Project Details
Projekt
Political discourse: ComAI and deliberative quality
Subject Area
Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
Communication Sciences
Communication Sciences
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 516511468
Political deliberation on the internet is widely seen as potentially vital to the larger public debate about fundamental societal challenges by virtue of its speed, breadth and openness. At the same time, debates on social media platforms are often polarized and plagued by problems such as incivility, lack of factuality and one-sidedness of arguments. P7 will investigate communicative AI in the domain of political discourse by means of online discursive monitoring and intervention. Taking on a largely experimental approach, we will study the effect of social bots that utilize large language models (LLMs) on the quality of deliberation. As our case study we will approach debates related to climate change on German-language Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. Combining discourse theory with recent innovations in LLMs, we will both monitor and intervene in public political discussions. Enlisting a group of public speakers on climate change, we will also closely investigate how social bots are appropriated in the domain of political discourse by analyzing discourse trajectories with and without bot intervention, and through accompanying user surveys.
DFG Programme
Research Units
