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The public sphere was both one of the most popular and most debated concepts in political philosophy in the 20th century. It is one of the few concepts that has attracted attention from a wide range of disciplines. Despite the already rich intellectual history of the concept, many scholars still disagree over its proper use and definition. The purpose of this article is to review recent research into the public sphere with a co-citation analysis. A citation analysis helps to obtain a broader view of the development of the concept in different disciplines. Such an approach is of importance because the concept of the public sphere is neither fixed nor stable, as is typical for an essentially contested concept. Rather than finding the most prominent or even "right" interpretation of the concept, the primary goal of this study is to explore the evolvement and differentiation of the concept in different domains and disciplines over time. In such an analysis, the whole corpus of academic literature focusing on the public sphere as a concept can be captured. In a first step, I introduce the concept of the public sphere as an essentially contested concept. In a second step, I analyze 5386 publications from the last 20 years with a co-citation analysis. Based on the data, I identify different research communities, analyze the development of the communities and topics over time, and empirically observe some of the conditions of an essentially contested concept.

AbstractThe threat of disinformation features strongly in public discourse, but scientific findings remain conflicted about disinformation effects and reach. Accordingly, indiscriminate warnings about disinformation risk overestimating its effects and associated dangers. Balanced accounts that document the presence of digital disinformation while accounting for empirically established limits offer a promising alternative. In a preregistered experiment, U.S. respondents were exposed to two treatments designed to resemble typical journalistic contributions discussing disinformation. The treatment emphasizing the dangers of disinformation indiscriminately (T1) raised the perceived dangers of disinformation among recipients. The balanced treatment (T2) lowered the perceived threat level. T1, but not T2, had negative downstream effects, increasing respondent support for heavily restrictive regulation of speech in digital communication environments. Overall, we see a positive correlation among all respondents between the perceived threat of disinformation to societies and dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy.

Twitter has already become one of the most important social media platforms for political communication. Concerning the use of Twitter in politics, two possible developments have been at the core of the theoretical discussion – equalization and normalization. As normalization seems to be the case in most western countries about politicians' Twitter use, it is yet unknown to what extent this debate can be applied to non-election times. The aim of our study is threefold. First, we address the debate of normalization on Twitter with a focus on the activity level on Twitter. Second, we classify the politicians based on their activity level in order to investigate to what extent the Twitter use still differs even if a high level of adoption has been reached. Third, we analyse the impact of the traditional media on the Twittersphere during parliamentary and non-parliamentary phases, thus focusing on non-election times. Our results show that even though media attention gives some politicians an advantage online, equalization tendencies are still possible on Twitter if politicians actively use the platform.

Online harassment is increasingly applied as a form of information control to curb free speech and exert power in online public spheres. In recent years, states have appeared to be particularly invested in weaponizing information against dissidents in an attempt at dominating social and political discourses. Reports by prominent human rights institutions, as well as anecdotal evidence, indicate that Iran remains among the states with a track record of such actions. The scope of targeted cyber abuse varies by case. This study investigates the size and perpetrators of online violence, harassment, and abuse against critical members of the Iranian diaspora, including journalists, civil society activists, and artists, among many others. This study substantiates findings of qualitative interviews with a quantitative study of Instagram accounts of related individuals and explores the patterns and communities involved in disseminating hate speech in an attempt at manipulating public opinion and suppressing voices of dissidents.

We analyse the use of Twitter in political communication in Switzerland because, in comparison with other democracies, Switzerland with its strong federalism, fragmented party system, small country size and semi-professional politicians can be seen as the least-likely critical case, thus creating unique conditions for the use of social media. The study investigates the individual characteristics of Swiss Members of Parliament that could influence social media usage. Thus, the study contributes to the debate about equalization and normalization with respect to Twitter as a relevant microblogging channel for political communication and to the significance of country-specific conditions for the adoption of innovations in political online communication. The study explains the shift from equalization towards normalization with the diffusion of innovations theory.

Inequities in China are reflected within state-run media coverage due to its specific role "guiding public opinion," and with our study we contribute to the geographic turn in the Chinese context with regard to media and journalism. As a subject of a spatial study, China is unique due to several factors: geographic diversity, authoritarian control, and centralized media. By analyzing text from 53,000 articles published in People's Daily (rénmín rìbào, 人民日報) from January 2016 to August 2020, we examine how the amount of news coverage varies by region within China, how topics and sentiments manifest in different places, and how coverage varies with regard to foreign countries. Automated methods were used to detect place names from the articles and geoparse them to specific locations, combining spatial analysis, topic modeling and sentiment analysis to identify geographic biases in news coverage in an authoritarian context. We found remarkably uniform and positive coverage domestically, but substantial differences towards coverage of different foreign countries.

Abstract
Alternative news media (ANM) have become an important information source for certain audiences. Research shows that ANM usage is linked to a preference for populist parties and the use of digital media. However, ANM existed before the rise of populism and digital media over the last two decades. Thus, we must assume that additional factors are related to ANM usage. To investigate such factors, we conducted a cross-sectional online survey (N = 1,212) of the Swiss population. We analyze how affinity toward conspiracy myths, preference for populist parties, the usage of social media, and the Telegram messenger app are related to ANM usage. The results indicate that people with a high affinity toward conspiracy myths are more likely to use ANM. Different than in previous studies, preference for populist politics is not related to higher ANM usage in Switzerland. Our results suggest that the political context matters when studying ANM usage and that the strong focus on right-wing populism might lead to scholars missing part of the bigger picture. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the use of social media and Telegram, which recently gained relevance as a channel for mobilizing protests during the COVID-19 pandemic, positively connect with ANM consumption.

