Annett Heft
Biographic Data
| ID | 4267289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Annett Heft |
| GIVEN NAMES | Annett |
| FAMILY NAME | Heft |
| SIGNATURE | HEFT A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Weizenbaum Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6637-795X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 28 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Attributing coordinated social media manipulation
Social media are key arenas for public opinion formation, but are susceptible to coordinated social media manipulation (CSMM), that is, the orchestrated activity of multiple accounts to increase content visibility and deceive audiences. Despite advances in detecting and characterizing CSMM, the attribution problem—identifying the principals behind CSMM campaigns—has received little scholarly attention. In this article, we address this gap by synt…
Veiled conspiracism
Digital communication venues are essential infrastructures for anti-democratic actors to spread harmful content such as conspiracy theories. Capitalizing on platform affordances, they leverage conspiracy theories to mainstream their political views in broader public discourse. We compared the word choice, language style, and communicative function of conspiracy-related content to understand its platform-dependent differences and convergence. Our …
Differential social media affordances
Social media have profoundly changed social communication practices across a vast range of contexts. To theorize these changes, numerous authors have proposed digital affordances as a conceptual lens. Yet, to date, most accounts of digital affordances either gloss broadly over cross-platform or use-dependent differences in practices; or they are highly context-specific, obstructing theoretical integration. In this article, we conceptualize social…
Lgde
We present Local Graph-based Dictionary Expansion (LGDE), a method for data-driven discovery of the semantic neighbourhood of words using tools from manifold learning and network science. At the heart of LGDE lies the creation of a word similarity graph from the geometry of word embeddings followed by local community detection based on graph diffusion. The diffusion in the local graph manifold allows the exploration of the complex nonlinear geome…
Lgde
We present Local Graph-based Dictionary Expansion (LGDE), a method for data-driven discovery of the semantic neighborhood of words using tools from manifold learning and network science. At the heart of LGDE lies the creation of a word similarity graph from the geometry of word embeddings followed by local community detection based on graph diffusion. The diffusion in the local graph manifold allows the exploration of the complex nonlinear geomet…
Varieties of antigenderism
This research contributes to the study of populist radical right parties’ (PRRPs) role in gendered democratic backsliding by analyzing their articulation and symbolic representation of gender issues. We compare the politicization of gender issues across three European PRRPs, examining how context-specific gendered opportunity structures – the level of contestation of gender issues in their country, the resonance of antigenderism among their elect…
Copycats? Do right-wing groups emulate left-wing digital advocacy organizations
Same but different? Explaining issue agendas of right-wing parties’ Facebook campaigns in the 2019 EP election
Social media are important for right-wing parties to communicate with and mobilize potential voters in election campaigns. Our study focuses on the Facebook campaigns of right-wing parties in six European countries and aims to understand which issues are transnationally shared and which ones emphasize national perspectives on the agenda of the populist actors. We ask what context conditions at party and country-levels determine the individual iss…
Resiliencia de las esferas públicas en la crisis sanitaria mundial
La pandemia de la Covid-19 alteró los modos “normales” de funcionamiento de la esfera pública y activó un modo experimental de hacerla frente, que reinventaba las formas de lo público y los intercambios comunicativos. En este artículo, conceptualizamos las respuestas sociales desencadenadas por la crisis como formas particulares de resiliencia de la esfera pública, y evaluamos el papel de la digitalización y los espacios digitales en la aparición…
Mapping a Dark Space
Crafted as an open communication platform characterized by high anonymity and minimal moderation, Telegram has garnered increasing popularity among activists operating within repressive political contexts, as well as among political extremists and conspiracy theorists. While Telegram offers valuable data access to research non-institutionalized activism, scholars studying the latter on Telegram face unique theoretical and methodological challenge…
Mobilization and support structures in radical right party networks. Digital political communication ecologies in the 2019 European parliament elections
The 2019 European Parliament elections seemingly fostered concerted political action among radical right parties (RRPs) to fortify their positions and mobilize publics on a pan-European scale. Digital platforms provide central infrastructure for networks among political actors and user interactions on the ground. Our study, therefore, investigates the intra-and transnational networking on Twitter established by RRPs' strategic communication and u…
