Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit aus der Perspektive einer Theorie der Spätmoderne

Dieser Beitrag möchte die gesellschaftstheoretisch fundierte Diskussion des neuen Strukturwandels der Öffentlichkeit fortführen und dabei einen neuen Ansatz aufgreifen, der von dem Kultursoziologen Andreas Reckwitz unter dem Titel "Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten - Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne" vorgelegt wurde. Dazu wird dieser Theorieentwurf vorgestellt, diskutiert und auf seine Potenziale für eine Theorie von Öffentlichkeit unter Bedingungen eines neuerlichen Strukturwandels hin geprüft. Im Fokus steht die Frage, welche Einsichten durch die Unterscheidung der sozialen Logiken des Allgemeinen und Singulären (sowie die damit verbundene These ihrer Umstellung) gewonnen werden können – und wie sie sich mit derzeitigen Überlegungen in der Öffentlichkeitstheorie verbinden lassen. Darüber hinaus wird ein Vorschlag unterbreitet, wie der theoretischen Herausforderung begegnet werden kann, derzeitige Strukturveränderungen von Gesellschaft und Öffentlichkeit aus einer fachlichen Tradition heraus angemessen zu beobachten und zu beschreiben, die sich begrifflich und theoretisch in der industriellen Moderne entwickelt hat

Weizenbaum Report 2023: Political Participation in Germany

With the lifting of most COVID infection control measures, the year 2022 offered citizens significantly more opportunities to engage in politics, after the previous two years had been characterized by far-reaching restrictions on public life. In addition, global political events such as Russia's attack on Ukraine and the protests against the authoritarian regime in Iran had a mobilizing effect on the German population, which is reflected in an increasing number of demonstrations compared to the previous year. The aim of the Weizenbaum Panel is to observe long-term developments in political participation and to analyze the digital transformation of civic action. The longitudinal study on political participation and communication, which has been conducted annually since 2019, looks at political participation and civic engagement in Germany. In addition to the changing role of digital media for people's political actions, this year's report investigates authoritarianism as a driver of anti-democratic participation, so-called "dark participation" on the internet (pp. 10-12), and the effects of social inequality on political participation (pp. 14-16). The annual Weizenbaum Report presents selected findings from the representative longitudinal survey, which was conducted for the fourth time from October to December 2022

Sharing is caring: Addressing shared issues and challenges in hate speech research

This book is the result of a conference that could not take place. It is a collection of 26 texts that address and discuss the latest developments in international hate speech research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. This includes case studies from Brazil, Lebanon, Poland, Nigeria, and India, theoretical introductions to the concepts of hate speech, dangerous speech, incivility, toxicity, extreme speech, and dark participation, as well as reflections on methodological challenges such as scraping, annotation, datafication, implicity, explainability, and machine learning. As such, it provides a much-needed forum for cross-national and cross-disciplinary conversations in what is currently a very vibrant field of research

Stichprobenziehung für Online-Inhaltsanalysen: Suchmaschinen und Filter Bubbles

Stichproben für Inhaltsanalysen im Internet sind aufgrund der spezifischen Eigenschaften von Online-Inhalten nur schwer zu realisieren. Häufig greift die Forschung auf Suchmaschinen zurück, um mit ihrer Hilfe öffentliche Kommunikation im Internet zu erfassen. Dabei ergeben sich jedoch verschiedene Probleme, die einerseits mit einem noch stark massenmedial geprägten Medienbegriff und andererseits mit den Algorithmen der eingesetzten Suchmaschinen zu tun haben. In einer Studie anhand verschiedener Suchanfragen bei Google wurde untersucht, welche Folgen ihr Einsatz für Online-Stichprobenziehungen haben kann. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Suchmaschinen erstens eine Öffentlichkeit konstruieren, die weit über die herkömmliche massenmediale Öffentlichkeit hinausgeht und zweitens zu erheblichen Unterschieden je nach suchender Person führt. Als Schlussfolgerung sollten in Zukunft verschiedene Nutzungspraktiken berücksichtigt und Analysen auf alle auffindbaren anstatt nur auf journalistische Angebote bezogen werden.The characteristics of the internet make it challenging to draw samples for content analyses of online media. To reproduce public online communication, researchers frequently – and predominantly – rely on search engines to find relevant content. But this approach involves a series of problems, which are due in part to the specifics of search engine algorithms but also to the tendency to orient studies of public media to mass-media. This study analyses the effects of using search engines to collect samples for two content analyses. The results show that online publics display a much greater range of content than classical mass media and that search results differ strongly between searchers. More representative sampling should thus attempt to more closely mirror usage patterns and include a greater variety of the public media that exists beyond the channels of professional mass media coverage

