This Leibniz Media Lunch Talk is organized by the Hamburg section of the Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC). Azade Kakavand will present findings from her recently completed dissertation, which examines the networking and communication of right-wing extremists on social media platforms. The moderator is PD Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt. The event will be held in English.
About the Talk
As part of her dissertation, Azade Kakavand examined the networking and communication of right-wing extremists on five social media platforms. She conducted three studies for this purpose. In a conceptual study, she assigned findings from the literature on the online presence of the far right to technology affordances. In five case studies, she researched far-right networks on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), YouTube, and Telegram. Finally, she tested various approaches to combine accounts of public actors on several platforms. Together, the studies provide new conceptual, empirical and methodological starting points for research into the use of social media.
About the Speaker
Azade Kakavand joined the Social Media Observatory of the Research Institute Social Cohesion and the Media Research Methods Lab at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut (HBI) as a postdoc in July 2025. Her research interests include technology affordances, social media and polarization. She uses computational methods, especially network analysis and text-as-data methods.