Challenges of and approaches to data collection across platforms and time
Taking the example of conspiracy-related communication online as one form of contentious politics, this study examines the data collection challenges for multidimensional comparative research across platforms, time, and cultural embeddings. It compares the architectures and features relevant to data collection, access regimes, and use cultures for a set of digital platforms and communication venues. Differentiating between actor- and content-base…
Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics
This article investigates how the hybrid nature of right-wing alternative news media striving for journalistic legitimacy and partisan credibility plays out on source and topical diversity and balance in article content. The article draws on a sample of 1000 randomly selected articles published by 20 right-wing alternative online news media from six countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden) from March 2019 to February 2020…
Transnational issue agendas of the radical right? Parties’ Facebook campaign communication in six countries during the 2019 European Parliament election
In this study, we investigate to what degree radical right parties use social media for pushing a common issue agenda to mobilise voters on a pan-European scale. Using the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election as a case, we analysed radical right parties’ campaign agendas in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden and identified the transnationally shared issue repertoire in their Facebook communication. Based on the structural topic …
Anti‐elitism in the European Radical Right in Comparative Perspective
To better understand the communication of anti‐elitism in contemporary politics, this study conceptually differentiates between specific anti‐elitism geared toward specific, materially powerful elites (‘Angela Merkel’) and general anti‐elitism referencing broader discursive constructs (‘the elite’). The study analyses the online communications of radical right parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections from six countries (Germany, France, …
Pandemic Protesters on Telegram
This study analyzes how platform affordances, their appropriation by movement actors, and these actors' leveraging of information ecosystems-in combination-helped form a digital counterpublic during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on public communication data sent by more than 300 Telegram channels and group chats affiliated with the Querdenken movement over a 2-year period, and combines automated and manual text classification with network analy…
Between Journalistic and Movement Logic
The article analyzes the in-article referencing practices of right-wing alternative online news media. It distinguishes between a journalistic logic, in which referencing practices follow established journalistic ways of ensuring facticity and context, and a movement logic, in which references are used to obtain political, movement-oriented goals of dismissing opponents, supporting your allies, multiplying forces and building a community. Based o…
BRAT Rapid Annotation Tool
Im Kontext interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit insbesondere mit Kolleg*innen aus der Informatik wird die Kommunikations- und Medienforschung seit geraumer Zeit mit einer großen Bandbreite an Forschungssoftware konfrontiert, mit der sie bislang nur wenig Erfahrungen hat. Neben Programmiersprachen wie Python oder R sind dies etwa spezifische Tools zur Textanalyse, die eine Alternative zu bisherigen Varianten der computergestützten Inhaltsanalyse dars…
Measuring the diffusion of conspiracy theories in digital information ecologies
Digital platforms and media are fertile breeding grounds for disinformation and conspirational views. They provide a variety of communication venues for a mixed set of actors and foster the diffusion of content between actor groups, across platforms and media, and across languages and geographical spaces. Understanding those diffusion processes requires approaches to measure the prevalence and spread of communicative acts within and across digita…
Resilience of Public Spheres in a Global Health Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted “normal” modes of public sphere functioning and activated an experimental mode of coping, reinventing forms of publicness and communicative exchanges. We conceptualise the social responses triggered by the crisis as particular forms of public sphere resilience and assess the role of digitalisation and digital spaces in the emergence of distinct modes and dynamics of resilience. Four areas of enhanced public sphere …
Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture
Current research on visual media and the far right creates two expectations: that memes play an increasingly salient role in the far right’s digital visual culture, and that the visual and participatory dimensions of internet culture facilitate greater transnationality. We explore these expectations with a comparative research design, situating memes in relation to other genres of visual content and across different country contexts. Taking a mix…
