IKM postdoc Aidar Zinnatullin at the ECPR General Conference, Thessaloniki (26–29 August 2025)

IKM postdoc Aidar Zinnatullin participated in the ECPR General 
Conference at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He presented 
“Conflict and Uncertainty as Drivers of Politicization of Socio-Scientific 
Issues: Media Dynamics During the COVID-19 Pandemic”, a study from 
the StraKoSim project, supported by the German Federal Ministry of 
Education and Research (BMFTR).

The study tracks how German mainstream media politicized biomedical 
and non-biomedical scientific expertise about COVID-19 using a set of 
computational text analysis techniques. The study finds that politicization
is episodic and event-driven, peaking at major policy events; it is more 
frequent and sustained in biomedical coverage, while non-biomedical 
coverage shows a lower baseline with sharper spikes. Media ideology 
conditions politicization asymmetrically: in non-biomedical domains, 
center-right outlets politicize more than centrists, while center-left 
outlets do not.

In addition, Aidar contributed to a conference panel related to his  
project about authoritarian responsiveness. In addition, he served as 
discussant on the panel "Contentious Politics in the Age of Digital 
Authoritarianism"