Individual Studies

Here you will find descriptions and information about the current individual studies of the Institute of Communication Science. Completed projects can be found here.

Click on a project title to go to the respective project description and information:

Self-portrayal in selfies and user reactions to the hashtag #bodypositive on Tumblr

Mixed-Method-Research on Coping with Dissonance Online

Citizen Science describes a voluntary participation and integration of citizens in knowledge acquisition and knowledge gain by collaborating with established scientific institutions and universities. The extent to which citizen science projects represent 'successful' forms of science communication and how to evaluate this form of citizen participation is so far unclear and not empirically substantiated. The current public debate in politics and society does not reflect on this, but is strongly normative and value-laden. Therefore, the purpose of this research project is to investigate the significance of Citizen Science regarding the relationship between science and the public as well as to empirically evaluate Citizen Science projects.

Knowledge is a key variable in science communication, especially in terms of the knowledge deficit model or the Public Understanding of Science approach. According to this, it is assumed that the lay public's knowledge of science topics needs to be increased through science communication (especially via the media) in order to strengthen positive attitudes toward science and its topics. However, previous studies have mainly revealed only small correlations between media use, knowledge and attitudes. One of the reasons for this might be methodological deficits, since the question what knowledge about science topics actually is has hardly been discussed so far. Therefore, this research project focuses on the following aspects: how knowledge about topics such as climate change should be theoretically conceptualized, which dimensions exist, and how knowledge can be operationalized within survey studies.

"You Can Do Better Than That!": Tweeting Scientists Addressing Politics on Climate Change and Covid-19

Climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic are global challenges in which scientists play a crucial role and immediate political action is required. While climate change has been on the public agenda for several decades, the pandemic is a relatively new issue. In such cases, social media offers scientists the opportunity to disseminate scientific results to the public and to express calls for action and their personal attitudes towards politics. So far, little is known about the extent to which scientists make use of this option.

Kaija Biermann, Nicola Peters and Monika Taddicken addressed these questions in a study. The similarities and differences between visible German climate experts and visible German Covid-19 experts regarding advocacy and assessments of policies and political actors on Twitter were examined using content from 2021. The results show that climate experts addressed politics and expressed negative evaluations, the degradation of competence and blaming in their tweets more often than Covid-19 experts. However, the Covid-19 experts made more political calls for action. The comparative study provides insight into the interrelations between science and politics in digital communication environments and visibly illustrates scientists’ communication behaviours towards different socio-scientific issues.

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