Transnational Journalism Networks “From Below”. Cross-Border Journalistic Collaboration in Individualized Newswork
Journalism pioneers practice and foster the method of cross-border collaboration, contributing to the ongoing transformation of the journalistic field. This paper analyzes cross-border journalistic collaborations primarily initiated beyond large media organizations. Based on information provided by Hostwriter members and Dataharvest – the EIJC participants, this study carves out (1) central motives, (2) types and characteristics of cross-border r…
Cross-bordering journalism
This article examines the adoption of cross-border collaboration practices by introducing the concept of ‘intermediaries of change’: individual journalists who drive the adoption and gradual normalisation of pioneering cross-border practices. We ask how they implement cross-border practices, integrate them into existing working routines, and how this influences their working conditions using a case study on Europe’s Far Right, a network of seven …
Beyond Breitbart
Right‐wing online news media have emerged in many countries as an important force in the media landscape, positioning themselves as an alternative to a perceived political and media mainstream. This article studies these sites as a cornerstone of right‐wing digital news infrastructures in six Western democracies (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on content analyses of websites and social media…
Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States
The recent rise of a more transnationally networked political right across Europe and the United States has been accompanied by an emerging alternative digital news infrastructure through which information circulates and shared epistemologies are established. This paper examines the extent to which digital news sites on the right are interconnected within and across countries. It further explores which additional sites serve as transnationally sh…
Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States
The recent rise of a more transnationally networked political right across Europe and the United States has been accompanied by an emerging alternative digital news infrastructure through which information circulates and shared epistemologies are established. This paper examines the extent to which digital news sites on the right are interconnected within and across countries. It further explores which additional sites serve as transnationally sh…
Cross-bordering journalism
This article examines the adoption of cross-border collaboration practices by introducing the concept of ‘intermediaries of change’: individual journalists who drive the adoption and gradual normalisation of pioneering cross-border practices. We ask how they implement cross-border practices, integrate them into existing working routines, and how this influences their working conditions using a case study on Europe’s Far Right, a network of seven …
Searching for Autonomy in Digital News Entrepreneurism Projects
Digital entrepreneurism is often depicted as a positive disruption in the news ecosystem; it initiates new business models, fosters new ways of storytelling, and enables closer interaction with audiences. The extent to which entrepreneurial journalism entails a disruption of journalistic norms, roles, and procedures remains a matter of debate. Against this background, our study aims to explore how news entrepreneurism impacts journalistic autonom…
Transnational issue agendas of the radical right? Parties’ Facebook campaign communication in six countries during the 2019 European Parliament election
In this study, we investigate to what degree radical right parties use social media for pushing a common issue agenda to mobilise voters on a pan-European scale. Using the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election as a case, we analysed radical right parties’ campaign agendas in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden and identified the transnationally shared issue repertoire in their Facebook communication. Based on the structural topic …
Anti‐elitism in the European Radical Right in Comparative Perspective
To better understand the communication of anti‐elitism in contemporary politics, this study conceptually differentiates between specific anti‐elitism geared toward specific, materially powerful elites (‘Angela Merkel’) and general anti‐elitism referencing broader discursive constructs (‘the elite’). The study analyses the online communications of radical right parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections from six countries (Germany, France, …
Transnational Journalism Networks “From Below”. Cross-Border Journalistic Collaboration in Individualized Newswork
Journalism pioneers practice and foster the method of cross-border collaboration, contributing to the ongoing transformation of the journalistic field. This paper analyzes cross-border journalistic collaborations primarily initiated beyond large media organizations. Based on information provided by Hostwriter members and Dataharvest – the EIJC participants, this study carves out (1) central motives, (2) types and characteristics of cross-border r…
Challenges of and approaches to data collection across platforms and time
