Expert on online communication @thorstenquandt.bsky.social aims to use his ERC grant to discover how online groups function, how their values can break down and how they can create a toxic, dangerous community. #NoToHate @uni-muenster.de 👇 buff.ly/A4EIvdN

Portrait Prof. Dr. Thorsten Quandt - Twelve months, twelve people - June

Porträts 2025 Broschüre Zwölf Monate, zwölf Menschen

uni-muenster.de

Hello, Game Studies/Video Game scholars or developers with an interest in games scholarship! I'm looking for one or two *very very very* quick turnarounds for a manuscript with @gpccomm.bsky.social.

Posting live from stage at #ica26 where I present our #rstats 🎁 {atrrr} which can interact with 🦋

#ICA26 FOMO Post Nr. 3 - The finale As the 76th conference of the @icahdq.bsky.social comes to a close, it is time for one last presentation promotion 👇

#ICA26 FOMO Post Nr. 2: Today @ree-flx.bsky.social presents our poster on over 40 years of research on video games. Together with @thorstenquandt.bsky.social we mapped sociel scientific games research since 1980 with a focus on changes in the field.

#ICA2026 FOMO Post Nr. 1: Today my colleague Johanna Klapproth will present a study in the "All about Tiktok" session of the PolComm division

🔊 The magnificent @ddc-sdu.bsky.social x TrygFonden Fellowship Program is open, seeking the 2027 cohort 🚀 3 types of fellowships: 1️⃣ academic 2️⃣ journalist 3️⃣ policy fellows 🗓️ deadline September 1 Read the call for details and instructions 🚨🚨Spread the word 🚨🚨 www.sdu.dk/en/forskning...

Happy to see our article on #alternativemedia in #Journalism, analyzing how "alternativeness" varies in Africa, Asia, Latin America & the Middle East! Part of a wonderful collab with @thorstenquandt.bsky.social & @mshu.bsky.social from @uni-muenster.de. To read: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

📣 Publication Alert: tinyurl.com/genaianddesi... In the book chapter "Generative AI and Disinformation", @thorstenquandt.bsky.social, Johanna Klapproth, @zwizwasvens.bsky.social and I use the concept of dark participation to systematically examine how GenAI can be used for nefarious purposes.

Generative AI and Disinformation | 9 | A Systematic Examination of Cha

The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) has fundamentally transformed the dynamics of public communication, offering both unprecedented opportunities and profound

tinyurl.com

@anniewald.bsky.social, @aytalina.bsky.social, and I present at the Long Night of Research!⚛️ How do social issues compete for public attention?🤔 You will learn via playing with an agent-based model 🤖🎲 langenachtderforschung.at/station/5656 📍24.04, 5-11 PM 📍Stand C04, Main Building of @univie.ac.at

Wie konkurrieren soziale Themen um öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit? - #LNF26 Lange Nacht der Forschung

Warum setzen sich manche Themen in der Öffentlichkeit durch – während andere rasch verschwinden? An dieser Station interagieren Sie mit einer Computersimulation und erfahren, wie Aufmerksamkeit in soz...

langenachtderforschung.at

The editorial of the second volume of our special issue on “The Dark and the Light Side of Gaming” in Frontiers has been published. The collection includes 10 great articles, all published open access! www.frontiersin.org/research-top...

Frontiers | The Dark and the Light Side of Gaming, volume II

This is the second Research Topic of a series. The first volume can be found here. In public debates, and among certain strands of scholarship, digital games...

frontiersin.org

Join the online info session on the 3rd of March to get informed and ready to join the Masters program for Digital Media and Society at the University of Bremen! Click here to parttake in the Q&A session: uni-bremen.zoom-x.de... Or here, for more information: zemki.uni-bremen.de/...

📢Publication alert 📢 LLMs are an awesome technology, but they come with trade-offs! Paul Balluff, @justinho.bsky.social, @seanhp.bsky.social, Alexis Palmer, @lrossi.bsky.social, Irina Shklovski, Chung-hong Chan and I commented on these trade-offs in #commsky research. Out now and open access!

Newer, Larger, Better? A Critique of the Unreflective LLM Adoption in Communication Research

The growing adoption of large language models (LLMs) in political communication research has prompted excitement but also concern. In this opinion piece, we offer an informed and critical overview ...

tandfonline.com

First DDC Brown Bag Lunch talk of 2026: This Thursday (Feb 19th), @curdknupfer.bsky.social and @andre-k-rodarte.bsky.social present ideas and ongoing research on "Connective Factions". If you are at SDU, grab some lunch and join us in Dynamo, at 12!

4 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 (𝐏𝐡𝐝, 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐝𝐨𝐜, 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐫) 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐃𝐂!!! 😯🤩 The DDC is expanding its team with *4* new opportunities for researchers passionate about the intersection of AI, media, democracy, & society. Deadline: 📅 Feb 15 for 3 of these roles! The Professorship deadline follows in March.🧵👇

Postdoc position(s) at The Digital Democracy Centre

Application deadline: February 15th, 2026, 23:59 CET/CEST.

fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com

New @gesis.org data set publication: "Social Media Accounts of German Candidates from the German Federal Election 2025" doi.org/10.4232/1.14...

