The "Database of Public Spokespersons" (DBÖS) offers a comprehensive collection of the most relevant German social media accounts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram and systematises actors who contribute to public communication.
Jan-Hinrik Schmidt,
Felix Münch and
Lisa Merten have now published an updated version and make it available to other researchers for their work free of charge.
Link to the database
The DBÖS contains a total of 7,169 entries (as of June 2023) from three main categories (media offerings; organisations; people), including accounts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram, if available. The categories are divided into different types:
- The 2,169 media offerings include newspapers, broadcasters, newsrooms, or journalistic online-only offerings, etc.
- The 738 organisations are accounted for by party organisations and public authorities.
- In addition, the DBÖS lists 4,262 journalists and politicians (members of the Bundestag and state parliaments) as well as members of the government.
For individual types, additional data are recorded, for example, the gender of a person or the form of financing of a media offer.
The documentation of the data set explains the distinction of the types, names the research sources, and gives an overview of basic distributions, e.g., the share of social media accounts.
The DBÖS is a service of the "
Social Media Observatory", one of the projects at the Research Institute Social Cohesion in Hamburg. The database is intended to support researchers in their research projects and is updated regularly.
Picture: Vishal Bansal on unsplash
[1 August 2023]
