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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 21: Computational Social Science
SOE 21.1: Talk
Thursday, March 21, 2024, 17:00–17:15, MA 001
Online platforms and democracy: measuring systemic risks now and in the future — •Philipp Lorenz-Spreen1, Lisa Oswald1, Stephan Lewandowsky2,3, and Ralph Hertwig1 — 1Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany — 2School of Psychological Science and Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK — 3School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Information and communication technology has undergone dramatic developments over the past two decades. Increased peer-to-peer connectivity has led to more self-organised public discourse, but it has also given researchers new tools to quantify precisely this systemic shift. Detailed and longitudinal data from social media allow us to measure and model their network structures and dynamics. However, to get a holistic and global picture, a recent systematic literature review has provided us with a number of dimensions of political behaviour that appear to be influenced by the use of digital media. Our findings show that, while the directions within each dimension are mostly clear, they are distributed differently globally and the mechanisms by which these dimensions are linked are still unknown. Understanding these better is crucial for civil society in democracies worldwide, and I will conclude with a methodological outlook on how we can empirically investigate these missing links in the future.