DDC lecture - Philipp Lorenz-Spreen

Philipp Lorenz-Spreen will be giving a DDC lecture on Wednesday, November 8th 2023, at 13:00 at the University of Southern Denmark.

Dr. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen is a researcher at the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. His recent research aims to explore the relationship between human behavior, online platform connectivity, and their impact on public discourse and democracy, while also questioning the current status quo and seeking untapped opportunities for an improved online information landscape and participatory democracy.

Title: Digital Media and Democracy: What is Changing Globally and How to Measure it

Abstract: Information and communication technology has undergone dramatic developments over the past two decades. Increased peer-to-peer connectivity has led to more self-organised public discourse, but it has also given researchers new tools to quantify precisely this systemic shift. Detailed and longitudinal data from social media allow us to measure and model their network structures and dynamics. However, to get a holistic and global picture, a recent systematic literature review has provided us with a number of dimensions of political behaviour that appear to be influenced by the use of digital media. Our findings show that, while the directions within each dimension are mostly clear, they are distributed differently globally and the mechanisms by which these dimensions are linked are still unknown. Understanding these better is crucial for civil society in democracies worldwide, and I will conclude with a methodological outlook on how we can empirically investigate these missing links in the future.

Contact: 

ddc@sam.sdu.dk