Showing papers by "Christian Baden published in 2021"
TL;DR: In this article, political polarization on the digital sphere poses a real challenge to many democracies around the world, and there is a need to improve the co-existence of political polarization.
Abstract: Political polarization on the digital sphere poses a real challenge to many democracies around the world. Although the issue has received some scholarly attention, there is a need to improve the co...
111 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposed a composite definition of "conspiracy theories proper" (CTP) that violate fundamental norms of democratic discourse, such as assuming conspirators' pervasive control over events and information, constructing dissent as a Manichean binary, and employing an elusive, dogmatic epistemology.
Abstract:
Despite widespread concern over the alleged rise of conspiracy theories, scholars continue to disagree whether it is possible to distinguish specific kinds of conspiracist accounts that can justifiably be denounced as objectionable. In this article, we review scholarship from multiple disciplines to develop a composite definition of “conspiracy theories proper” (CTP) that violate fundamental norms of democratic discourse. Besides referring to grand conspiracies to account for social phenomena, we argue, such conspiracy theories: (a) assume conspirators’ pervasive control over events and information, (b) construct dissent as a Manichean binary, and (c) employ an elusive, dogmatic epistemology. We discuss the operational potential and limitations of our definition using news user talkbacks on the U.S., British and German online editions of Russia Today (RT), a popular platform among proponents of out-of-mainstream political views. Identifying key operational challenges in the classification of natural discourse, we sketch avenues toward a more rigorous study of contentious political talk.
24 citations
TL;DR: A first step toward instrument validation is indicated, indicating that both methods for the topic modeling of multilingual document collections yield valid, comparable results, while method-specific differences remain.
Abstract: The goal of this paper is to evaluate two methods for the topic modeling of multilingual document collections: (1) machine translation (MT), and (2) the coding of semantic concepts using a multilin...
13 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the question of whether women and men tend to use different communicative styles, strategies, and practices has been examined over the past few decades, and the results show that women tend to be more communicative than men.
Abstract: Over the past few decades, numerous studies have examined the question of whether women and men tend to use different communicative styles, strategies, and practices. In this study, we employed a h...
10 citations
01 Jan 2021
1 citations