Jonas Kaiser

• Dr. phil.
• Professor (Assistant) at Suffolk University

This exploratory study analyzed user-generated science communication on Reddit from May 2007 to October 2018 ($n=694.147$ posts). We used automated content analyses and topic modelling to explore patterns that the user-generated communication exhibits. Results indicate that science communication on “r/science” refers to a broad range of different t...

We review 100 articles published from 2000 to early 2020 that research aspects of vaccine hesitancy in online communication spaces and identify several gaps in the literature prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. These gaps relate to five areas: disciplinary focus; specific vaccine, condition, or disease focus; stakeholders and implications; research met...

This study focuses on misinformation about the Zika virus on YouTube in Brazil. Whereas most studies in health communication have so far conducted manual content analysis to understand the scope of health-related misinformation, we use a computational approach to understand the formation of information clusters via YouTube's video recommendation al...

Algorithms and especially recommendation algorithms play an important role online, most notably on YouTube. Yet, little is known about the network communities that these algorithms form. We analyzed the channel recommendations on YouTube to map the communities that the social network is creating through its algorithms and to test the network for ho...

The identification of bots is an important and complicated task. The bot classifier "Botometer" was successfully introduced as a way to estimate the number of bots in a given list of accounts and, as a consequence, has been frequently used in academic publications. Given its relevance for academic research and our understanding of the presence of a...

This study focuses on the formation of far-right online communities on YouTube and whether the rise of three new actors (Pegida, Identitarian movement, AfD) can also be observed with user behavior on YouTube. We map the network of far-right, conspiracy and alternative media channels in the German-language YouTube sphere, how this network evolves ov...

The 2016 US election and the victory of Donald Trump are closely connected to a perceived rise of the far-right in the United States. We build upon public sphere and alternative media theory to discuss the relevance of alternative media for the US (far-)right and whether the election period and the candidate Trump allowed far-right alternative medi...

Public sphere theory has come to an epistemic crossroads. The rise of right-wing movements in Europe and the U.S., for example, pose a challenge to public sphere theorists. This holds especially true since they make use of social media to articulate their messages, network, recruit, dissent or attack. In this conceptual paper we suggest a functiona...

Debates around climate change are a prominent example of polarized online communication. We examine the German climate hyperlink network and evaluate the degree to which it is shaped by mainstream and skeptical views. By combining the theoretical frameworks of the networked public sphere and counterpublics, we describe the relation between publics...

Online comment sections can be considered a public battleground for contestation where members of mainstream publics and counterpublics meet. The case of the climate skeptic counterpublic in Germany was chosen to find out where and how members of the counterpublic are speaking out and how the mainstream responds to that. I conducted a hyperlink net...

The concepts of democracy, public sphere and public opinion are as closely intertwined as contested. Since the dawn of the Internet scholars have argued about its opportunities, challenges and risks for society. Recent developments appear fundamental in that they have touched upon the core of Western democracies – the making of a public sphere and...

Mass media are considered to be a forum for the formation of public opinion on climate politics and an important influencing factor for political decision-making. Against this background, this paper deals with the 2‑degree limit, the international political objective to keep global warming below 2 degrees, and analyses the representation and interp...

This thesis is an investigation into the climate change discourse in the German networked public sphere with a focus on the climate skeptic counterpublic. I will focus in particular on the hypothesis that a polarizing discourse might lead to a fragmentation of the public sphere and the formation of echo chambers. This overarching research question...

This paper explores the integration of different social fields within the German Energy Transition (Energiewende) discourse in the election year 2013 by analysing the hyperlink structures online. Energiewende describes the fundamental transition from non-renewable energy to sustainable sources. This goal is both ambitious and controversial. Numerou...

Despite numerous international studies on climate change, there is skepticism in the media and it is prominent in public opinion polls. This article focuses in particular on the framing of climate skepticism in Germany, a country that, in the main, is said to be convinced about climate change. By using a two-step content analysis of 379 news articl...