I am Professor and Chair of Digital Governance at the School of Governance/Department of Political Science (Hochschule für Politik) of the Technical University of Munich. My research and teaching interests are in the areas of digital media and political participation, political communication and computational social science. My current work focuses on (but is not limited to) two interconnected topics: participatory inequality and the normalisation of incivility in online spaces. The first stream of my research focuses on the investigation of the longitudinal impact of social media use on political participation — and democracy more broadly — using panel data and experimental methods. The second stream of my research utilises social media data and investigates uncivil interactions between citizens and politicians on social media. I am particularly interested in understading the broader and potentially corrosive consequences these developments have on democracy — especially on the possible demobilising impact on both citizens and politicians.
My latest book investigates conceptual and empirical topics in the study of political participation, with emphasis on how digital media have affected political participation. It is now available on Kindle, as well as in Hardcover version and can be purchased on Amazon. You can also have a look at some of the content at Google Books.
Read information about Political Participation in a Changing World: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Citizen Engagement here.
You can read my latest collaborative work on harassment on Twitter here
You can also take a look at my latest collaborative work on new forms of political participation here