ECREA 2024

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

The first full day at the ECREA 2024 conference begins for me with a panel on Telegram and politics. The first presenter is Corinna Peil, whose interest is in COVID-19 conspiracy narratives on Telegram. How do the people who disseminate such narratives understand content moderation interventions?

After a brief excursion to Helsinki for a workshop and a guest lecture, I have made my way to Ljubljana for the great biennial European communication conference, ECREA 2024. After the opening ceremony and a pipe organ performance (!) of Laibach’s “The Whistleblowers”, we start now with a keynote by Vesna Leskošek, addressing the conference theme of ‘communication and social (dis)order’.

She begins by introducing the idea of the welfare state, as a concept that may be in decline in the present time. But the welfare state maintains social order, social structures, and social institutions; it was one of the great developments in post-war Europe, and critical to the maintenance of peace. It built on precedents such as social insurance policies in early twentieth-century Germany, and developed in divergent ways under the differing regimes of in western and eastern Europe during the second half of that century.

Critically, the welfare state also regulates markets, reflecting a commitment to principles of social justice and equality; this also means that it assumes responsibility for those who are unable to achieve such social justice and equality by themselves. It builds on insurance, solidarity, and direct and indirect services, and provides these through the redistribution of taxes. In spite of common American misunderstandings of the welfare state as a socialist project, it is a critical component of capitalist systems.

The welfare state ensures social peace: it is a compromise between employers and the labour force. Its opponents are typically both liberal and conservative forces who see this as placing restrictions on the free market, and thereby holding back economic development as well as eroding individual responsibility. These arguments deny the morality of welfare recipients.

Modern followers of these arguments included politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, who saw those relying on the welfare state as abusing state support; these arguments gradually led to the erosion of broad public support for the welfare state, and the establishment of mainstream political efforts to dismantle welfare state regulations. This reduction of welfare state frameworks has led to an increase in the exploitation of labour forces and a reduction of protection for vulnerable groups.