch erheblich an Effizienz und Systematik ein. Obwohl diese Defizite lange bekannt sind und auch schon mehrfach beanstandet wurden, hatten entsprechende Initiativen zum Aufbau solcher Infrastrukturen für die Forschung im Fach bislang wenig Erfolg. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt diese Initiativen vor, diskutiert mögliche Gründe für ihr Scheitern und formuliert auf dieser Grundlage Vorschläge für zukünftige Initiativen in den drei Bereichen Materialversorgung, Langfristforschung und Dateninfrastruktur.
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    Fragmentation in high-choice media environments from a micro-perspective: Effects of selective exposure on issue diversity in individual repertoires
    (2019) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Eilders, Christiane
    Online communication is often seen to promote audience fragmentation because it facilitates selective exposure and therefore is likely to divide audiences into sub-publics that hardly share common issues with other sub-publics. This study takes a micro-perspective on fragmentation by focusing on issue diversity in media items users have encountered in a particular week. Diversity was assessed via content analyses based on online diaries of 645 participants who recorded their media use concerning the German debates on climate change and federal elections. Findings show lower degrees of diversity for users of non-jour- nalistic online media than for users of journalistic mass media.
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    From Insult to Hate Speech. Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration
    (2021) Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Strippel, Christian; Trebbe, Joachim; Emmer, Martin
    In recent debates on offensive language in participatory online spaces, the term ‘hate speech’ has become especially prominent. Originating from a legal context, the term usually refers to violent threats or expressions of prejudice against particular groups on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. However, due to its explicit reference to the emotion of hate, it is also used more colloquially as a general label for any kind of negative expression. This ambiguity leads to misunderstandings in discussions about hate speech and challenges its identification. To meet this challenge, this article provides a modularized framework to differentiate various forms of hate speech and offensive language. On the basis of this framework, we present a text annotation study of 5,031 user comments on the topic of immigration and refuge posted in March 2019 on three German news sites, four Facebook pages, 13 YouTube channels, and one right-wing blog. An in-depth analysis of these comments identifies various types of hate speech and offensive language targeting immigrants and refugees. By exploring typical combinations of labeled attributes, we empirically map the variety of offensive language in the subject area ranging from insults to calls for hate crimes, going beyond the common ‘hate/no-hate’ dichotomy found in similar studies. The results are discussed with a focus on the grey area between hate speech and offensive language.
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    Information seeking and communication during forced migration
    (Weizenbaum Institute, 2020) Emmer, Martin; Kunst, Marlene; Richter, Carola
    The recent refugee movements to Europe occur in the digital age. While there is a common perception that 'every refugee carries a smartphone', research on this new phenomenon is limited. To fill this academic gap, we have conducted a representative survey of more than 400 refugees living in Berlin which provides insight into the use of digital media in preparation for and during forced migration. We also asked whether digital media shaped images of and expectations about the refugees' target country Germany. The data confirm that digital media are important tools for refugees but also show that refugees are not a homogenous group and that usage patterns depend on regional origins. Moreover, we found that refugees who frequently accessed the Internet before they fled were better informed than others. Whereas Internet use also contributed to a positively-biased perception of Germany, the respective effect of traditional media use was stronger.
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    Information seeking and communication during forced migration. An empirical analysis of refugees’ digital-media use and its effects on their perceptions of Germany as their target country
    (2020) Emmer, Martin; Richter, Carola; Kunst, Marlene
    There is a common perception that ‘every refugee carries a smartphone’, but research on this phenomenon is limited. We conducted a representative survey of 400 refugees to Germany which provides insight into their use of digital media in preparation for and during forced migration. We also asked whether digital media shaped images of and expectations about the refugees’ target country Germany. The data show that refugees are not a homogeneous group and that usage patterns depend on regional origins. Internet use also contributed to a positively biased perception of Germany, but the effect of traditional media use was stronger.
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    Moderationsfaktoren: ein Ansatz zur Analyse von Selektionsentscheidungen im Community Management
    (DGPuK, 2020) Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Strippel, Christian; Laugwitz, Laura; Emmer, Martin; Trebbe, Joachim; Gehrau, Volker; Waldherr, Annie; Scholl, Armin; Deutsche Gesellschaft Für Publizistik- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft E.V.; Gehrau, V., Waldherr, A. & Scholl, A.
    Aggressive and discriminatory comments posted on news websites and social media threaten social cohesion and pose challenges for a site‘s respective editorial staff. Based on 20 qualitative, guided interviews with community managers, this article is an early examination of the factors that influence moderation decisions and the moderation strategies which are used to address hate comments online. By referencing preexisting gatekeeping research, this study models the explanatory factors which, in turn, define the 'moderation factors' on the level of the individual, the norms and routines of the profession, the organization and society.
