About
30
Publications
19,174
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
416
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. My main research is on political communication in the context of digitalization. I‘m researching how (non-institutional) political and societal actors use digital media and how they adapt to the changing communication environment.
Additional affiliations
October 2014 - present
August 2013 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (30)
Die sogenannte Flüchtlingskrise 2015/2016 wurde von weiten Teilen der deutschen Bevölkerung auch als eine Krise der Medienberichterstattung wahrgenommen. Umfragedaten zeigen, dass zum Teil mehr als die Hälfte der Deutschen der Ansicht war, die Massenmedien stellten Fakten, z. B. zu soziodemografischen Merkmalen und zur Kriminalität von Zuwanderern,...
To increase the outreach of their messages, populists and non-populist political actors use populist communication strategies that stimulate users to interact with their messages on social media platforms. Yet, not much is known about the effect of such strategies on different types of user interactions of distinct valence. Applying a manual conten...
The rise of right-wing populist parties in Western democracies is often attributed to populists’ ability to instrumentalize news media by making deliberate provocations (e.g., verbal attacks on migrants or politicians from other parties) that generate media coverage and public awareness. To explain the success of populists’ deliberate provocations,...
The expansion of the Internet, especially social media, enables political actors to address voters directly. However, on social media, where user interactions factor into the algorithmically determined relevance of messages and, in turn, their spread, political actors have to use communication features that entice users to interact with their messa...
This study investigates influences on gatekeeping processes that have the potential to cause biased media coverage. We tested whether and, if so, to what extent journalists’ and organizational interests affect journalistic news processing. In a content analysis, we contrasted the press coverage (n = 1199 articles) of trade disputes of newspaper jou...
In welcher Form und in welche Orte mobilisieren demokratiefeindliche Kräfte in Deutschland? Diese Frage hat an Bedeutung gewonnen, da jene Kräfte über die Jahre der Pandemie eine schwer überschaubare Protestkultur herausgebildet haben. Eine zentrale Rolle bei diesen Mobilisierungen rechtsextremer und verschwörungsideologischer Art spielt der Messen...
Zusammenfassung
Die Medienberichterstattung über Geflüchtete wird von einem großen Teil der deutschen Bevölkerung als einseitig wahrgenommen. Inhaltsanalysen zeigen allerdings sehr unterschiedliche Befunde: Während einige Studien eine einseitig positive Berichterstattung konstatieren, kommen andere zu dem Ergebnis, die Berichterstattung sei einseit...
Social networking platforms particularly offer political campaigns to employ personalized advertising strategies, such as the targeting of selected audiences with matching content, known from digital business marketing This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Facebook plays a key role in election campaigns because it provides strategic marketing affordances for political parties’ electoral goals. Organic media allow to engage regularly with broader audiences through publicly visible Facebook posts. Paid media advertisements draw on personal data to target tailored messages only at selected users. Thus,...
Research on user comments has found that incivility in online discussions affect readers’ attitudes, feelings, and their willingness to participate in discussions. Yet the extent to which users encounter these comments in their daily routine is largely unknown. On social network sites, the number of interactions with comments, particularly the Like...
This study compares the balance of newspaper and television news coverage about migration in two countries that were differently affected by the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 in terms of the geopolitical involvement and numbers of migrants being admitted. Based on a broad consensus among political elites, Germany left its borders open and rece...
This study examined what type of response to commenters who disagree led to more positive attitudes toward a news organization’s Facebook page. Results of two experiments, one in Germany (n = 764) and one in the United States (n = 763), found that a high-person-centered (HPC) response, which acknowledges people’s emotions, led to more positive atti...
Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die Berichterstattung über Flucht und Migration in sechs deutschen Leitmedien (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bild, ARD Tagesschau, ZDF heute, RTL Aktuell) zwischen Februar 2016 und Dezember 2020 mithilfe einer quantitativen Inhaltsanalyse. Dabei wird insbesondere in den Blick genommen, wie ko...
Online comment sections on news organizations' social media pages provide a unique forum for exploring attitudes toward platform governance and freedom of expression at the crossroads between people, platforms, and news providers. Amid ample political and policy interest, little empirical evidence exists on user perceptions of platform governance....
In einer Befragung von 580 Richtern und Staatsanwälten aus 11 Bundesländern wurden deren konkrete Beobachtungen bei Strafverfahren ermittelt, an denen sie selbst beteiligt waren. Die Analysen zeigen: Medieneinflüsse auf Strafverfahren sind viel häufiger als die Diskussion von spektakulären Verfahren vermuten lassen und sie beruhen vor allem auf der...
