Project team: Prof. Dr. Silke Adam, Prof. Dr. Michaela Maier, Dr. Teresa Gil-Lopez, Dr. Mykola Makhortykh, Dr. Aleksandra Urman, Dr. Clara Christner, Ani Baghumyan, Ernesto de León, Dr. Lea Gorski, Dr. Maryna Sydorova, Dr. Roberto Ulloa

The project is funded by the „Swiss National Science Foundation" (FNSNF) and the "Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft" (DFG)

Project partner: Institute of Communication and Media Studies, Bern

Publications

Adam, S., Urman, A., Arlt, D., Gil-Lopez, T., Makhortykh, M., Maier, M. (2023). Media trust and the COVID-19 pandemic: An analysis of short-term trust changes, their ideological drivers, and consequences in Switzerland. Communication Research, 50(2), 205-229. doi.org/10.1177/00936502221127484

Christner, C., Urman, A., Adam, S., & Maier, M. (2022). Automated Tracking Approaches for Studying Online Media Use: A Critical Review and Recommendations. Communication methods and measures, 16(2), 79-95. doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2021.1907841

de León, E., Makhortykh, M., Gil-Lopez, T., Urman, A., & Adam, S. (2022). News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship. The International Journal of Press/Politics. doi.org/10.1177/19401612221087179

de León, E. (2023). On Issue Survival: News Media and How Political Issues Remain Salient in the Face of Crisis. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 35(3), 1-12. doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edad024

Gil-Lopez, T., Christner, C., de León, E., Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Maier, M., & Adam, S. (2023). Do (not!) track me: Relationship between Willingness to Participate and Sample Composition in Online Information Behavior Tracking Research. Social Science Computer Review. doi.org/10.1177/08944393231156634

Maier, M., Gil-Lopez, T., Bromme, L., Zinkernagel, A., Welzenbach-Vogel, I. C., Christner, C., Adam, S., Schmitt, M., & Tillman, E. R. (2023). The interplay between explicit and implicit populist radical-right attitudes in Germany and Switzerland. Political Psychology, Online First. doi.org/10.1111/pops.12895

Maier, M., Welzenbach-Vogel, I.C., Christner, C., Tillman, E.R., Zinkernagel, A., & Schmitt, M. (2022). Implicit and explicit populist and anti-immigrant attitudes and their explanatory power for populist radical-right party support. Acta Politica (2022). doi.org/10.1057/s41269-022-00255-6

Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Gil-Lopez, T., & Ulloa, R. (2022). To track or not to track: examining perceptions of online tracking for information behavior research. Internet Research, 32(7), 260-279. doi.org/10.1108/INTR-01-2021-0074

Urman, A. & Makhortykh, M. (2021). You are how (and where) you search? Comparative analysis of web search behaviour using web tracking data. Journal of Computational Social Science. doi.org/10.1007/s42001-023-00208-9

Conference Presentations

2023

Adam, S.; de Leon, E., Mykhortykh, M.; Rohrbach, T.; Keller, F., Valli C., Baghumyan, A.; Gil-Lopez, T.; Maier, M. (2023): Wie Informationen und Voreinstellungen den Glauben an Verschwörungstheorien beeinflussen. Münchenwiler Seminar, Schweiz.  

Adam, S.; de Leon, E., Mykhortykh, M.; Rohrbach, T.; Keller, F., Valli C., Baghumyan, A.; Gil-Lopez, T.(2023): What makes people trust conspiracy ideas. Workshop Information quality and trust. Dresden, Germany. 

de León, E. (2023, April) On Issue Survival: News Media and How Political Issues Remain Salient in the Face of Crisis. Paper presented at Swiss Association for Communication and Media Research (Political Communication section). 

Maier, M. (2023, March). Implicit and Explicit Right-Wing Populism in Germany and Switzerland. Measuring Communication Concepts: Conceptualization and Data Collection Workshop, Haifa, Israel.

