For a research project to be effectively collaborative across different continents and time zones, regular interaction among participants is essential, including in-person meetings. Last week, for example, researchers from the “Mapping Polarization in News Media Content” project in Brisbane, Australia, met with researchers from Germany at the HBI in Hamburg.
A key focus of the workshop was developing and discussing prompting and validation strategies for AI-supported content analysis. Additionally, participants worked on joint publications and prepared papers for ECREA and the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conferences.
This workshop was part of the collaboration between the HBI and Queensland University of Technology (QUT), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and Universities Australia.
More about the Project
This joint research project between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the HBI is led by Dr. Katharina Esau from QUT and Dr. Lisa Merten from the HBI. Researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the University of Bremen, and the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences are also participating.
The project will conduct a comparative analysis to determine the extent to which reporting on the climate crisis in Germany and Australia exhibits characteristics of destructive polarization. Such characteristics include an excessive focus on extreme actors and positions, as well as the devaluation of scientific information. Using AI-supported methods, the researchers will systematically examine coverage from more than 50 news outlets for such indicators of polarization. Subsequently, the study will analyze whether the use of polarizing coverage is associated with greater polarization of political attitudes.