The course is conducted in English。

While this course is primarily aimed at graduate-level students, undergraduates may be considered on a case-by-case basis under exceptional circumstances. IMPORTANT: IF YOU COULD NOT BOOK THE CLASS - USE THIS FORM - WILL THEN GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU: https://forms.gle/f7kWXf16CR79pQd97 Political communication has undergone dramatic changes over the last few years, primarily due to the new possibilities offered by the internet. This has created new opportunities and challenges for citizens, journalists, and politicians. Throughout this seminar, we will explore critical topics in online political communication, such as the transformation of the global media landscape, the rise of populism in various countries, the use of social media by extremists to spread their ideologies, the role of disinformation and the impact of AI, and how political actors exploit the networked environment to bypass traditional gatekeepers. A particular emphasis will be placed on the impact of these issues on journalism, with discussions enriched by both international and domestic examples.

- understand today's networked public sphere and how political communication has changed and affected journalism - know about the current state of research in political communication - learn to understand and use quantitative methods - Plan a research design and conduct own study

Expect to spend 2–3 hours per week on coursework, depending on your prior experience with political communication.

Recommended literature for presentations (preliminary version - some topics will still be changed) Every student picks one topic and plans a presentation based on the recommended literature. You can also completely deviate from the recommended literature as long as still cover the overall issue of the session. ———————————————————————— " Online Campaigning" Journalism and political online communication Lecheler, S., & Kruikemeier, S. (2016). Re-evaluating journalistic routines in a digital age: A review of research on the use of online sources. New Media & Society, 18(1), 156–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815600412 Parmelee, J. H. (2014). The agenda-building function of political tweets. New Media & Society, 16(3), 434–450. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444813487955 Schumacher, N. F., Maurer, P., & Nuernbergk, C. (2021). Towards New Standards? Interaction Patterns of German Political Journalists in the Twittersphere. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 194016122110255. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211025502 Election campaigns Chadwick, A., & Stromer-Galley, J. (2016). Digital Media, Power, and Democracy in Parties and Election Campaigns: Party Decline or Party Renewal? The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(3), 283–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161216646731 Kreiss, D., & Mcgregor, S. C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle. Political Communication, 35(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1364814 McGregor, S. C. (2020). “Taking the Temperature of the Room.” Public Opinion Quarterly, 84(S1), 236–256. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaa012 Politicians on social media Jungherr, A. (2016). Twitter use in election campaigns: A systematic literature review. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 13(1), 72–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2015.1132401 Barbera, P., & Zeitzoff, T. (2018). The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media? International Studies Quarterly, 62(1), 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx047 van Vliet, L., Tornberg, P., & Uitermark, J. (2020). The Twitter parliamentarian database: Analyzing Twitter politics across 26 countries. PLOS ONE, 15(9), e0237073. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237073 ———————————————————————— "Polarization and disinformation" Fake news Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(7), 2521–2526. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806781116 Del Vicario, M., Bessi, A., Zollo, F., Petroni, F., Scala, A., Caldarelli, G., … Quattrociocchi, W. (2016). The spreading of misinformation online. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(3), 554–559. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517441113 Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. (2019). Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook. Science Advances, 5(1), eaau4586. International disinformation Golovchenko, Y., Hartmann, M., & Adler-Nissen, R. (2018). State, media and civil society in the information warfare over Ukraine: citizen curators of digital disinformation. International Affairs, 94(5), 975–994. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy148 Bail, C. A., Guay, B., Maloney, E., Combs, A., Hillygus, D. S., Merhout, F., … Volfovsky, A. (2019). Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201906420. doi:10.1073/pnas.1906420116 Lukito, J., Suk, J., Zhang, Y., Doroshenko, L., Kim, S. J., Su, M.-H., … Wells, C. (2019). The Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: How Russia’s Internet Research Agency Tweets Appeared in U.S. News as Vox Populi. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 194016121989521. doi:10.1177/1940161219895215 Polarization Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Hunzaker, M. F., ... & Volfovsky, A. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216-9221. Tucker, J. A., Guess, A., Barbera, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., ... & Nyhan, B. (2018). Social media, political polarization, and political disinformation: A review of the scientific literature. Political polarization, and political disinformation: a review of the scientific literature (March 19, 2018). ———————————————————————— "Platforms and Filter Bubbles" Algorithms and filter bubbles Flaxman, S., Goel, S., & Rao, J. M. (2016). Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption. Public Opinion Quarterly, 80(S1), 298–320. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw006 Zuiderveen Borgesius, F. J., Trilling, D., Moller, J., Bodo, B., De Vreese, C. H., Helberger, N., … Internet Policy Review. (2016). Should we worry about filter bubbles? Internet Policy Review. https://doi.org/10.14763/2016.1.401 Eady, G., Nagler, J., Guess, A., Zilinsky, J., & Tucker, J. A. (2019). How Many People Live in Political Bubbles on Social Media? Evidence From Linked Survey and Twitter Data. SAGE Open, 9(1), 2158244019832705. Kaiser, J., & Rauchfleisch, A. (in press). Birds of a feather get recommended together: Homophily in YouTube’s channel recommendations in the United States and Germany. Social Media + Society. Micro-targeting Coppock, A., Hill, S. J., & Vavreck, L. (2020). The small effects of political advertising are small regardless of context, message, sender, or receiver: Evidence from 59 real-time randomized experiments. Science Advances, 6(36), eabc4046. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc4046 Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489(7415), 295–298. doi:10.1038/nature11421 Platforms Pasquale, F. (2016). Platform neutrality: Enhancing freedom of expression in spheres of private power. Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 17(2), 487-513. Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New media & society, 12(3), 347-364. Kleis Nielsen, R., & Ganter, S. A. (2018). Dealing with digital intermediaries: A case study of the relations between publishers and platforms. New media & society, 20(4), 1600-1617. Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2016). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society. ———————————————————————— "Social movements and authoritarian countries" Social movements and the internet Benkler, Y., Roberts, H., Faris, R., Solow-Niederman, A., & Etling, B. (2015). Social Mobilization and the Networked Public Sphere: Mapping the SOPA-PIPA Debate. Political Communication, 32(4), 594–624. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2014.986349 Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). THE LOGIC OF CONNECTIVE ACTION: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661 Theocharis, Y., Vitoratou, S., & Sajuria, J. (2017). Civil society in times of crisis: understanding collective action dynamics in digitally-enabled volunteer networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 22(5), 248-265. Authoritarian countries Pearce, K. E. (2015). Democratizing kompromat: the affordances of social media for state-sponsored harassment. Information, Communication & Society, 18(10), 1158–1174. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1021705 Rauchfleisch, A., & Schafer, M. S. (2015). Multiple public spheres of Weibo: a typology of forms and potentials of online public spheres in China. Information, Communication & Society, 18(2), 139–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.940364 Hobbs, W. R., & Roberts, M. E. (2018). How Sudden Censorship Can Increase Access to Information. American Political Science Review, 112(03), 621–636. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000084 Hashtag activism Freelon, D., Bossetta, M., Wells, C., Lukito, J., Xia, Y., & Adams, K. (2020). Black Trolls Matter: Racial and Ideological Asymmetries in Social Media Disinformation. Social Science Computer Review, 089443932091485. doi:10.1177/0894439320914853 Jackson, S. J., & Foucault Welles, B. (2015). Hijacking #myNYPD: Social Media Dissent and Networked Counterpublics. Journal of Communication, 65(6), 932–952. doi:10.1111/jcom.12185 Mundt, M., Ross, K., & Burnett, C. M. (2018). Scaling social movements through social ———————————————————————— (backup topic "Populism and Extremis") Populism Engesser, S., Ernst, N., Esser, F., & Buchel, F. (2017). Populism and social media: how politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, Communication & Society, 20(8), 1109–1126. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1207697 Schmuck, D., & Hameleers, M. (2020). Closer to the people: A comparative content analysis of populist communication on social networking sites in pre- and post-Election periods. Information, Communication & Society, 23(10), 1531–1548. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1588909 Jungherr, A., Schroeder, R., & Stier, S. (2019). Digital media and the surge of political outsiders: Explaining the success of political challengers in the United States, Germany, and China. Social Media+ Society, 5(3), 2056305119875439. Terrorism Klausen, J. (2015). Tweeting the Jihad?: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948 Prucha, N. (2016). IS and the Jihadist Information Highway – Projecting Influence and Religious Identity via Telegram. Perspectives on Terrorism, 10(6). Retrieved from http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/556 Baugut, P., & Neumann, K. (2019). Online propaganda use during Islamist radicalization. Information, Communication & Society, 1–23. doi:10.1080/1369118x.2019.1594333 The extreme right and the internet O’Callaghan, D., Greene, D., Conway, M., Carthy, J., & Cunningham, P. (2015). Down the (White) Rabbit Hole: The Extreme Right and Online Recommender Systems. Social Science Computer Review, 33(4), 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439314555329 De Koster, W., & Houtman, D. (2008). ‘STORMFRONT IS LIKE A SECOND HOME TO ME’: On virtual community formation by right-wing extremists. Information, Communication & Society, 11(8), 1155–1176. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691180802266665 Rauchfleisch, A., & Kaiser, J. (2020). The German Far-right on YouTube: An Analysis of User Overlap and User Comments. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2020.1799690