Taking the example of conspiracy-related communication online as one form of contentious politics, this study examines the data collection challenges for multidimensional comparative research across platforms, time, and cultural embeddings. It compares the architectures and features relevant to data collection, access regimes, and use cultures for a set of digital platforms and communication venues. Differentiating between actor- and content-base…
Copycats? Do right-wing groups emulate left-wing digital advocacy organizations
Veiled conspiracism
Digital communication venues are essential infrastructures for anti-democratic actors to spread harmful content such as conspiracy theories. Capitalizing on platform affordances, they leverage conspiracy theories to mainstream their political views in broader public discourse. We compared the word choice, language style, and communicative function of conspiracy-related content to understand its platform-dependent differences and convergence. Our …
Same but different? Explaining issue agendas of right-wing parties’ Facebook campaigns in the 2019 EP election
Social media are important for right-wing parties to communicate with and mobilize potential voters in election campaigns. Our study focuses on the Facebook campaigns of right-wing parties in six European countries and aims to understand which issues are transnationally shared and which ones emphasize national perspectives on the agenda of the populist actors. We ask what context conditions at party and country-levels determine the individual iss…
Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics
This article investigates how the hybrid nature of right-wing alternative news media striving for journalistic legitimacy and partisan credibility plays out on source and topical diversity and balance in article content. The article draws on a sample of 1000 randomly selected articles published by 20 right-wing alternative online news media from six countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden) from March 2019 to February 2020…
Pandemic Protesters on Telegram
This study analyzes how platform affordances, their appropriation by movement actors, and these actors' leveraging of information ecosystems-in combination-helped form a digital counterpublic during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on public communication data sent by more than 300 Telegram channels and group chats affiliated with the Querdenken movement over a 2-year period, and combines automated and manual text classification with network analy…
Here, There and Everywhere”
This paper provides an overview of possibilities to localize acts of communication and their agents based on digital traces and scrutinizes their advantages and disadvantages. It shows, (i) what types of geographic information exist in social media data and to what extent they are available to researchers, (ii) which approaches exist to classify locations and (iii) what the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are. Introducing a…
Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten in der Digitalen Gesellschaft
Barbara Pfetsch, Annett Heft und Curd Knüpfer diskutieren in ihrem Beitrag die Form und demokratischen Qualitäten von öffentlicher Kommunikation jenseits des Nationalstaates und im Hinblick auf die Bedingungen und Folgen des Wandels von Kommunikationsinfrastrukturen infolge der Digitalisierung. Durch digitale Plattformen und Netzwerke können Problemlagen, wie sie infolge der Globalisierung jenseits und zwischen nationalstaatlichen Zuständigkeiten…
Searching for Autonomy in Digital News Entrepreneurism Projects
Digital entrepreneurism is often depicted as a positive disruption in the news ecosystem; it initiates new business models, fosters new ways of storytelling, and enables closer interaction with audiences. The extent to which entrepreneurial journalism entails a disruption of journalistic norms, roles, and procedures remains a matter of debate. Against this background, our study aims to explore how news entrepreneurism impacts journalistic autonom…
Beyond Breitbart
Right‐wing online news media have emerged in many countries as an important force in the media landscape, positioning themselves as an alternative to a perceived political and media mainstream. This article studies these sites as a cornerstone of right‐wing digital news infrastructures in six Western democracies (Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Drawing on content analyses of websites and social media…
Toward a Transnational Information Ecology on the Right? Hyperlink Networking among Right-Wing Digital News Sites in Europe and the United States
The recent rise of a more transnationally networked political right across Europe and the United States has been accompanied by an emerging alternative digital news infrastructure through which information circulates and shared epistemologies are established. This paper examines the extent to which digital news sites on the right are interconnected within and across countries. It further explores which additional sites serve as transnationally sh…
Here, There and Everywhere”