2022

de León, E., Makhortykh, M. & Adam, S. (2022, August). A Portrait of Alternative COVID-19 News Users – Who They Are, What They Read and How They Access It. Paper presented at the ECPR 2022, Innsbruck, Austria.

Christner, C., Makhortykh, M., & Gil-Lopez, T. (2022, August). Who encounters disinformation online? Combining survey and web tracking data to investigate predictors of disinformation exposure. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck, Austria.

Makhortykh, M., de León, E., Christner, C., Sydorova, M., Urman, A., Adam, S., Maier, M., & Gil-Lopez, T. (2022, August). Is a single model enough? Lessons learned from systematically comparing automated classifications of populist radical right content in German. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Innsbruck, Austria.

de León, E., Makhortykh, M., & Adam, S. (2022, May). Walking roads to hyperpartisan news: Online intermediaries to COVID-19 news during the outbreak of the pandemic. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

Urman, A. & Makhortykh, M. (2022, May). You are how (and where) you search? Comparative analysis of web search behaviour using web tracking data. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

Gil-Lopez, T., Christner, C., de León, E., & Makhortykh, M. (2022, May). Do (not!) track me: Relationship between willingness to participate and sample composition in online information behavior tracking research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

Maier, M., Adam, S., Gil-Lopez, T., Makhortykh, M., Bromme, L., Christner, C., de León, E., & Urman, A. (2022, May). Populist radical-right attitudes and selective information exposure: studying who tunes out and who prefers attitude-consonant information. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

Makhortykh, M., de León, E., Urman, A., Gil-Lopez, T., Christner, C., Adam, S., & Maier, M. (2022, May). Panning for gold: Lessons learned from automated classification of political and populist radical right content for German textual content. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

Adam, S., Maier, M., Aigenseer, V., Makhortykh, M., Ulla, R., Urman, A., Christner, C., & Gil-Lopez, T. (2022, May). One Does Not Simply Analyze Tracking Data: Challenges of Utilizing Large-Scale Tracking Collections for Communication Research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), Paris, France.

2021

Gil-Lopez, T., Makhortykh, M., & Urman, A. (2021, September). Do (not!) track me: Relationship between willingness to participate and representativeness of online tracking research. Paper presented at the ECREA conference, virtual conference.

Makhortykh, M., Maier, M., Aigenseer, V., Ulloa, R., Urman, A., Christner, C., Gil-Lopez, T., & Adam, S. (2021, September). Tell me what you browse: Using browser tracking to study (political) information behaviour. Paper presented at the ECREA conference, virtual conference.

Adam, S., Maier, M., Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Christner, C., de León, E., & Gil Lopez, T. (2021, July). Pushing research on user-centric information exposure forward: bringing tracking, survey and automated text classification together. Keynote at the IC2S2, Zurich. 

de León, E., Makhortykh, M., Gil-Lopez, T., Adam, S. (2021). Rally Round what Flag? The Role of Media Consumption during the COVID-19 Pandemic for the Development of Political Trust in Switzerland (Unpublished). In: 71st Annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference (Mass Communication Division) - “Engaging the Essential Work of Care: Communication, Connectedness, and Social Justice”. Virtual. 27.05-31.05.2021.

de León, E., Makhortykh, M., & Urman, A. (2021, May). Where did you come from, where did you go? Pathways to news in Germany and Switzerland. Paper presented at the ICA Annual Convention, virtual conference.

de León, E., Makhortykh, M., Gil-Lopez, T., & Adam, S. (2021, May). The Role of Media Consumption during the COVID-19 Pandemic for the Development of Political Trust. Paper presented at the ICA Annual Convention, virtual conference.

Christner, C. & Makhortykh M. (2021, May). Work in Progress: Who encounters disinformation online and why? Investigating predictors of exposure to disinformation (Work in Progress). Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), (virtual conference).

Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Adam, S., Maier, M., Merten, L., Metoui, N., Gil-Lopez, T., & Christner, C. (2021, April). New methods for new (and old) topics: Tracking information behaviour at the time of change. Panel at DACH 21, virtual conference.

Adam, S., Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Christner, C., Gil-Lopez, T., & Maier, M. (2021, April). Media consumption and conspiracy beliefs in COVID-19 times – combing tracking and survey research. Paper presented at the Dreiländertagung für Kommunikationswissenschaft, Zürich, Switzerland (virtual conference).

Makhortykh M., Adam, S., Maier, M., Urman A., Gil-Lopez, T., Christner, C., & De Léon, E. (2021, April). News at the time of crisis: Comparing desktop- and mobile-based browsing behaviour during COVID-19 pandemic. Paper presented at the Dreiländertagung für Kommunikationswissenschaft, Zürich, Switzerland (virtual conference).

2020

Gil-Lopez, T. (2020). Mobilizing alienation: An empirical test of the relationship between populist-radical-right attitudes and citizen’s willingness to engage in contentious participatory behaviors through exposure to alternative media. Paper presented at the 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), virtual conference.

Maier, M., Gil-Lopez, T., Welzenbach-Vogel, I.C., Christner, C., Zinkernagel, A., Adam, S., Schmitt, M., & Tilmann, E. (2020, July). Assessing the populist radical-right potential. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP), Berlin, Germany (virtual conference).

Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Gil-Lopez, T., & Ulloa, R. (2020). To track or not to track: Examining perceptions of online tracking in the context of information behaviour research. Paper presented at the ICA Annual Convention, Gold Coast.

Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Gil-Lopez, T., & Ulloa, R. (2020). Would you kindly let us track you? Examining perceptions of online tracking in the context of information behaviour research. Paper presented at the 9th biennial Surveillance & Society conference of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN2020), Rotterdam.

2019

Makhortykh, M., Urman, A., Christner, C. & Gil Lopez, T. (2019, November). Veritas es machina: A critical review of automated approaches for detecting political disinformation online. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the German Communication Association’s Division “Digital Communication”, Berlin, Germany. 

Urman, A., Christner, C., Adam, S., & Maier, M. (2019, July). Online tracking tools for research purposes: A critical review of existing approaches. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC²S²), Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Aigenseer, V., Adam, S., Maier, M., Urman, A., Christner, C., Makhortykh, M., & Gil-Lopez, T. (2019, July). WebTrack – tracking users’ online information behavior while screen-scraping content. Poster presented at the 5th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC²S²), Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Aigenseer, V., Urman, A., Maier, M., Adam, S. & Christner, C. (2019, May). Webtrack. Chrome Extension for Tracking Users' Browsing Behavior using Screen-Scraping, 3rd Digital Tracking Workshop, Washington D.C.

Preparatory work

2018

Maier, M., Urman, A. & Christner, C. (2018, October). Tracking Political Information Behavior. 1. Digital Tracking Workshop, Amsterdam.

Maier, M., Vogel., I., Christner, C., Tillman, E. & Schmitt, M. (2018, July). Development of Implicit Measures for Populist Attitudes. Annual meeting of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR), Marrakesh.

2017

Vogel, I., Christner, C., Maier, M., Tillman, E. & Schmitt, M. (2017, September). Development of Implicit Measures for Populist Attitudes. Fachgruppentagung Medienpsychologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie (DGPs), Landau. 

Questionnaires

To access the German-language questionnaires, please click on the country name in the corresponding wave.

Wave 1: Germany, Switzerland

Wave 2: Germany, Switzerland

Wave 3: Switzerland

WebTrack

The license for the software developed within this project (WebTrack) remain with the University of Bern and the Technical University of Rheinland-Pfalz. For non-commercial purposes, the code is open source

Backend source code: https://gitfront.io/r/user-6760823/Xkff33k5rYKD/webtrack-server/

Frontend source code: https://gitfront.io/r/user-6760823/FGeoQFp11QgS/webtrack-extension/