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The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Shota Gelovani, who shifts our discussion further to the theme of democratic listening: the scrutiny and constructive discussion of statements by other citizens in a democracy. This can happen also between dissenting individuals, and may lead, if not to the removal of differences, then at least to partial consensus and an enlightened dissent.

Analytical listening (understanding others’ views) and critical listening (identifying errors in others’ judgments) are especially central to this, and democratic listening will also involve giving listening signals, substantive engagement with others’ claims, taking perspectives, and generating a feeling …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Matthias Revers, who continues our focus on polarisation in climate communication. The project sent out a recruitment survey in Germany and the UK to recruit participants with divergent views on climate change, then organised some 40 conversations on Zoom between participants with opposing views, and examined whether such conversations entrenched or weakened disagreements and antipathy between viewpoints. This examined conversational moves (like signalling willingness or interest, and steering the conversation in particular directions), as well as practices of assessment (articulating approval or disapproval), drawing on analytical categories like conversational receptiveness and …

The post-lunch session on this first day of ECREA 2024 conference is on polarisation, and starts with Hendrik Meyer, whose interest is in the case of disruptive climate protests. Such protests, in Germany for instance by the Letzte Generation protest group, tend to attract controversial media coverage, and it may be such coverage rather than the protests themselves that drive polarisation dynamics.

Untangling the various factors influencing such dynamics is difficult, and this project examined both news media coverage and social media debates to determine patterns of both issue and group polarisation, in both the content of communication and the …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 is Agnieszka Stępińska, whose focus is on understanding from current researchers how they approach the study of public opinion formation. This includes academic scholars, experts working for think tanks, and professional public opinion pollsters, and a short questionnaire will be distributed to these groups within the coming weeks, with a focus on central and eastern European and Balkans countries.

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Christian Baden, whose emphasis is on the theoretical challenges in studying public opinion dynamics in digital spaces. One such challenge is that what people say (loudly and publicly) on the Internet is not inherently representative for overall public opinion; and that public opinion expression on social media also intersects with and is being negotiated through mainstream and alternative media coverage.

Public opinion expression on social media is therefore participatory and subject to an interactive negotiation; the focus here is not on what is being said, but what remains standing after this …

The next session at ECREA 2024 is a panel on the study of public opinion expressions, organised by the Opinion Network initiative. We start with Dimitra Milioni, discussing the study of opinion expression in a comparative cross-platform perspective across social media platforms. This focusses on the interplay between user practices and digital architectures, as viewed from a sociotechnical perspective.

Elements of this might include the way that pseudonymity or anonymity settings influence politeness and civility in commenting; the way that similarities between commenter identities on social media as compared to mainstream media discussion fora affect discussion processes; or the way …

Finally, we end this ECREA 2024 session with a video presentation by Kilian Bühling, whose focus is on the use of Telegram for German-language COVID-19 protest mobilisation. This covers some 715 broadcast channels and 229 public group chats. Telegram has a 10% audience reach in Germany, and is used especially by contentious social movements for both public and private communication. The perceived anonymity and lack of content moderation here are especially attractive to such groups – including the Querdenker movement which opposed public health measures to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

This movement was established in spring 2020, and engaged in …

The next speaker in this ECREA 2024 session is Giuliana Sorce, focussing on the use of Telegram by the Identitarian movement in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. This is a far-right movement which emerged first on Facebook and moved to Telegram after being deplatforming there; it especially targets what it perceives as an Islamic threat to European societies.

This paper explores why and how this movement uses Telegram as a key channel for its activities. It conducted a snowball sampling from a starting-point of three key accounts and eventually examined 13 Telegram channels with some 14,000 posts up to April 2023 …

The next speaker in this rapid ECREA 2024 session is Christian Schwieter, whose focus is on the German news coverage of Telegram as a new and challenging social media platform. Telegram has become a hugely contested object in popular discourse; it has marketed itself as a strongly pro-democracy and pro-free speech platform, but is also accused of allowing hate speech and child abuse materials on its channels – notably Telegram founder Pavel Durov was recently arrested in France for this reason.

Telegram has also become a refuge for the deplatforming, and a space for alternative, conspiracist, and far-right groups. The …

The next speakers in this ECREA 2024 session on Telegram are Lars Rinsdorf and Kathrin Müller, whose interest is in hyperpartisan, alternative, and conspiracist social media spheres. Telegram is a very attractive tool for the publics populating such spheres; it is a hybrid communication platform that is especially well suited to the interests of such publics.

What are the actor identities, communicative practices, and frames of relevance emerging in such (counter)publics? The project explored this through expert interviews pointing researches to relevant topics and channels; then examined some 50 such channels closely through qualitative analysis; gathered some 2,700 posts from …