Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://www.weizenbaum-library.de/handle/id/1111

Collection of articles, reviews, preprints

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Subject: search.filters.subject.social media

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 30
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    From permanent campaign to permanent communication: parliamentarians’ cross-media practices in routine and election times
    (2025-04-14) Severin-Nielsen, Majbritt Kappelgaard; Kruikemeier, Sanne; Ohme, Jakob; Gade Kjelmann, Kristian
    With the advent of social media, politicians must navigate an increasingly complex and fast-paced political communication landscape. Scholars have argued that the development pushes politicians to be in permanent campaign mode and that this, in turn, weakens their engagement in other policy-making tasks. In this study, we examine parliamentarians’ cross-media behaviors and strategies in a hybrid media environment in light of the theory of permanent campaigning. Through cluster analyses of parliamentarians’ media behaviors and interviews with them about their media strategies during a routine and election period in the most likely case, Denmark, we contribute to the conceptual development of the permanent campaign in a hybrid media context.
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    Algorithmic social media use and its relationship to attitude reinforcement and issue-specific political participation – The case of the 2015 European immigration movements
    (2020-09-02) Ohme, Jakob
    Selective exposure to likeminded political viewpoints on algorithmic social media platforms is considered a potential source of polarization of public opinion. We still know little about the proposed mechanism or how potential reinforcement of specific attitudes affects citizens’ political behavior, especially in a nonelectoral context. Focusing on the issue of immigration during the refugee influx to Europe in autumn 2015, this study investigates the effects of social media usage on attitude reinforcement, connecting it to political participation in refugee-related activities. A panel study conducted among Danish citizens (n = 847) reveals that frequent social media usage reinforces existing attitudes and mobilizes political participation. However, citizens who become more extreme in their attitude toward immigration over time are found to be less likely to become politically active regarding this specific issue.
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    Partisan Selective Exposure in Times of Political and Technological Upheaval: A Social Media Field Experiment
    (2019-06-30) Mothes, Cornelia; Ohme, Jakob
    Contemporary democracies are increasingly shaped by a surge of populism, posing serious threats to the idea of liberal democracy. Particularly in the run-up to elections, knowledge of such threats is essential for citizens to cast an informed vote. Against this background, the present study examined the likelihood of media users to engage with political news providing critical perspectives on populist movements in a 24-hour social media field experiment during the 2017 federal election campaign in Germany (N = 210). Based on two selective exposure measures, findings suggest that exposure to critical news is contingent upon the conceptualization of populist partisanship as a political orientation of either high commitment (i.e., voting intention) or high affinity (i.e., sympathy for a party). While high commitment triggered a rather classic confirmation bias, especially regarding click decisions, high affinity caused selection patterns to be more strongly guided by informational utility, particularly during newsfeed browsing, with counter-attitudinal information receiving more attention. When public sentiment cues were present, however, attitudinal patterns disappeared. These findings imply that partisan news use in times of political upheaval is best gauged by taking a closer look at the particular type of partisanship that guides selective exposure, as both types of partisanship caused contrary exposure patterns, and that today’s news environments potentially override attitudinal influences by providing additional social monitoring cues.
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    Mobilization vs. demobilization discourses on social media
    (2021-09-03) Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta; de Vries Kedem, Maya; Maier, Daniel; Stoltenberg, Daniela
    While scholarly attention has been devoted to social media’s potential mobilizing function, they may also contribute to demobilization discourses: social communication actively promoting nonvoting. This paper examines discourses around mobilization vs. demobilization in the context of the municipal elections in Jerusalem. As the sweeping majority of East Jerusalem Palestinians have continuously been boycotting Jerusalem’s municipal elections, this is a potent case through which to examine how demobilization functions in action, through social media conversations. Using a mixed-methods analysis of Twitter contents as structured by different languages, our findings show how mobilization and demobilization discourses can co-occur during the same election event. Users of different languages – reflecting different social and political identities – interpret the elections in contrasting ways, with tangible implications for (in)equality in political participation. The study thus contributes theoretically to several domains of political communication, including election studies, local politics, and language fragmentation in online political discourse.
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    Longitudinal Data Donation Behavior and Data Omission across Four Social Media Platforms
    (2026-01-01) Wedel, Lion; Ohme, Jakob
    This research article presents insights from a two-wave, longitudinal data donation study across four major social media platforms: TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. We investigate a critical yet underexplored aspect of data donation: allowing participants to delete specific data traces before submission. Our analysis quantifies the impact of this selective omission on data completeness and, consequently, the analytical power of the resulting datasets. Furthermore, leveraging a longitudinal design, we examine the stability of donation and deletion behaviors over time in a panel setting. Findings reveal an overall increase in the platform donor rate in the second wave. However, we also observe substantial donor attrition. Notably, the omission of data traces is predominantly observed among first-time donors.Our results suggest the feasibility of longitudinal data donation research designs. For allowing participants selective data omission, a careful weighing of the trade-offs is necessary, as this practice—when utilized—significantly compromises data completeness.
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    Just the tip of the iceberg? State of the art of coordinated social media manipulation research
