Lecture: "Web Science, now more than ever: Case studies on political communication in social media"

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Steffen Staab, University of Koblenz

The event takes place as part of the ITeG lecture series "Digital Society - a Design Task" at the Scientific Center for Information Technology Design (ITeG). The dates are usually Wednesdays from October 31, 5-7 p.m., in the ITeG (Pfannkuchstraße 1), room 0420. Admission is free.
www.uni-kassel.de/go/ringvorlesung-iteg

Abstract of the lecture:
Web Science is a field of research that deals with how people work together and interact with each other in large socio-technical systems such as the World Wide Web. This requires an understanding of the interaction between humans and technology and the way in which society and technology co-constitute each other. Achieving this understanding requires trans-disciplinary collaboration between different disciplines and a multi-method approach to problems and opportunities arising from the web and similar systems. Examples include problems such as misinformation on the web on the one hand and opportunities such as the development of a collaborative, intelligent web on the other. Our approach to web science is illustrated by research examples on participation. Using both data science studies of the Pirate Party's Liquid Democracy platform and surveys on the use of participation tools by the Greens / Bündnis 90, we find that the actual use of tools does not always meet the expectations of the participants. In the outlook section, we look at two current projects that deal with the monitoring of social media in the political communication of elites and the monitoring and handling of misinformation.