I Einleitung I.1 Problemstellung -- I.2 Relevanz -- I.3 Vorgehen -- II Zum Begriff der Öffentlichkeit -- II.1 "Öffentlichkeit" in Kommunikationswissenschaft und Soziologie -- II.2 Der Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit -- II.3 Die digitale Transformation der Öffentlichkeit -- III Zur Etablierung von Gegenöffentlichkeiten -- III.1 Der Gegenöffentlichkeitsbegriff -- III.2 Sozialer Wandel als Bedingung -- III.3 Medialer Wandel als Bedingung -- III.4 Alternativmedien als Gegenöffentlichkeiten -- IV Relationen zwischen Öffentlichkeit und Gegenöffentlichkeit -- IV.1 Relationale Soziologie und digitale Räume -- IV.2 Relationen auf digitalen Plattformen -- V Theoretische Zwischenbilanz und empirische Forschungsfragen -- V.1 Öffentlichkeit und Gegenöffentlichkeit als relationale Theoriefiguren -- V.2 Zum Stellenwert von Gegenöffentlichkeiten in digitalen Gesellschaften -- V.3 Empirische Forschungsfragen -- VI Methodisches Design und Datenerhebung -- VI.1 Sampling alternativer Online-Nachrichtenmedien im DACH-Raum -- VI.2 Qualitative Analyse alternativer Newswebsites -- VI.3 Datenerhebung auf Twitter -- VI.4 Relationale Analyse der Digitalplattform Twitter -- VII Datenauswertung und Resultate -- VII.1 FF1: Bestandsaufnahme alternativer Online-Nachrichtenmedien im DACH-Raum – ein deskriptiver Überblick -- VII.2 FF2: Typologie alternativer Nachrichtenmedien -- VII.3 FF3: Twitter-Netzwerke alternativer Nachrichtenmedien -- VII.4 FF4: Relationen alternativer Nachrichtenmedien in der Twittersphäre -- VIII Ergebnisdarstellung und Fazit -- VIII.1 Gesamtresümee -- VIII.2 Limitationen -- VIII.3 Ausblick.

Twitter has pushed public opinion on foreign policy into partisan bubbles that often value alternative media sources over traditional media or political elites. Public opinion on China is no exception. On the left, some alternative media outlets support China as a socialist ideal, while others criticize it as a key player in global capitalism and neoliberal order. This leads to an important puzzle: How and why do some transnational left media disseminate pro-China messaging while others do not? We focus on two leftist alternative media outlets: the Qiao Collective and Lausan. Both organizations claim to offer a variety of counter-hegemonic-oriented discourses. We first qualitatively analyze the differences in how these two organizations frame key topics in contemporary Chinese politics including Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the Hong Kong protests. We then use quantitative social network analysis to show how their communication efforts lead to different follower audiences. In the last step, we analyze what issues the Qiao Collective is using to achieve its inward- and outward-oriented goals. Our study shows how both outlets focus on the transnational left, but each reaches distinct audiences that do not overlap. We find that the Qiao Collective jumps on traditional left-wing issues in the US to extend its reach while regularly posting positive, often revisionist perspectives about Chinese politics. This specific element conflicts with its claim of supporting anti-imperialist and pro-democracy politics and distinguishes the Qiao Collective from other transnational left outlets.

As social media sites have become significant arenas for political debate in recent years, this paper investigates the political debate that took place on Twitter in the wake of the Swiss referendum on the Nuclear Withdrawal Initiative, which was conducted in November 2016. Using Twitter data of 3000 users, we could identify 7 distinct communities that varied in terms of their size, position, and contribution to the debate. The most dominant communities in the debate were the Conservative Mainstream and the Green-Left communities. Moreover, our findings show that communities supporting and opposing the initiative differ with regard to the wording they use in their tweets. Finally, our results reveal an active exchange both within and, even more importantly, between the communities, which indicates a rather pluralistic and internally connected debate. Thus, our findings clearly contrast with those of prior studies concerning political debates on social media that identified pronounced echo chambers.

In recent years, several instances of political actors who created fake grassroots activity on the Internet have been uncovered. We propose to call such fake online grassroots activity digital astroturfing, and we define it as a form of manufactured, deceptive and strategic top-down activity on the Internet initiated by political actors that mimics bottom-up activity by autonomous individuals. The goal of this paper is to lay out a conceptual map of the phenomenon of digital astroturfing in politics. To that end, we introduce, first, a typology of digital astroturfing according to three dimensions (target, actor type, goals), and, second, the concept of digital astroturfing repertoires, the possible combinations of tools, venues and actions used in digital astroturfing efforts. Furthermore, we explore possible restrictive and incentivizing countermeasures against digital astroturfing. Finally, we discuss prospects for future research: Even though empirical research on digital astroturfing is difficult, it is neither impossible nor futile.

Viele Politiker und Journalisten nutzen Twitter inzwischen regelmäßig und sind über die Microblogging-Plattform miteinander vernetzt. Daher ist es im Sinne des Agenda-Building-Ansatzes für Politikerinnen und Politiker potenziell möglich, zu versuchen, über Twitter die Berichterstattung der Journalisten zu beeinflussen. Der Beitrag analysiert vor diesem Hintergrund, welche Faktoren politischer Tweets deren Nutzung durch Schweizer Journalisten erklären. Basis ist eine standardisierte Online-Befragung Schweizer Journalistinnen und Journalisten zu ihrer Nutzung von Tweets von Politikern für ihre Arbeit. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Journalisten politische Tweets vor allem dann für ihre Berichterstattung nutzen, wenn sie sich als Zitate eignen oder Informationen zu Hintergründen oder politischen Veranstaltungen enthalten. Da politische Tweets vor allem genutzt werden, wenn sie zitierfähig sind, ist ein Agenda-Building-Prozess über Twitter plausibel.