Summary: The article examines whether the entry of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) into the German Bundestag changed the communication behavior in parliament. We assume that communication behavior has become more negative and more incivil and that this has two causes: On the one hand, the AfD, as a new populist opposition party, argues more n...
Click or type? An analysis of different intervention strategies in uncivil online discussions on Facebook // Uncivil online discussions can polarize attitudes to social issues, reduce pro-social behavior towards certain groups, and deter potential participants from active participation. Besides the intervention of professional community managers, t...
Medienberichte über Strafverfahren können sich direkt auf das Urteil auswirken, weil sie einen Einfluss auf Staatsanwälte und Richter besitzen. Sie können sich aber auch indirekt im Urteil niederschlagen, weil sie das Verhalten von unter anderem Zeugen verändern. Mehr als ein Drittel der Richter und Staatsanwälte hat bei ihren Verfahren einen stark...
We investigate the effects of sentiment and issue salience on emotionally labeled responses to posts from political actors on Facebook (i.e., Reactions). We use an automated content analysis of Facebook posts and voter survey data in a multilevel negative binomial regression approach. Findings show that the sentiment of a post relates to the number...
Journalists, scholars, and citizens have raised concerns regarding the high share of incivility in comment sections of news outlets. The current study surveyed members of the social movement #ichbinhier, which aims at collectively countering uncivil comments to cultivate a civil discussion atmosphere in comment sections. We root the activities of #...
When covering societal conflicts, journalists often feel a tension between normative and commercial requirements. Consequently, media coverage has a hybrid character consisting of elements ascribed to both a normative and a commercial media logic. Therefore, analyzing the prevalence of single elements in media coverage reveals only part of the stor...
Incivility in online user discussions is discussed as a significant challenge for democratic societies. Interactive journalistic moderation is seen as a promising strategy to deal with and prevent online incivility. Such moderation occurs, for example, when journalists publicly respond to uncivil comments and ask their authors to discuss more civil...
Right-wing populist groups’ accusations of a ‘lying’ press and the increasing fear of the effects of fake news on public opinion formation give rise to the question of how trust in the news media can be explained. Social psychological theories such as the Hostile Media Effect or the idea of Motivated Reasoning suggest that recipients perceive media...
Popularity cues, such as likes and shares, point to mainly positive user reactions. On an aggregated level, they either indicate relevance assignments or endorsements of online items, particularly in the context of political communication. Second, popularity cues may affect the audience’s political perceptions, behaviors, and attitudes. This paper...
This special issue examines user comments as a specific type of interpersonal public online communication in which people are allowed to post comments below the content from professional communicators, such as journalists, politicians, ompanies, and service providers. Numerous studies have tracked the development f these “below the line” comments (...
Incivility in user comments on news websites has been discussed as a significant problem of online participation. Previous research suggests that news outlets should tackle this problem by interactively moderating uncivil postings and asking their authors to discuss more civilized. We argue that this kind of interactive comment moderation as well a...
Parlamentarische Debatten richten sich zwar an die Öffentlichkeit, werden von dieser aber fast ausschließlich in stark gekürzter Form über die Massenmedien wahrgenommen. Dies wirft erstens die Frage auf, nach welchen Kriterien Journalisten entscheiden, welche Argumente aus den Debatten sie in der Berichterstattung aufgreifen. Zweitens stellt sich d...
Projects
Project (1)
Due to its adversarial character, wage conflicts between trade unions and employers’ associations are often covered in the mass media. At the same time, the question of how a wage conflict is picked up in the media is of crucial relevance for the collective actors involved: Both trade unions and employers’ associations try to convince the general public and political actors of their arguments and positions in order to ensure public and political support in the dispute. However, the existing body of research on the patterns of media coverage about wage disputes does not clarify which role specific aspects of the conflict itself as well as media characteristics play in explaining the tone, amount, and content of coverage.
In order to answer this question, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of the media coverage about eleven different wage disputes in Germany between 2003 and 2015. Additionally, we analyzed the corresponding trade unions and employers’ associations’ press releases. The selection of wage dispute cases was guided by the principle to cover a wide array of economic branches and actors involved. As it was our aim, to establish the picture of wage disputes as it is presented in the media as comprehensive as possible, we analyzed a total of 12 media outlets including national quality papers, tabloids, weekly periodicals, business paper and the releases of the national news agency dpa.
Funding: Otto-Brenner-Stiftung
Project term: 01.04.2015 - 31.05.2016
Project Manager: Christina Köhler and Pablo Jost
