How do young people process social media posts about the war in the Middle East? In an interview with the online magazine LEIBNIZ, Kira Thiel talks about her research on the experiences of children and young people in the digital world, as well as the opportunities and risks associated with them.

From the interview

LEIBNIZ: Ms. Thiel, news and images of the war in the Middle East are everywhere. Children and young people encounter them on Instagram and TikTok, for example – where they are usually without adult supervision. You examined how young people perceive images and videos of war on social media very soon after the 7th of October 2023. How did you approach this?

KIRA THIEL: So far, we know very little about what war content young people come into contact with on social media and how they perceive it. However, we had the impression that they come across much more explicit content on social media than in journalistic reporting. A wild mix of content is circulating on social media in a wide variety of forms and from a wide range of sources: journalistic articles, clips from those affected, expressions of solidarity from influencers, or content from the warring parties, such as videos recorded by Hamas terrorists with body cams. Since we are already working with a Hamburg school on other projects, we had the idea of talking directly to the students about their experiences and views: How often do they come into contact with war content? And what role does it play in their everyday media use?

Read the full interview (in German) in the online magazine LEIBNIZ

Photo by Josh Felise on Unsplash

In the SWR live session “Fühl ich! Nachrichten & du” [Feeling it! News & You] as part of the ARD Youth Media Day, Michael Reiss talked about current trends in news consumption, particularly news avoidance. The stream is available in the ARD media library (in German) until the 13th of November, 2029.

Information about the Live Session “Fühl ich! Nachrichten & du”

There is more than enough bad news. According to the 19th edition of the Shell Youth Study, published in October 2024, more and more young people between the ages of 18 and 24 are avoiding news because they feel exhausted.

The session “Fühl ich! Nachrichten & du” [Feeling it! News & You] provided insights into young people’s media behavior and strategies for dealing with negative news.

The session was livestreamed on ARD alpha on the morning of the 13th of November, 2024.

Information about the ARD Youth Media Day

On the ARD Youth Media Day, the regional broadcasting companies open their studios to students from the eighth grade up, visit schools and offer an extensive online program. In the “Year of the News”, the focus was particularly on journalistic information gathering, recognizing disinformation, fact-checking, and rules for public broadcasting reporting.

Image: screenshot from the SWR live session “Fühl ich! Nachrichten & du” from 13 November 2024, Michael Reiss is sitting on the far left

Christian Ollig has successfully defended his dissertation on the topic “European Platform Constitutions – The Constitutionalization of Digital Communication Spaces through Art. 14 Para. 4 Digital Services Act”. We congratulate him warmly on this achievement and are very happy for him!

The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz (left in the picture).

In his dissertation, Christian Ollig examines the regulation of digital platforms by the European Union. He develops an innovative understanding according to which platform companies are directly bound by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union – via a reference in the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA marks a fundamental change in the understanding of the roles of state and private actors. Christian Ollig shows that the traditional separation between these actors is becoming increasingly less important in the digital space – a process he describes as “hybridization.” His doctoral thesis provides a new perspective on key challenges of platform regulation, particularly with regard to global companies operating in the European Union and Germany that have significant influence on public opinion.

The publication of the dissertation is planned for the first half of 2025.

Christian Ollig has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Media Law and Public Law including its Legal Theoretical Foundations at the Law Faculty of Universität Hamburg since October 2021. He supports Prof. Dr. Schulz in research and teaching and coordinates the work between Universität Hamburg and the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut. He studied law at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, the Université de Cergy-Pontoise and the College of Europe in Bruges (LL.M.). His studies were supported by the German National Academic Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Franco-German University.

In the podcast FREEDOM, Judith Möller and other experts discuss the following questions: What hurdles will challenge our freedom in the future? How will our ideas of freedom change in view of the internet, artificial intelligence or the economic and power-political strengthening of autocratic states?

Kenza Ait Si Abbou, an artificial intelligence specialist and professor of empirical communication research focusing on media use and social media effects at Universität Hamburg, is working together with the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut and Prof. Dr Judith Möller as well as the China expert and professor of contemporary Sinology at the University of Trier, Prof. Dr Kristin Shi-Kupfer. Together with the freelance journalist Wiebke Keuneke (Studio van Meer), they discuss the future of freedom.

It is time to fight for freedom. This is the motto of the 2024 Science Year – Freedom, organised by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The last part of the six-part podcast FREIHEIT [freedom] is about the obstacles to freedom.

The podcast FREIHEIT [freedom] of the Science Year 2024 on the subject of freedom is a production of Studio van Meer in collaboration with the agency neues handeln AG; initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Keno C. Potthast has successfully defended his dissertation on ‘The Law of Party Political Communication. Constitutional Guidelines for the Technical-Distributive Dimension of Political Parties’ Communication on Social Media Platforms’. We are very happy for him!

In his dissertation, Keno C. Potthast addressed questions regarding the use of social media platforms by political parties: How can parties communicate on the platforms? When does party communication tip over into undue influence? He developed guidelines for legislators to use as a basis for regulatory action based on these conditions.

The focus was on the technical-distributive dimension of communication, incorporating insights from communication studies. He paid particular attention to the phenomena of microtargeting, astroturfing and the use of social bots.

The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulz (on the right in the picture).

Keno C. Potthast was a junior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) from 2019 to 2023. He worked on online political communication from a jurisprudential perspective. His activities were part of Research Program 1 “Transformation of Public Communication: Journalistic and Intermediary Functions in the Process of Opinion Formation”.

He previously studied law with a focus on information and communication at Universität Hamburg.

On 25 October 2020, the German federal states agreed on a reform of public broadcasting, but failed to resolve the question of financing. In a commentary in Legal Tribune Online (LTO), HBI Director Wolfgang Schulz predicts cuts with an uncertain outcome and a new broadcasting judgment on the horizon.

Read the commentary by Wolfgang Schulz on LTO (in German).

When relaunching its website, the HBI placed great emphasis on making the website barrier-free and thus accessible to everyone. This has also been verified by a test. In the BIK BITV test (web), the federal ordinance on barrier-free information technology, 7 out of 7 pages of an independent, representative page selection were evaluated as BITV-/EN 301 549-compliant.

The website https://leibniz-hbi.de/en is thus largely compatible with the requirements of the HmbBITVO (and the requirements of EU Directive 2016/2102).

You can access the audit report in German here: https://report.bitvtest.de/6e304dba-67c0-4647-9584-1c3b24a2bd54.html#results-summary.

Not all content has been migrated from the old site to the new one yet, but we’re working on it!

Since October 2024, Kristina Kobrow has been the new host of our BredowCast and a member of the HBI’s science communication team. Thank you for joining us!

Kristina Kobrow studied “Cultural Studies – Culture, Arts and Media” at Leuphana University Lüneburg and graduated with a Master’s degree in 2018. Prior to this, she completed a Bachelor’s degree in “Music and Dance Studies” in Salzburg and Nice.

Her career path has led her to the Hamburg Department of Culture and to Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR).

Prof. Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann has been appointed to the Internet Governance Task Force by the German Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport (BMDV). The task force has six months to develop future scenarios for the development of German digital policy up to the year 2040.

A second task force is dedicated to the topic of “AI Governance”. In each task force, 14 scientists, business representatives and representatives of technical committees will develop a strategy paper for the German government’s international digital policy.

The two kick-off events took place on 6 September 2024 in Berlin.