This paper provides an overview of possibilities to localize acts of communication and their agents based on digital traces and scrutinizes their advantages and disadvantages. It shows, (i) what types of geographic information exist in social media data and to what extent they are available to researchers, (ii) which approaches exist to classify locations and (iii) what the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches are. Introducing a…
Resilience of Public Spheres in a Global Health Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted “normal” modes of public sphere functioning and activated an experimental mode of coping, reinventing forms of publicness and communicative exchanges. We conceptualise the social responses triggered by the crisis as particular forms of public sphere resilience and assess the role of digitalisation and digital spaces in the emergence of distinct modes and dynamics of resilience. Four areas of enhanced public sphere …
Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture
Current research on visual media and the far right creates two expectations: that memes play an increasingly salient role in the far right’s digital visual culture, and that the visual and participatory dimensions of internet culture facilitate greater transnationality. We explore these expectations with a comparative research design, situating memes in relation to other genres of visual content and across different country contexts. Taking a mix…
Transnational Journalism Networks “From Below”. Cross-Border Journalistic Collaboration in Individualized Newswork
Journalism pioneers practice and foster the method of cross-border collaboration, contributing to the ongoing transformation of the journalistic field. This paper analyzes cross-border journalistic collaborations primarily initiated beyond large media organizations. Based on information provided by Hostwriter members and Dataharvest – the EIJC participants, this study carves out (1) central motives, (2) types and characteristics of cross-border r…
Cross-bordering journalism
This article examines the adoption of cross-border collaboration practices by introducing the concept of ‘intermediaries of change’: individual journalists who drive the adoption and gradual normalisation of pioneering cross-border practices. We ask how they implement cross-border practices, integrate them into existing working routines, and how this influences their working conditions using a case study on Europe’s Far Right, a network of seven …
Between Journalistic and Movement Logic
The article analyzes the in-article referencing practices of right-wing alternative online news media. It distinguishes between a journalistic logic, in which referencing practices follow established journalistic ways of ensuring facticity and context, and a movement logic, in which references are used to obtain political, movement-oriented goals of dismissing opponents, supporting your allies, multiplying forces and building a community. Based o…
BRAT Rapid Annotation Tool
Im Kontext interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit insbesondere mit Kolleg*innen aus der Informatik wird die Kommunikations- und Medienforschung seit geraumer Zeit mit einer großen Bandbreite an Forschungssoftware konfrontiert, mit der sie bislang nur wenig Erfahrungen hat. Neben Programmiersprachen wie Python oder R sind dies etwa spezifische Tools zur Textanalyse, die eine Alternative zu bisherigen Varianten der computergestützten Inhaltsanalyse dars…
Measuring the diffusion of conspiracy theories in digital information ecologies
Digital platforms and media are fertile breeding grounds for disinformation and conspirational views. They provide a variety of communication venues for a mixed set of actors and foster the diffusion of content between actor groups, across platforms and media, and across languages and geographical spaces. Understanding those diffusion processes requires approaches to measure the prevalence and spread of communicative acts within and across digita…
Resiliencia de las esferas públicas en la crisis sanitaria mundial
La pandemia de la Covid-19 alteró los modos “normales” de funcionamiento de la esfera pública y activó un modo experimental de hacerla frente, que reinventaba las formas de lo público y los intercambios comunicativos. En este artículo, conceptualizamos las respuestas sociales desencadenadas por la crisis como formas particulares de resiliencia de la esfera pública, y evaluamos el papel de la digitalización y los espacios digitales en la aparición…
Mapping a Dark Space
Crafted as an open communication platform characterized by high anonymity and minimal moderation, Telegram has garnered increasing popularity among activists operating within repressive political contexts, as well as among political extremists and conspiracy theorists. While Telegram offers valuable data access to research non-institutionalized activism, scholars studying the latter on Telegram face unique theoretical and methodological challenge…
Mobilization and support structures in radical right party networks. Digital political communication ecologies in the 2019 European parliament elections
The 2019 European Parliament elections seemingly fostered concerted political action among radical right parties (RRPs) to fortify their positions and mobilize publics on a pan-European scale. Digital platforms provide central infrastructure for networks among political actors and user interactions on the ground. Our study, therefore, investigates the intra-and transnational networking on Twitter established by RRPs' strategic communication and u…
