Political Communication
The theory and empirics of political communication form one of the research foci of the chair. Research on political communication deals with the preconditions, contents and consequences of freely accessible communication on all matters of public concern.
It encompasses media-mediated and direct forms of communication. Its preferred object of study is the communicative dimension of the production, enforcement, and mediation of collectively binding decisions in the democratic polity. Special attention is paid to the observation of stability and change of political communication in times of technical and social transformation. In the recent past, suppositions about a fundamental structural change of public, political communication, for example, due to the greater availability and use of digital technologies, have dominated. This strongly technology-deterministic perspective all too often leaves out social, cultural and political aspects. It is true that technical progress initially creates potential for change. However, the extent to which this potential will be exploited or will materialize depends on a variety of factors and remains an open question. It is also an open question whether the (non-)use of this potential will have an advantage or a disadvantage for the functioning of democracy.
Projekte
Discourse Data for Policy [DD4P] | 08/2020 – 09/2022 |
Competitive institutional HHU funding |
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For evidence-based policy-making and its adequate public communication, an understanding of social discourses as well as their temporal development and dependence on social and media events is necessary. Especially in dynamically developing fields of political action such as the Corona pandemic, migration or climate policy, data from social media discourses offer opportunities to identify social trends, opinion patterns and behavioral intentions. The interdisciplinary project DiscourseData4Policy (DD4P) aims to use methods from AI and machine learning to make social online discourses on Twitter understandable and to enable a better understanding of dynamic interactions between social events, political measures and their social acceptance. Against this backdrop, the project continues to investigate the extent to which such discourse data can inform the political process and what impact this has on citizens' perceptions of politics. Project website: dd4p.gesis.org | |
Prof. Dr. Frank Marcinkowski, Christian Koß In interdisciplinary cooperation with Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze (computer science, HHU/GESIS), Prof. Dr. Stefan Harmeling (computer science, HHU), Prof. Dr. Martin Mauve (computer science, HHU), Jun.- Prof. Dr. Tobias Escher (sociology, HHU), Dr. Christopher Starke (media studies, University of Amsterdam) | |