Polcom Vienna

📢 New research from POLCOM! Congrats to our colleague @hosseinkermani.bsky.social and co-authors on their new paper in Democratization! 🎉 The study explores false information on Persian Twitter during Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom uprising. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1351...

📢 New Publication in @jscicom.bsky.social

📢 New publication: How do political journalists balance closeness to political sources with journalistic independence? Through the “double adaptation” according to 🇨🇿 and 🇦🇹 researchers, including POLCOM’s Melanie Haberl and @solecheler.bsky.social. Read the study below! 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/2167...

💡📄 How does an authoritarian regime fight back against a hashtag movement? @hosseinkermani.bsky.social & colleagues examined how pro-regime Iranian Twitter accounts suppressed the Mahsa Amini movement, clarifying mechanisms of repression under theocracy. Read #OA: doi.org/10.1080/1353...

🌟📣 Sharing new #OA studies w/ @solecheler.bsky.social: 1. 📄 Curious on the role search engines play in journalists' info-gathering process? See this rare experiment: doi.org/10.1080/1461... 2. 📄 How do dimensions of VR storytelling affect presence and empathy? Read this: doi.org/10.1080/1751...

Congratulations to @danielwiesner.bsky.social on getting the Top Student Paper Award from the @polcomm.bsky.social at #ICA2026 🥳🥳 we couldn’t be prouder!

🌍 POLCOM is heading to Cape Town for #ICA2026! Our team will present new research from content moderation to misinformation, science communication and political communication. Hope to see you there! Full schedule here: polcom.univie.ac.at/news/news-de...

Last week, PhD candidate Lena Pohlmann presented her topic "Towards Sustainable AI" at the #CHI-26 workshop, which brought together researchers to map the grand challenges and opportunities at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and #AI #sustainability. 👏✨ #DigitalHumanities

📄🥳 New #OA paper by Melanie Haberl, @dominikhokamp.bsky.social, Marína Urbániková, Lenka Císařová, Folker Hanusch & @solecheler.bsky.social discuss "emotional communities" as an integrated lens to analyze the journalism–politics fields & explore new research avenues: 🔗 doi.org/10.1177/1464...

📄📣 New study from PhD candidate @clmron.bsky.social co-authored by @solecheler.bsky.social & POLCOM alumnae Dr. Jana Laura Egelhofer studied how scientists understand & communicate uncertainty about their research through 28 interviews in 🇦🇹. The #OA paper is avaialble w/ @natureportfolio.nature.com.

📣📄 A new #OA study by @hosseinkermani.bsky.social investigates how Iranian Telegram channels coordinated messaging during the 12 day Israel–Iran war, showing how infrastructural and leisure-oriented channels are incorporated into wartime influence operations. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1933...

📄 📣 New #Data-DrivenCampaigning research led by @xiaotongchu.bsky.social w/ contributions from @solecheler.bsky.social & co-authors reviews evidence on effects and outlines a research agenda on message tailoring, voter awareness, cross-national contexts and more. 🔗 academic.oup.com/anncom/advan...

📄📣 A new study led by @hosseinkermani.bsky.social analyzed 36,255 Persian tweets from the Women, Life, Freedom movement. It found pro-regime users were the most uncivil, while anti-regime incivility functioned as resistance—driven mainly by ideology, not identity. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@hosseinkermani.bsky.social took part in the #LunchtalksSommersemester2026 at the #ParisLodronUniversitätSalzburg about how authoritarian regimes such as in Iran use incivility and false information to suppress online democratic movements. More on the talks here: lnkd.in/ejuyE255 👏📣

📄 📣 @hosseinkermani.bsky.social co-authored a new study in #TheCommunicationReview that analyzed over 78K Farsi tweets after the death of Mahsa Amini to map anti-regime, reformist, and pro-regime dynamics on #Twitter. Read here 🔗 www-tandfonline-com.uaccess.univie.ac.at/doi/full/10....

