After #EPSS26 in Belfast, we're presenting a new version of our working paper "Far-Right Speeches and Emotional Contagion in Parliament: Sequential and Multimodal Evidence from Germany" (w/ @chrisguarnold.bsky.social + @pluggedchris.bsky.social) at #PolMeth26, hosted at Michigan State University!
Chris Arnold@chrisguarnold.bsky.social · 3w agoWhen the far right enters parliament, established parties go high on average. But right after a far-right speech, they answer madly in anger: in words, voice, and body. Joint work with @ankuepfer.bsky.social and @pluggedchris.bsky.social presented at #PolMeth2026 at Michigan State.
![2026-03-11 | Input talk | Andreas Küpfer (TU Darmstadt & University of Birmingham)
Politics in Action: Studying Multimodal Data from Local Meetings to National Parliaments
Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom]
März 11, 2026, 13:45-15:15
Abstract
The analysis of multimodal political communication enables political scientists to study how politicians and parties behave in previously untapped ways. While large volumes of audiovisual data are increasingly available, these data are typically unstructured and vary substantially in quality, requiring robust and carefully designed processing pipelines. This talk guides through the challenges and opportunities of analysing political video data across institutional contexts. Analysing videos from local political meetings, including US school boards and state supreme courts, allows the generation of features such as transcriptions, gendered speech shares, and agenda items. However, the often semi-professional production quality of such recordings limits the systematic use of visual information. By contrast, legislative debate recordings are typically standardised and post-edited, enabling the leverage of visual features such as eye contact seeking to study the emergence of dominant behaviour during parliamentary speech. Scaling multimodal processing and feature extraction workflows across heterogeneous institutional contexts is, therefore, crucial. It enables the systematic study of political communication across levels of government and over longer time periods.
Presenter
Andreas Küpfer is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the DFG-funded project "Analysing Legislative Politics with Aligned Text, Audio and Image Data" at the Institute for Political Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt, holding a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Mannheim. He works at the intersection of Data Science and Political Science. His research focuses on (multimodal) political communication, combining computational with tradi…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oizrkjzyr6vekl76tjctghcl/bafkreiawvyqdytqoc4essm7llpzps33qsxpv6spg6i4fi5fk7qy33p63ye)
![Brave New Data Access World: What the Digital Services Act (DSA) Means for Researcher Access to Digital Platforms
Hybrid event [A5, 6, Room A231 + Zoom]
Dezember 03, 2025, 13:45-15:15
Abstract
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) marks a turning point for the study of digital platforms by establishing a legal framework for researcher access to platform data, including from major social media companies. Article 40 of the DSA outlines how researchers can request such access, opening unprecedented possibilities for empirical investigations into the digital public sphere. Yet, the practical implementation of this right to data access raises important challenges. Questions of eligibility, the scope of accessible data, and the ethical and technical standards required for secure processing are central to understanding what this new regime will mean in practice. This talk provides an overview of the DSA’s data-access provisions, explains their relevance for the research community, and discusses what opportunities—and limitations—emerge for studying systemic risks, algorithmic effects, and platform governance. It reflects on early experiences with Article 40 implementation and considers what it will take to build a sustainable infrastructure for independent, policy-relevant research on digital platforms in Europe.
Presenter
Jakob Ohme leads the interdisciplinary "Digital News Dynamics" research group at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin, exploring the impact and dissemination of professional journalism on digital platforms versus other sources like influencers or AI. His work emphasizes the changes digital and mobile communications bring to news consumption and political engagement, particularly across different generations. Jakob Ohme is dedicated to advancing digital methodologies in political communication and journalism research, notably through the innovative use of digital trace data. He's also a Co-Principal Investigator in the #DSA40 Collaboratory, foc…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oizrkjzyr6vekl76tjctghcl/bafkreiel7po2hq6ec4nl66aupw2wper4yrmr4dywhmbeihjiki2mapsowe)