Challenges of and approaches to data collection across platforms and time
Taking the example of conspiracy-related communication online as one form of contentious politics, this study examines the data collection challenges for multidimensional comparative research across platforms, time, and cultural embeddings. It compares the architectures and features relevant to data collection, access regimes, and use cultures for a set of digital platforms and communication venues. Differentiating between actor- and content-base…
Right Topic, Right Source? Source Diversity and Balance in Right-Wing Alternative News Content Across Topics
This article investigates how the hybrid nature of right-wing alternative news media striving for journalistic legitimacy and partisan credibility plays out on source and topical diversity and balance in article content. The article draws on a sample of 1000 randomly selected articles published by 20 right-wing alternative online news media from six countries (the US, the UK, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden) from March 2019 to February 2020…
Transnational issue agendas of the radical right? Parties’ Facebook campaign communication in six countries during the 2019 European Parliament election
In this study, we investigate to what degree radical right parties use social media for pushing a common issue agenda to mobilise voters on a pan-European scale. Using the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election as a case, we analysed radical right parties’ campaign agendas in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden and identified the transnationally shared issue repertoire in their Facebook communication. Based on the structural topic …
Anti‐elitism in the European Radical Right in Comparative Perspective
To better understand the communication of anti‐elitism in contemporary politics, this study conceptually differentiates between specific anti‐elitism geared toward specific, materially powerful elites (‘Angela Merkel’) and general anti‐elitism referencing broader discursive constructs (‘the elite’). The study analyses the online communications of radical right parties in the 2019 European Parliament elections from six countries (Germany, France, …
Pandemic Protesters on Telegram
This study analyzes how platform affordances, their appropriation by movement actors, and these actors' leveraging of information ecosystems-in combination-helped form a digital counterpublic during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on public communication data sent by more than 300 Telegram channels and group chats affiliated with the Querdenken movement over a 2-year period, and combines automated and manual text classification with network analy…
Varieties of antigenderism
This research contributes to the study of populist radical right parties’ (PRRPs) role in gendered democratic backsliding by analyzing their articulation and symbolic representation of gender issues. We compare the politicization of gender issues across three European PRRPs, examining how context-specific gendered opportunity structures – the level of contestation of gender issues in their country, the resonance of antigenderism among their elect…
Copycats? Do right-wing groups emulate left-wing digital advocacy organizations
Same but different? Explaining issue agendas of right-wing parties’ Facebook campaigns in the 2019 EP election
Social media are important for right-wing parties to communicate with and mobilize potential voters in election campaigns. Our study focuses on the Facebook campaigns of right-wing parties in six European countries and aims to understand which issues are transnationally shared and which ones emphasize national perspectives on the agenda of the populist actors. We ask what context conditions at party and country-levels determine the individual iss…
Attributing coordinated social media manipulation
Social media are key arenas for public opinion formation, but are susceptible to coordinated social media manipulation (CSMM), that is, the orchestrated activity of multiple accounts to increase content visibility and deceive audiences. Despite advances in detecting and characterizing CSMM, the attribution problem—identifying the principals behind CSMM campaigns—has received little scholarly attention. In this article, we address this gap by synt…
Veiled conspiracism
Digital communication venues are essential infrastructures for anti-democratic actors to spread harmful content such as conspiracy theories. Capitalizing on platform affordances, they leverage conspiracy theories to mainstream their political views in broader public discourse. We compared the word choice, language style, and communicative function of conspiracy-related content to understand its platform-dependent differences and convergence. Our …
Political science (21 works) · Social Media and Politics (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Politics (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Public relations (8 works) · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection (7 works) · Media Studies and Communication (7 works)