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    Online Civic Intervention: A New Form of Political Participation Under Conditions of a Disruptive Online Discourse
    (2020) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Kunst, Marlene; Emmer, Martin
    In the everyday practice of online communication, we observe users deliberately reporting abusive content or opposing hate speech through counterspeech, while at the same time, online platforms are increasingly relying on and supporting this kind of user action to fight disruptive online behavior. We refer to this type of user engagement as online civic intervention (OCI) and regard it as a new form of user-based political participation in the digital sphere that contributes to an accessible and reasoned public discourse. Because OCI has received little scholarly attention thus far, this article conceptualizes low- and high-threshold types of OCI as different kinds of user responses to common disruptive online behavior such as hate speech or hostility toward the media. Against the background of participation research, we propose a theoretically grounded individual-level model that serves to explain OCI.
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    Perspektivwechsel: Migrationsberichterstattung in ausgewählten afrikanischen Ländern und Deutschland aus Migrant*innensicht
    (DGPuK, 2020) Zappe, Anna-Carina; Bastian, Mariella; Leißner, Laura; Henke, Jakob; Fengler, Susanne; Gehrau, Volker; Waldherr, Annie; Scholl, Armin; Deutsche Gesellschaft Für Publizistik- Und Kommunikationswissenschaft E.V.; Gehrau, V., Waldherr, A. & Scholl, A.
    Since 2015, migration and immigration have been relevant topics of political debate in Germany. Therefore, various communication studies researched the media reporting on these issues and examined how it affects the perception of migrants within the German population (e.g. Arlt & Wolling, 2017). In distinction to this, the present study addresses the question of how migrants themselves receive migration reporting, how they perceive it, and how it shapes their personal migration and integration actions. We conducted two focus group discussions with migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. The participants discussed both the reception and evaluation of migration reporting in their country of origin and in Germany. The results show that the topic of migration was hardly reported in the countries of origin, which is why personal migration decisions were more influenced by interpersonal communication. In Germany, the African participants perceive media reports about migration issues as too one-sided and as reduced to the sub-themes of poverty and war.
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    Popularity cues in online media: Theoretical and methodological perspectives in political communication research
    (2018) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Jost, Pablo; Eilders, Christiane; Maurer, Marcus; Haßler, Jörg
    Popularitätshinweise wie Likes und Shares signalisieren grundsätzlich positive Nutzerreaktionen. Im Kontext politischer Kommunikation sind sie in ihrer aggregierten Form entweder Indikator für Relevanzzuweisungen von oder die Zustimmung zu Online-Beiträgen. Popularitätshinweise können aber auch Faktoren sein, welche die Wahrnehmung, das Verhalten und die Einstellungen des Publikums beeinflussen. Dieser Beitrag thematisiert theoretische und methodologische Aspekte für beide Perspektiven. Im Rückgriff auf Konzepte wie wahrgenommene Relevanz, Einstellungskonsonanz und Persuasion, werden zuerst die Gründe für das Liken und Sharen diskutiert. Danach wird die Wirkung von Popularitätshinweisen hauptsächlich vor dem Hintergrund der Schweigespiraltheorie und heuristischer Informationsverarbeitung erörtert. Die Informationsverarbeitung wird als Schlüsselfaktor identifiziert um zu verstehen, wie das Liken und Sharen politischer Inhalte entsteht und welche politischen Effekte Popularitätshinweise auf Individualebene hervorrufen. Die methodologische Diskussion bezieht sich auf Fragen der Datenerhebung, sowie der Validität und der Durchführbarkeit von Studien zu Popularitätshinweisen.
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    “The Boundaries are Blurry…”. How Comment Moderators in Germany See and Respond to Hate Comments
    (2022) Paasch-Colberg, Sünje; Strippel, Christian
    Aggressive and hateful user comments on news sites and social media threaten discussions on the Internet and pose a difficult challenge for content regulation. Previous research has mainly focused on the analysis of moderation strategies in dealing with such comments. In contrast, little attention was paid to the issue of which comments are considered problematic by content moderators in the first place. The answer to this question has more than theoretical relevance, but practical significance against the backdrop of increasing efforts to automate the detection of hate speech or toxicity in user comments. Based on 20 interviews, this paper explores what comment moderators in Germany consider to be hate comments, how they moderate them, and how differences in moderation practices can be explained. Our findings show strong agreement regarding extreme cases of hate comments, whereby there is overlap with the theoretical concept of hate speech, but also forms of incivility. Moreover, the interviews revealed differences in the perception and handling of hate comments, which can be linked to explanatory factors at the levels of the individual, professional routines, and the organization.
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    The effects of likes on public opinion perception and personal opinion
    (2019) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Eilders, Christiane
    Drawing on the spiral of silence theory and heuristic information pro- cessing, we contend that individuals use likes as sources for assessing public opinion. We further argue that individuals may even adapt their personal opinions to the tenor reflected in those cues. The assumptions were tested using data from an experiment involving 501 participants, who encountered media items on two issues with or without likes. The findings show that respondents inferred public opinion from the media bias if it was supported by likes, however, only in cases of high levels of fear of social isolation. Respondents further adapted their personal opinion to the media bias if it was supported by likes.