👏 Shout-out to Lena Pohlmann-PhD in the Vienna Doctoral College on #DigitalHumanism-for her insights at the #CEU debate series “AI vs. Planet: Peril or Opportunity?” tackling how AI shapes planetary futures and sustainability from a humanistic lens. #AI #Planet #DigitalHumanism #CEU

See the 📚Launch: "Twitter Activism in Iran" at #ECPR! Exploring how Iranians use Twitter under restrictions to mobilize, shape discourse & challenge authoritarians. 🗓 13 Feb 2026, 09:00 GMT Presenter: Dr. @hosseinkermani.bsky.social Discussant: Dr. Gi Yeon Koo #SocialMedia #Iran #PoliticalScience

#IPKW welcomed ~80 guests for the alumni #ScienceSlam on “The Future of Truth–How Fact-Checking Must Change in the Age of #AI, #Deepfakes and Social Media.” Great contributions by @gngeorgarakis.bsky.social, Claudia Wilhelm @jamoeberl.bsky.social and more! Looking forward to another event soon!👏🔬

We at the POLCOM team wish you a happy, successful and fulfilling new year! We look forward to new opportunities, growth, exchange, and meaningful collaborations in 2026! ✨ 🥳 ✨

📊 A new @jmcquarterly.bsky.social study by @teresaelena.bsky.social, @jlegelhofer.bsky.social and @solecheler.bsky.social compared how deepfakes, cheapfakes, and decontextualized videos influence perceptions, finding distinct effects. Read the full #OA paper: doi.org/10.1177/1077...

Congratulations to Dr. @andreawiesner.bsky.social, who successfully defended her PhD thesis, “Drawing Lines in Gray Areas: Toward Feasible, Accepted, and Effective Content Moderation” supervised by Professor @solecheler.bsky.social and Assistant Professor Svenja Schäfer. 🤩🥳 Congrats, Dr. Wiesner!

New publication out in #IJPP! 📑 We study how audience expectations of journalism 📰 shifted during COVID-19 in Austria 🇦🇹 – showing both short-term rally effects & longer-term recalibration 🔄. Led by @clmron.bsky.social & @danielwiesner.bsky.social , w/ @andreasriedl.bsky.social & me. 1/n

ONLINE FIRST! This article by Dominika Betakova et al. uses a comparative online experiment to test whether nudges could help with #news avoidance. Available with OPEN ACCESS. ➡️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

1/ I’m thrilled (and a little proud 🤗) to share my first single-authored publication! It’s now out open access in Information, Communication & Society: 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1369...

🚫📰 Can we use nudges to mitigate news avoidance? Yes and no — it depends on what nudges we use! Together with @hajoboo.bsky.social & @solecheler.bsky.social I wanted to test whether nudges can reduce news avoidance as limited news consumption—and to do so beyond established Western democracies. 🧵👇

📣👀Early-Career Researchers @ ECREAs PolComm Section Conference 2025! A few last-minute spots for the ‪@yecrea.bsky.social‬ pre-conference workshop just opened. Want to join a great lineup of speakers on early-career profile building, network development, and transience? Just drop us a message! 🙂

🚨📝 New publication: Svenja Schäfer w/ Lea Gorski and PolCom members @hannahgreber.bsky.social + @solecheler.bsky.social explored whether solutions are effective in sustainability communication and examined the attribution of responsibility through an experiment. 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/1751...

Today @ #ViennaChildren'sUniversity 🧒 How can YOU stay safe on social media? 🤔 Our @solecheler.bsky.social & @amplanitzer.bsky.social, with @julianeidhardt.bsky.social & @allanhanbury.bsky.social, explored counter speech 🗣️ & algorithmic moderation 🤖 via roleplay, annotation games & a kindness wall 💛

@ipk-univie.bsky.social is wrapping up #ica25 in Denver! From awards to withdrawn presentations, we‘ve had it all this year. Sending warm greetings & thoughts to all colleagues who could not participate 🫶✨

Thanks #ICA25 for a great panel on Science in Political Contexts. It was a pleasure to present our latest findings to such an engaged and insightful audience. w/ @jamoeberl.bsky.social & @solecheler.bsky.social

