I’ll add another one to the growing list of Spockos

Cover von Heft 1/2026 Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft

🔊 Heft 1/2026 unserer Zeitschrift Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft" (M&K) ist als Themenheft zur "Datafizierung der Kommunikation" mit dt. + engl. Beiträgen im Open Access erschienen
➡️www.inlibra.com/de/document/view/pdf/uui...

New #OpenAccess paper in #EnvironmentalCommunication 🎉:
“Activists Preserving the (Multi-Platform) Environment: Advocacy Coalitions of #Lützerath Climate Protests”
(w/ @pzerrer.bsky.social, Hannah-Marie Büttner & @kudusch.de)

🔗 Link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🧵⬇️ Summary Thread:

Die Mittelbauveranstaltung ~Pizza & Perspektiven~ der DGPuK Fachgruppen Methoden und Medienökonomie, moderiert von @buehling.bsky.social und Miriam Bernhard war ein voller Erfolg!

It is a strange feeling to be at least partly responsible for this because I was one of the people who sent this square in when you were looking for new options for gagh.biz/game.

Strange, but … also good?

2️⃣ “Activists Preserving the (Multi-Platform) Environment” (presented by me, with @pzerrer.bsky.social, Hannah-Marie Büttner and @kudusch.de)
A cross-platform study of the #Lützerath protests on Twitter/X, Telegram, & Mastodon — mapping how advocacy and antagonism unfold across digital spheres

Very honored to speak today at the European Comissions Knowledge Hub on the Prevention of Radicalisation Crisis Communication Event on "managing the online dimension after terrorist attacks", sharing, amongst others, @kudusch.de & my work on disinformation and conspiracy theories in times of crisis

Currently #dgpuk2025 a panel with Rebecca Ciesielski (Bayrischer Rundfunk), Sandra Wachter (Oxford Iternet Institute) and @ajungherr.bsky.social discussing with Christopher Neuberger about the democratic potential of #AI

AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think Generating one image takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone.

Good question also by @kudusch.de - what price do we at society pay for the CO2 need of AI data centers? Indeed energy consumption is massive (www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/05/1...) - even if Humans also *need* CO2 www.nature.com/articles/s41... - we need a more nuanced & sustainable approaches

Thank you 🙌🏻

Thank you!

Thank you! <3

Thaaaaaanks!

Thank you!!

AI Hype and its Function: An Ethnographic Study of the Local AI Initiative of the Associated Press Economic precarity and the competitive environment of the news industry have resulted in pressures for news professionals to become early adopters and foster AI in journalism. At the same time, pra...

There is a lot of work that detects and debunks AI hype. But what function does AI hype actually serve?

Anna Schjøtt and I draw on 8 months of observations at the Associated Press to show how expectations on AI are leveraged to coordinate actors and mobilise resources: tinyurl.com/mwr2b6t3

1/ I promised some research for team #Bluesky. Here we go.

Unpopular opinion: #Debunking doesn't stop #polarization. In fact, our research (and others') shows it can *add* to it. #Prebunking works better—timing is key.

Our #simulation studies shed light on this. 👉

📢 Postdoc (100%) und Promotionsstelle (75%) im Bereich Rechtsextremismusforschung mit Schwerpunkt Medien und Öffentlichkeit an der Uni Tübingen bei Prof. Dr. Annett Heft. Bewerbungsfrist für beide Stellen ist der 10.1.2025. (links zu den Stellen 👇)

How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec...

A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵

The Wayback machine is such a precious, unique resource - increasingly so as web search collapses.

None of my platform history work (including the Twtr book with @nancybaym.bsky.social) would've been possible without it.

But it's also increasingly precarious. Give them all the support you can!

A map of a neural network. On the left are five trolleys, linked to a series of circles representing the neural network, linked with a dense set of lines indicating possible connections. On the right, the result of the neural network is a number of people tied to train tracks.

Dusting off my best work

Ich würde mich auch anmelden, danke fürs Zusammenstellen!

A bit late to the Starter Pack Party, but here is a list of Alternative Media Scholars: go.bsky.app/NA5cJvW

Feel free to share and comment if you want to be included!

100% Maybe it gives us a better understanding of the LLMs themselves (and their training data), but the idea that LLMs could act as proxies for real human subjects is just absurd.

Agreed. What I always liked about ABM is how simple rules can lead to complex emergent phenomena. Using black-box LLMs instead is a caricature of this idea. It may seem intuitive and produces interesting data, but it offers no explanation.

This is what happened in academia in 2016 - research on #disinformation, #misinformation and #fakenews exploded. The field was basically not existing before. I added a potential trigger element to our graph. From a presentation (and forthcoming paper) with @mshu.bsky.social and Johanna Klapproth.

New Study with Gwendolin Gurr and @juliametag.bsky.social finds: Negative evaluations of topic-specific coverage such as migration do not lead to a loss of trust in the media in general. More in the paper here: ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc…

Honored to speak today at the future cast of trendone and KPMG about disinformation and digital democracy

Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms Abstract. Large language models (LLMs) are a potential substitute for human-generated data and knowledge resources. This substitution, however, can present

Using LLMs for solving your (small & large) coding Qs has consequences. It eats tons of fossil energy & threatens our future knowledge base

"Large language models reduce public knowledge sharing on online Q&A platforms" 🧪💻🤖

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... 🔓

A screenshot of the linked article with a quote by Cory Doctorow: This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power. It's RSS.

#RSS is a pretty neat way to stay up to date on your favorite news(-letters), social media accounts*, podcast and blogs.

This piece by @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy really drives this point home: pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/k...

*e.g. #bluesky and #mastodon

A screenshot of the linked article with a quote by Cory Doctorow: This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power. It's RSS.

#RSS is a pretty neat way to stay up to date on your favorite news(-letters), social media accounts*, podcast and blogs.

This piece by @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy really drives this point home: pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/k...

*e.g. #bluesky and #mastodon