The research group investigates the impact of digital technologies and media in the formation of transnational and national online issue publics, communication infrastructures and processes of political mobilization. We focus on right-wing and populist-right communication ecologies which develop around critical issues such as migration, asylum, anti-feminism, xenophobia or anti-Islamism in various European countries and the US. The research group takes a comparative perspective on right-wing communication and applies computational social science methods including data scraping, topic modelling, and network analysis.

The role of digital technologies

The research group examines the role of digital technologies and network communication in right-wing and populist-right movements across Europe and the US. We focus on the formation of communication infrastructures, online issue publics and transnational linkages around critical issues such as migration, asylum, anti-feminism, xenophobia, and anti-Islamism in various European countries.

The influence of digital media

How do digital media influence the nature of issue careers, the dynamics of political mobilization, and the patterns of coalition building in right wing anti-democratic movements? To what degree do digital media foster transnational linkages between right wing networks and populist movements? In our studies we analyze the characteristics of digital platforms, the interactions between traditional mass media and social media in hybrid media systems, as well as the dynamics of national and transnational dissemination processes and information flows.

Our Ph.D. candidates have a range of focuses: Susanne Reinhardt asks how stereotypes about gender and womanhood are represented in digital communication networks of the political right; Vadim Voskresenksii examines network structures and topic convergence of international right-wing actors migrating to Russian social media for communication and coalition building; former Ph.D. candidate and now associated researcher Matthias Hoffmann examined the networks of anti-asylum groups on Facebook in order to assess the significance of digital media for right wing movements in Germany.

We also work together on a range of collaborative projects. You can find some of our recent publications:

Annett Heft, Eva Mayerhöffer, Susanne Reinhardt, and Curd Knüpfer (2020), “Beyond Breitbart: Comparing Right‐Wing Digital News Infrastructures in Six Western Democracies,” Policy & Internet, 12: 20-45. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.219

Annett Heft, Curd Knüpfer, Susanne Reinhardt, & Eva Mayerhöffer (2021). “Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States”. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(2), 484–504. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220963670

Curd Knüpfer, Matthias Hoffmann & Vadim Voskresenskii (2020) “Hijacking MeToo: transnational dynamics and networked frame contestation on the far right in the case of the ‘120 decibels' campaign”, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2020.1822904