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.