From Insult to Hate Speech: Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration

In recent debates on offensive language in participatory online spaces, the term ‘hate speech’ has become especially prominent. Originating from a legal context, the term usually refers to violent threats or expressions of prejudice against particular groups on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. However, due to its explicit reference to the emotion of hate, it is also used more colloquially as a general label for any kind of negative expression. This ambiguity leads to misunderstandings in discussions about hate speech and challenges its identification. To meet this challenge, this article provides a modularized framework to differentiate various forms of hate speech and offensive language. On the basis of this framework, we present a text annotation study of 5,031 user comments on the topic of immigration and refuge posted in March 2019 on three German news sites, four Facebook pages, 13 YouTube channels, and one right-wing blog. An in-depth analysis of these comments identifies various types of hate speech and offensive language targeting immigrants and refugees. By exploring typical combinations of labeled attributes, we empirically map the variety of offensive language in the subject area ranging from insults to calls for hate crimes, going beyond the common ‘hate/no-hate’ dichotomy found in similar studies. The results are discussed with a focus on the grey area between hate speech and offensive language

Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration

Abstract In recent debates on offensive language in participatory online spaces, the term ‘hate speech’ has become especially prominent. Originating from a legal context, the term usually refers to violent threats or expressions of prejudice against particular groups on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. However, due to its explicit reference to the emotion of hate, it is also used more colloquially as a general label for any kind of negative expression. This ambiguity leads to misunderstandings in discussions about hate speech and challenges its identification. To meet this challenge, this article provides a modularized framework to differentiate various forms of hate speech and offensive language. On the basis of this framework, we present a text annotation study of 5,031 user comments on the topic of immigration and refuge posted in March 2019 on three German news sites, four Facebook pages, 13 YouTube channels, and one right-wing blog. An in-depth analysis of these comments identifies various types of hate speech and offensive language targeting immigrants and refugees. By exploring typical combinations of labeled attributes, we empirically map the variety of offensive language in the subject area ranging from insults to calls for hate crimes, going beyond the common ‘hate/no-hate’ dichotomy found in similar studies. The results are discussed with a focus on the grey area between hate speech and offensive language

