Technology & Politics

Core themes: My research examines how digital communication shapes politics, public discourse, and emerging technologies. A central focus of my work is the study of digital publics: how communication emerges, circulates, and gains influence across and beyond social media environments, and how these dynamics shape political conflict, societal legitimacy, and innovation governance.

Methods: My work relies on computational social science approaches to analyse large-scale digital communication. These include:

• Social media analytics

• Natural Language Processing (NLP), including stance detection, sentiment analysis, toxicity and hate speech classification, and dictionary-based approaches

• Topic modelling

• Network analysis of communication and interaction structures

• Statistical modelling and survey analysis

Emerging Technologies, Narratives, and Innovation Governance:

A first line of research examines how emerging technologies are interpreted, debated, and legitimised in digital public spheres. Technological innovation is not only a technical process but also a communicative and political process of meaning-making. This research therefore investigates:

• How emerging technologies (e.g., quantum technologies) are discussed across public discourse, organisational communication, and policy debates

• How narratives surrounding emerging technologies shape elite coordination, public legitimacy, and technology adoption and diffusion

• How digital communication data can function as early indicators of coordination, fragmentation, and societal stabilisation within emerging innovation ecosystems

This work forms the core of the CSSInnoRadar project, which develops computational approaches to map technology narratives across digital publics and innovation ecosystems.

Political Communication and Electoral Campaigns:

A second line of research investigates how political actors use digital platforms during election campaigns and how these communication dynamics shape political competition. This work focuses on:

• Monitoring and analysing electoral campaigns across platforms such as X, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram

• Issue competition and agenda-setting in digital campaigning

• Strategic communication by political actors, including negative campaigning

• Interactions between political actors and citizens on social media

Polarisation, Conflict and Violence:

Another line of research examines how political discourse evolves within digital publics and how online communication environments shape participation, representation, and conflict. Key topics include:

• The evolution, politicisation, and radicalisation of digital discourse during periods of polycrisis

• Echo chambers, ideological clustering, and polarisation on social media

• Dynamics of intra-party conflict and public deviations from party lines

• The rise of radical and populist actors as digital frontrunners in political communication

Elite Communication and Power Structures:

A further line of research explores how political, economic, and technological elites shape digital discourse and influence public debate. This includes:

• Ideological positioning and worldviews of political and economic elites

• Communication strategies of influential actors in digital environments

• Power asymmetries within digital communication infrastructures

• Elite coordination and agenda leadership within digital publics