Philipp Darius

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PostDoc at Hertie School

Twitter is a digital forum for political discourse. The emergence of phenomena like fake news and hate speech has shown that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Recent findings suggest that some political actors might employ strategies to actively facilitate polaris...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused high uncertainty regarding appropriate treatments and public policy reactions. This uncertainty provided a perfect breeding ground for spreading conspiratorial anti-science narratives based on disinformation. Disinformation on public health may alter the population’s hesitance to vaccinations, counted among the ten most...

Der vorliegende Band ist dem Verhältnis von Informationen, Wahlen und Demokratie gewidmet. Deutschland, aber auch andere Länder in den Blick nehmend, widmen sich die Autor:innen vor allem den Bürger:innen, ihren Einstellungen, Interessen und Wahlentscheidungen. Auch die Rolle von Kontexten wird beleuchtet, insbesondere von Informationskontexten: Wi...

Whilst social media platforms provide global communication environments, these platforms are not primarily designed for political debates. This may have adverse effects on democracy and contribute to democratic fragmentation. This dissertation project investigates the role of social media platforms as potential accelerators of fragmentation in esta...

The EUDigiParty data set supports researchers interested in investigating digital communication activities by political parties in Europe by providing an extensive list of parties’ social media accounts on major digital platforms as of June 2024. The data is valuable for researchers in the fields of political communication, political science, polit...

This paper analyses the adoption of data‐driven campaigning (DDC) by German and French parties in recent national elections using data from an original post‐election survey of 27 parties (12 German, 15 French) and a new purpose‐built DDC campaign index. Specifically, we investigate two main research questions: (1) Do countries and parties vary in t...

Who governs—and who should govern—online communication? Social media companies, international organizations, users, or the state? And by what means? A range of rhetorical devices have been used to simplify the complexities associated with the governance of online platforms. This includes “constitutional metaphors”: metaphorical allusions to traditi...

Available open access at: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/6813 ----- Abstract: Social media campaigning is increasingly linked with anti-democratic outcomes, with concerns to date centring on paid adverts, rather than organic content produced by a new set of online political influencers. This study systematically c...

The EU Digital Service Acts signals a move away from self-regulation towards co- regulation of social media platforms within the European Union. To address online harms and rising platform power the DSA clarifies responsibilities of platforms and outlines a new technology regulatory framework to increase oversight. One key oversight instrument cons...

Political campaign activities are increasingly digital. A crucial part of digital campaigning is communication efforts on social media platforms. As a forum for political discourse and political communication, parties and candidates on Twitter share public messages and aim to attract media attention and persuade voters. Party or prominent candidate...

The global spread of Covid-19 has caused major economic disruptions. Governments around the world provide considerable financial support to mitigate the economic downturn. However, effective policy responses require reliable data on the economic consequences of the corona pandemic. We propose the CoRisk-Index: a real-time economic indicator of corp...

Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourses on social platforms can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of ‘has...

Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashja...

The global spread of Covid-19 has caused major economic disruptions. Governments around the world provide considerable financial support to mitigate the economic downturn. However, effective policy responses require reliable data on the economic consequences of the corona pandemic. We propose the CoRisk-Index: a real-time economic indicator of Covi...

While the coronavirus spreads around the world, governments are attempting to reduce contagion rates at the expense of negative economic effects. Market expectations have plummeted, foreshadowing the risk of a global economic crisis and mass unemployment. Governments provide huge financial aid programmes to mitigate the expected economic shocks. To...

With a network approach, we examine the case of the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of a "hashjacking" strategy - the use of someone else’s hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda. Our findings suggest that right-wing politicians (and their supporters/retweeters) actively and effect...