Diskursarchitekturen deutscher Nachrichtenseiten

Viele Redaktionen haben in den vergangenen Jahren Maßnahmen ergriffen, um ausfallenden Nutzerbeiträgen, Beleidigungen und Hassrede in den Kommentarspalten und Diskussionsforen ihrer Internetseiten zu begegnen. Neben der Formulierung von Community-Richtlinien, manueller Kommentarmoderation und dem Einsatz von Monitoringsoftware kommt dabei der "Diskursarchitektur", der technischen Ausgestaltung dieser Kommentarbereiche, eine große Bedeutung zu. Dazu zählen etwa verschiedene Formen der Registrierung, die Sortierung der Kommentarthreads oder verschiedene Grade der Anonymisierung. Die bisherige Forschung zu dem Thema hat solche Diskursarchitekturen zumeist in Fallstudien vergleichend untersucht, um möglichen Effekten der technischen Umgebung auf das Kommentarverhalten nachzuspüren. Die einzelnen Bestandteile von Diskursarchitekturen wurden dabei in der Regel analytisch nicht differenziert. Dieser Lücke widmet sich der vorliegende Beitrag und präsentiert eine Studie, in der alle von der IVW ausgewiesenen 361 redaktionell betreuten deutschen Nachrichtenseiten differenziert auf zehn verschiedene Merkmale hin analysiert wurden. Dabei zeigt sich, dass jene 173 Nachrichtenseiten, die überhaupt Kommentarspalten anbieten, ihre Möglichkeiten zur technischen Regulierung bei Weitem nicht ausschöpfen. Mit Hilfe einer hierarchischen Clusteranalyse wurden schließlich fünf distinkte Typen von Diskursarchitekturen in Kommentarspalten identifiziert, die in zukünftigen Studien zur Klassifizierung genutzt werden können.For some years now, news sites around the world are increasingly confronted with abusive user comments in their respective comment sections and discussion forums. While these spaces were long seen as promising instruments of democratic participation, they now have a reputation as spaces full of insults and hate speech. Since this not only poses a threat to social cohesion but can also compromise the image of a news site, many platforms have taken measures to regulate the comments on their sites since then. Some have published community guidelines, hired moderation teams and implemented monitoring software. As an additional measure, many adapted the technological design and the features of their comment spaces to gain more control over the posted comments. This includes, for example, requiring commenters to register with the site, sorting of comment threads and various degrees of anonymization. Many authors refer to this technological design of comment spaces as "discourse architecture." The theoretical argument behind this term is that the way comment spaces are "built" influences how commenters behave within them. This perspective is particularly interesting from the point of view of journalism research, since the relationship between editorial staff and audience is manifested in such technological architectures. Several studies have analyzed and compared various discourse architectures in order to investigate possible effects on commenting behavior. However, there is still a lack of a systematic analysis in this field. Apart from individual case studies, there are no findings on the diversity of discourse architectures which provide information on the technical conditions of audience participation on the Internet. On the theoretical basis of the discourse architecture approach, this study investigates two research questions: How are the included discourse architectures designed (RQ1)? And what types of discourse architectures can we identify (RQ2)? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a standardized analysis of 361 German news sites, which produced three key findings. Firstly, with regard to RQ1, we found that 173 of these 361 news sites offer comments sections, whereas only 24 offer discussion forums. In contrast, almost all sites in the sample have an additional Facebook page. Al-though we have not checked whether these pages actually contain posts and comments, against this back-ground we can nevertheless assume that the discourse architecture of Facebook has become the most important technological infrastructure for commenting news articles in Germany. Acknowledging the low deliberative quality of user discussions on Facebook revealed by earlier studies, this would be quite problematic with regard to social integration. Secondly, the detailed analysis of the comment sections showed that most news sites do not exhaust the possibilities of using technical discourse architectures to gain more control over the discussions of users and users. Overall, the technological design of the comment sections is quite inclusive, not very restrictive and only weakly regulated. The most popular features are required registration, rating of comments, opprtunities to report comments and the restriction of comment sections to certain topics. Thirdly, with regard to RQ2, five distinct types of discourse architectures for comment sections could be identified within the sample. They differ in terms of their combinations of features and as well as in terms of their outreach. Additionally, we found a significant correlation between the outreach of the news sites and the number of features that strengthen editorial control over the comments

Hate and harm

From a psychological point of view, hate speech can be conceptualized as harmful intergroup communication. In contrast to other forms of incivility, hate speech is directed toward individuals because of their (perceived) social identity. This explains why the harm of hate speech can extend to entire social groups and societies. Hate speech therefore cannot be separated from pre-existing power structures and resource inequalities, as its harm is particularly severe when coping resources are already deprived. Psychological research on the perpetrators of hate speech links hate speech to a lack of empathy and the acceptance of, or even desire for social inequalities. In summary, hate speech jars the norms of democratic discourses by denying fellow humans basic respect and violating the democratic minimal consent of human equality. Overall, the chapter demonstrates the usefulness of a (social) psychological perspective on the harms of hate speech for both researchers and practitioner