Discourse Power in the (Digital) Public Sphere

The internet is permanently changing the structure and logic of the political public sphere: the former gatekeeping position of traditional media is disappearing and new actors are entering the arena. Jan Rau’s dissertation project investigates how and to what extent German far-right and right-wing populist actors can exploit this transformation of discursive power relations. Specifically, the project deals with the question of the extent to which these actors can use digital media to introduce and disseminate their topics and narratives in public discourse. The project is based on data collections from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other digital media and platforms, as well as on the application of computational social science methods and natural language processing approaches.