"You don't have to use what the AI suggests," quoting a knowledge worker in a new ECIS 2026 study, describing the freedom to take or leave what AI offers. But that freedom is only half the story. By Adeline Frenzel-Piasentin, Nikola Finze & Marie-Sophie Kosok. 1/8

Looksmaxxing is often framed as self-improvement. But when does optimizing one’s appearance become a worldview that explains almost everything? Our colleague Christopher David discussed this in a recent #Tagesthemen segment on ARD, Germany’s largest public broadcaster. 1/5

How does extremist ideology travel into mainstream TikTok feeds - without looking like classic extremist propaganda? 👀 A Thread 🧵 1/10

What if AI in search stopped giving answers — and started helping people evaluate information more critically? 1/8

Correcting fake news isn't enough. We need our own narratives. Our colleague @risius.bsky.social spoke to local politicians in Ulm/Neu-Ulm about the evolution of disinformation and what makes societies more resilient. 📰 Covered by Südwest Presse 1/5

AI-powered “looksmaxxing” apps are increasingly appearing in mainstream platform environments. Marketed as self-improvement tools, they promise facial ratings, attractiveness scores and advice on how to “optimise” appearance. 1/5

🔐 Age verification is moving into the platform mainstream, with services like Discord beginning broader rollouts. The policy objective is widely shared: better protection of minors online. The implementation path, however, remains highly contested. 1/5

Our colleagues Deinera Jechle and Dr. @afrenzel.bsky.social published a new paper on how phenomena often studied separately (e.g., cyberattacks, disinformation, propaganda) are frequently coordinated as part of information warfare (IW). 1/4

How do extremist online communities decide who gets in? Our colleagues @cvdavid.bsky.social and @risius.bsky.social researched gatekeeping practices in extremist forums. Christopher presented their findings at #ACIS2025 in Australia 🧵 1/7

“Who controls social media, controls reality.” Our colleague Marten Risius gave a keynote at #DimensionDigitalisierung in Berlin on our Trust & Safety research at DSRC – from troll farms to AI-generated influencers with fabricated personas. 1/4 📸 Foto: Phil Dera / CC BY 4.0

In addition to his published paper "Mitigating the Effects of Harmful Social Media Content through Attitude Inoculation," our colleague @marcoduerr.bsky.social has shared a video presentation of his work. Watch the full presentation and read the paper here: aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/is_...

Digital Security Research Collaboratory Neu-Ulm@dsrc.bsky.social · 10mo ago

What if we could counter authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes before they take root? Our colleague @marcoduerr.bsky.social proposes attitude inoculation as a preventive strategy to build resistance against harmful political mindsets. aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/is_... 1/6

Our colleagues Christopher David and @risius.bsky.social have published an insight on how conflicting views on the role of women are contributing to ideological fractures within the „murder capital of the internet“, Stormfront. Check it out on @gnetresearch.bsky.social

GNET@gnetresearch.bsky.social · 8mo ago

As part of GNET’s series aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, Christopher David & @risius.bsky.social examine how Stormfront’s ideological unity is eroding as members increasingly diverge in their conceptualisations of white women. @dsrc.bsky.social

Detoxifying hate in social media posts sounds promising, but is the harm really gone? Our colleague @risius.bsky.social co-authored a paper on evaluating detoxification with an LLM-based agentic framework. 1/7 aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcont...

Do multiple perspectives improve hate speech detection? Presented at #ACMMM25 by our colleague @riekers.bsky.social, our new framework "MAXplain" introduces a multi-agent approach to multimodal hate speech detection. 1/6 🔗 dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

MAXplain: A Multi-Agent System for Interactive Multimodal Hate Speech Detection | Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia

dl.acm.org

What if we could counter authoritarian and anti-democratic attitudes before they take root? Our colleague @marcoduerr.bsky.social proposes attitude inoculation as a preventive strategy to build resistance against harmful political mindsets. aisel.aisnet.org/icis2025/is_... 1/6

Are you in an echo chamber or stuck in your own information cocoon? In a recent paper co-written by our @risius.bsky.social, they unpack the difference and why it matters for how we consume information. Read the thread for details. doi.org/10.1016/j.jsis.2025.101904 1/6

Hello Bluesky! We are a research collaboratory at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences in Germany. 1/3