Identifying #SyntheticDisinformation: @nilsvief.bsky.social, @boesch.bsky.social, @mshu.bsky.social, Johanna Klapproth, @zwizwasvens.bsky.social, @thorstenquandt.bsky.social, & @christianstoecker.de investigated detection strategies of German elite actors. doi.org/10.5771/2192...

We’re kicking off the year with the announcement of our 2025 special issue on how #SyntheticMedia challenge epistemic institutions. Many thanks to Alexander Godulla and @cphoffmann.bsky.social for their excellent work as guest editors. doi.org/10.5771/2192...

Such important work! Men across the globe publish around 40% of articles in communication and get almost 60% of the citations. Women publish almost 60% but get only a little over 40% of the citations. This gap has remained almost constant since 2000. #frozen #comsky academic.oup.com/anncom/advan...

Authors’ gender and productivity as predictors of reciprocal dynamics in publications and citations in communication

Abstract. Gender bias in academic publishing and citation practices in communication has been discussed extensively, yet the link between the two remains p

academic.oup.com

📢 New #OpenAccess! Why do some professors appear in the media far more than others? #RH_Heiberger @BasHofstra #S_Unger find both patterns of cumulative advantage & gender inequality, with men more likely to become “short-listed”! ➡️ Read it ungated at: doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf037 image.png

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender

Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

doi.org

After a long time in development, {traktok} #rstats is now finally on CRAN! Whether you have access to the Research API or just want to scrape some pages, traktok has you covered jbgruber.github.io/traktok/

Collecting TikTok Data

Getting TikTok data (<https://www.tiktok.com/>) through the official and unofficial APIs—in other words, you can track TikTok.

jbgruber.github.io

CRAN Package Updates Bot@cranberriesfeed.bsky.social · 8mo ago

New CRAN package traktok with initial version 0.1.0 #rstats https://cran.r-project.org/package=traktok

What gets professors into the media? 📢 New open access publication in @europeansocreview.bsky.social together with Raphael Heiberger from @s7css.bsky.social and @bashofstra.bsky.social! 👉 doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

Professors in the media: dynamics of cumulative advantage, reputation, and gender

Abstract. Translation of science to a general public is increasingly important in modern academia. Yet, there is little knowledge on whether and why scient

doi.org

📣 Come work with us!

Thorsten Quandt@thorstenquandt.bsky.social · 9mo ago

🎓 We’re hiring! Two researcher / PhD positions in the ERC project DANCE – Dark Nerd Communities at the University of Münster 🇪🇺 🧮 Quantitative: survey, lab + field experiments 🎙️ Qualitative: ethnography, focus groups, interviews Apply by 28 Nov 2025 👇 #AcademicJobs #ERC #PhD #CommunicationResearch

✨ New open-access paper ✨ We explored language similarity between Querdenken (Telegram) and German politicians (Twitter). In short: AfD’s communication most similar, but parts of FDP and CDU/CSU also find common ground through discrediting left-wing politics. Full paper: 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1369...

The language similarity between corona protest mobilizers on Telegram and German politicians on Twitter

Protest movements against COVID-19 containment measures, like Germany’s Querdenken, aim to put their position on the political agenda. The German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) acted...

doi.org

New publication, out in Political Analysis: There is an increasing array of tools to measure facets of morality in political language. But while they ostensibly measure the same concept, do they actually? I and @fhopp.bsky.social set out to see what happens.

😅 Late to share this one (summer + other projects got in the way), but this #aBitOfCCS episode with @ellamcloughlin.bsky.social is too good to skip. How do you measure something as complex as uncertainty in political speech? 🎙️ 🎧 Listen here: aboutccs.net/abitofccs/ #PoliticalSpeech #CSS

My first academic paper is out (open access). It's a study of the organisation of Prigozhin's Patriot Media Group, based on a dataset of 818 CVs of its employees downloaded shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. doi.org/10.1080/1075... The main findings are in the thread below.

Trolls Behind the Mask of Journalists: How Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Patriot Media Group Was Organized

The Patriot Media Group, sponsored by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Kremlin’s “troll farm,” represents a distinct type of media organization that does not fit any of the contemporary Russia...

doi.org

Thinking about using #CSS methods to study #racism, #stereotypes or #hate speech in text? 📐 👉 Check out my first dissertation paper co-authored by @fabiennelind.bsky.social and @hajoboo.bsky.social just published in Annals of the ICA! @icahdq.bsky.social 🥳 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/annc...

✨New Publication in JEPOP✨ How do societal stakeholders understand and detect disinformation? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Features of disinformation: an expert interview study on the perception of disinformation among political, governmental, media and business elites in Germany

To curb the spread of disinformation, societal decision-makers are working intensively on the design of effective intervention strategies. Primarily elites from the sectors of politics, administrat...

tandfonline.com

Still confused, but uber-happy. The news came out right after #ICA25 has ended: The European Research Council #ERC has awarded me an ERC Advanced Grant! Project DANCE on "Dark Nerd Communities" runs for 5 years with 2.5 million Euros funding. Immensely grateful! erc.europa.eu/.../erc-2024...

EU-Forschungsrat zeichnet Thorsten Quandt mit Advanced Grant aus

Der Kommunikationswissenschaftler Prof. Dr. Thorsten Quandt von der Universität Münster erhält einen mit 2,5 Millionen Euro dotierten „ERC Advanced Grant“ des Europäischen Forschungsrats. Mit dieser F...

uni-muenster.de