    (2025-12-26) Milzner, Miriam; Thiele, Daniel; Gong, Baoning
    Social media environments are increasingly exploited by manipulative actors through coordinated social media manipulation (CSMM) campaigns: the intentional and deceptive orchestration of social media networks to manipulate content visibility and public opinion formation. In recent years, research on CSMM has grown rapidly, and the field lacks a systematic synthesis of empirical findings on observed campaigns. This study addresses that gap through a systematic review of 83 studies sourced from Web of Science and EBSCOHost, each analyzing observed digital traces of CSMM. We introduce a conceptual model that frames CSMM as a three-step process: covert operation, implementation, and influence. Using this model, we map the existing research findings, identify critical gaps, and outline future research directions. The review shows that research disproportionately focuses on election periods, state-backed actors, and text-based content on Twitter/X while overlooking multimodal forms, platform-specific manipulation strategies, and broader geopolitical contexts. Linking online campaigns to offline actors, as well as assessing the impact of CSMM, also remain challenges. Overall, we call for integrative analytical frameworks that incorporate comparative designs, cross-platform and multilingual analyses, and greater attention to the dynamics of audience interaction.
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    Pandemic Populism? How Covid-19 Triggered Populist Facebook User Comments in Germany and Austria
    (2022-02-17) Thiele, Daniel
    Covid-19 and the government measures taken to combat the pandemic have fueled populist protests in Germany and Austria. Social media played a key role in the emergence of these protests. This study argues that the topic of Covid-19 has triggered populist user comments on Facebook pages of German and Austrian mass media. Drawing on media psychology, this article theorizes populist comments as an expression of “reactance,” sparked by repeated “fear appeals” in posts about Covid-19. Several hypotheses are derived from this claim and tested on a dataset of N = 25,121 Facebook posts, posted between January 2020 and May 2021 on nine pages of German and Austrian mass media, and 1.4 million corresponding user comments. To measure content-based variables automatically, this study develops, validates, and applies dictionaries. The study finds that the topic of Covid-19 did trigger populist user comments and that this effect grew over time. Surprisingly, neither the stringency of government measures nor mentions of elitist actors were found to have the expected amplifying effect. The study discusses the findings against the background of governing the ongoing crisis and worrisome developments in the online public sphere.
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    Updating Public Value: How Journalists Understand Their Societal Role in the Context of Digital Platforms
    (2025-11-19) Mayer, Anna-Theresa
    Journalism’s role transformation from gatekeeper to one of many communicating actors on digital platforms increasingly necessitates the profession to reflect on the societal value it can provide on digital platforms. Applying the concepts of ‘public value’ and ‘platformization,’ this case study examines funk, a unique content network from German public service media that produces content mainly for a young audience using social media platforms for distribution. Building on a newsroom observation that informed subsequent qualitative interviews with nine members of funk, the findings reveal that, while public value perceptions align with traditional understandings of public value, they are adapted to the digital environment. Furthermore, the funk members reflect on reaching the target group, interactivity, and technical features of digital platforms to enhance public value, while also stressing the boundaries mainly stemming from the commercially-oriented logic of digital platforms.
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    Platform governance under the Digital Services Act: a perspective on disinformation
    (2025-11-24) Gsenger, Rita
    Online platforms have become essential infrastructures for communication and commerce, playing a central role in content governance and shaping public discourse. While their accessibility fosters communication, it also facilitates the spread of harmful information, including disinformation. To address these risks and enhance transparency and accountability, the European Union (EU) introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), which mandates specific content moderation obligations for platforms operating within its jurisdiction. This study examines how 27 online platforms govern disinformation, employing a mixed-methods analysis of their Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. The analysis shows that ‘misleading’ content is the most frequently regulated category, with very large online platforms (VLOPs) and social media platforms exhibiting the highest levels of regulation. Although a range of sanctions exists, platforms primarily rely on content and account removal, with limited mechanisms for user participation. The study identifies four main clusters of disinformation addressed by platforms: misleading content, imposter content, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, and manipulation. These categories illustrate specific regulatory challenges, such as health-related disinformation and identity misrepresentation. The paper situates these findings within the context of regulatory frameworks like the Digital Services Act (DSA), emphasizing the need for further research on enforcement practices and the impact of content governance.
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    Attributing Coordinated Social Media Manipulation: A Theoretical Model and Typology.
    (2025) Thiele, Daniel; Milzner, Miriam; Gong, Baoning; Pfetsch, Barbara; Heft, Annett
    Social media are key arenas for public opinion formation, but are susceptible to coordinated social media manipulation (CSMM), that is, the orchestrated activity of multiple accounts to increase content visibility and deceive audiences. Despite advances in detecting and characterizing CSMM, the attribution problem—identifying the principals behind CSMM campaigns—has received little scholarly attention. In this article, we address this gap by synthesizing existing research and developing a theoretical model for understanding CSMM. We propose a consolidated definition of CSMM, identify its key observable and hidden characteristics, and present a rational choice model for inferring principals’ strategic decisions from campaign features. In addition, we present a typology of CSMM campaigns, linking variations in scale, elaborateness, and disguise to principals’ resources, stakes, and influence strategies. Our contribution provides researchers with conceptual and heuristic tools for attribution and invites interdisciplinary and comparative research on CSMM campaigns.