Another windowless room (but this time way bigger) in which I got to present first preliminary findings on how strategic politicians can *actually* be about their emotions in election campaigns 📷 @amplanitzer.bsky.social

What are the content-level characteristics of selectively avoided news? 🤔 @dbetakova.bsky.social presenting her impressive two-study research using computational text analysis and baysian modelling /w @solecheler.bsky.social & @hajoboo.bsky.social at an engaging #ICA25 panel on news avoidance 👏

What kinds of content do users themselves want to see moderated on platforms? 👀 Surprisingly, it's less about the incivility of language and more about authorial intention, target vulnerability and platform affordances /w @solecheler.bsky.social, @pia-p.bsky.social & Svenja Schäfer 🙂 #ICA25 #PolComm

📰 Empathy in journalism - meant to connect us, but can it also divide? @hannahgreber.bsky.social presents findings on the unintended side-effects of empathy-driven journalism at #ICA25 w/ @jesperstromback.bsky.social & @solecheler.bsky.social 👏

@polcomvienna.bsky.social at the #ica25, come see our presentations!

I will be presenting first findings on how Austrian politicians are building their emotional capital to meet the increasing need for personalisation and emotionalisation on Monday at 12 noon ✨ But also come and see all the other inspiring research findings from our team 💫

YES! Come see me presenting our paper “The shadow side of empathy? Eliciting empathy in journalism and its (potentially) unintended side-effects on polarization”- w. @solecheler.bsky.social & @jesperstromback.bsky.social Sunday, 13:30, Mineral G #ica25

Presenting in the coziest corner of #ICA25 including a weird neck tilt to see the screen ✅ w/ the one and only @andiisto.bsky.social, co-authored with @solecheler.bsky.social & Svenja Schäfer. Come watch me do that move again! 📅 Monday, 10:30 📍 Mineral G (again) 🗣️ „Science on the Political Stage“

I won something at #ica25 🥹❤️

Welcome to the ICA conference!

Our team showed up strong for the #PolcommPreconference25 🥳 @dominikhokamp.bsky.social shared his work on emotional ties of journalists & politicians, @amplanitzer.bsky.social presented her work on personalised algorithmic platform moderation and @solecheler.bsky.social was a discussant & panelists👏

These are the participants of the #PoliticalCommunicationPreconference25. It was an amazing day, full of interesting insights and great research. Although it's hard to say goodbye to a great day, #ICA25 is now officially starting! Let's enjoy the conference together! ❤️

📣 POLCOM Vienna @ #ICA25 Happy to see eight of our team members at ICA in Denver, CO this week - mentoring and sharing their latest research 🙂 Come say 👋 if you are around!

So proud of former PhD candidates at @polcomvienna.bsky.social , @hannahgreber.bsky.social and @teresaelena.bsky.social, who won the dissertation award of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences this year! Absolute 🌟🌟!

At #DigHum2025 conference this week in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier🌞 and excited to kick off Day 2 themed around AI, platforms & power! Happy to also contribute by discussing our ongoing project on algorithmic content moderation /w @pia-p.bsky.social @solecheler.bsky.social @julianeidhardt.bsky.social 🙂

It was a pleasure having you with us in Vienna, @academiuhhh.bsky.social! Thank you for the fantastic presentation 🤩🗣️ and best of luck to the entire INEQNEWS team 🗞️ with all your projects 🍀 We're happy to host you anytime!

Thrilled to share that I've started a new position as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Journalism at the SDU! 🥳🇩🇰 Together with Morten Skovsgaard & @kimandersen.bsky.social we'll test the effects of solutions-oriented journalism 🌱 📰 on various behavioral outcomes (so stay tuned 🧠 🧪 !)

Submitted my dissertation two weeks ago 🎉 and I could not be more grateful for my amazing supervisors, @solecheler.bsky.social & @hajoboo.bsky.social, and two wonderful teams @compcommlab.bsky.social & @polcomvienna.bsky.social, of which I was a proud member for the last four years 💪🏼