@incollection{DariusStephany, author = {Darius, Philipp and Stephany, Fabian}, title = {"Hashjacking" the Debate: Polarisation Strategies of Germany's Political Far-Right on Twitter}, series = {Social Informatics. SocInfo 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11864}, volume = {11846}, booktitle = {Social Informatics. SocInfo 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11864}, editor = {Weber (et al.), Ingmar}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Cham}, issn = {978-3-030-34971-4}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-34971-4_21}, pages = {298 -- 308}, abstract = {Twitter is a digital forum for political discourse. The emergence of phenomena like fake news and hate speech has shown that political discourse on micro-blogging can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Recent findings suggest that some political actors might employ strategies to actively facilitate polarisation on Twitter. With a network approach, we examine the case of the German far-right party Alternative f{\"u}r Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of a "hashjacking" strategy (The use of someone else's hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda.). Our findings suggest that right-wing politicians (and their supporters/retweeters) actively and effectively polarise the discourse not just by using their own party hashtags, but also by "hashjacking" the political party hashtags of other established parties. The results underline the necessity to understand the success of right-wing parties, online and in elections, not entirely as a result of external effects (e.g. migration), but as a direct consequence of their digital political communication strategy.}, language = {en} } @incollection{DariusStephany, author = {Darius, Philipp and Stephany, Fabian}, title = {How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: 'Hashjacking' as a Disinformation Strategy in Times of COVID-19}, series = {Complex Networks \& Their Applications X. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2021. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1016}, booktitle = {Complex Networks \& Their Applications X. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2021. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1016}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Cham}, isbn = {978-3-030-93413-2}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-93413-2_9}, publisher = {Hertie School}, pages = {100 -- 111}, abstract = {Twitter influences political debates. Phenomena like fake news and hate speech show that political discourses on social platforms can become strongly polarised by algorithmic enforcement of selective perception. Some political actors actively employ strategies to facilitate polarisation on Twitter, as past contributions show, via strategies of 'hashjacking'(The use of someone else's hashtag in order to promote one's own social media agenda.). For the example of COVID-19 related hashtags and their retweet networks, we examine the case of partisan accounts of the German far-right party Alternative f{\"u}r Deutschland (AfD) and their potential use of 'hashjacking' in May 2020. Our findings indicate that polarisation of political party hashtags has not changed significantly in the last two years. We see that right-wing partisans are actively and effectively polarising the discourse by 'hashjacking' COVID-19 related hashtags, like \#CoronaVirusDE or \#FlattenTheCurve. This polarisation strategy is dominated by the activity of a limited set of heavy users. The results underline the necessity to understand the dynamics of discourse polarisation, as an active political communication strategy of the far-right, by only a handful of very active accounts.}, language = {en} } @incollection{DariusUrquhart, author = {Darius, Philipp and Urquhart, Michael}, title = {Informational Power and Disinformation: Actors, Messages, Incentives, and Techniques of Disinformation Campaigns}, series = {Disinformation}, booktitle = {Disinformation}, editor = {Ginsborg, Lisa and Gori, Paula}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {Cham}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-00480-2_11}, publisher = {Hertie School}, pages = {187 -- 211}, abstract = {Disinformation has become a pivotal concern for policymakers globally. While the issue has been a longstanding issue for communication and foreign affairs scholars and practitioners, recent years have seen an escalation in its severity driven by geopolitical conflicts like the Ukraine war or the Israel-Gaza conflict. These conflicts, coupled with international tensions, are exacerbated by state-led foreign interference and information manipulation intersecting with domestic partisan disinformation campaigns. Democracies with open media systems are particularly exposed to disinformation campaigns by other actors. In this article, we understand disinformation campaigns as a political instrument of increasing the power of interpretation among target groups. These may be populations of foreign states but also domestic citizens that are targeted with disinformation by partisan groups or autocratic governments. To better assess the aim of disinformation campaigns, we propose to focus on informational power as a mediator underpinning Michael Mann's IEMP model based on ideological, economic, military, and political power. Working from this theoretical framework, we discuss the actors, messages, incentives, and techniques and tactics of disinformation campaigns from a European perspective.}, language = {en} }