As one of the Research Associates of He Whenua Taurikura, the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, I had the honor to kick off their new podcast series „Unsettling Extremism“ with the first episode on „Spreading Facts“.

To listen to the podcast please click here:

Together with Thorsten Faas, Sascha Huber, and Sigrid Roßteutscher I recently published the edited volume „Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie“ which is a Festschrift (commemorative publication) for Professor Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck (University of Mannheim). The book is fully open access and can be read here. It is partly in English and partly in German. I also contributed to the book with a co-authored chapter together with Ansgar Wolsing („The Times They are A-changin”, lineare Trends oder Muster in der Fernsehberichterstattung über KanzlerkandidatInnen, pp. 53-84) and as well as to the introduction as one of the editors (Informationsflüsse, Wahlen und Demokratie: Einleitung zur Festschrift für Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck, pp. 9-22).

During the 2023 election, the team of the New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS) and the Internet, Social Media, and Politics Research Lab (ISPRL) lead by me has published several blog posts with results from the NZSMS which reveal how the political parties and their leaders campaigned on social media during the 2023 New Zealand election. This includes results on topics such mis- and disinformation, negative campaigning, populism and many other aspects of the campaigns. All of these publications are open access and can be found under the links below. I also wrote a short piece for The Conversation on the alleged rise of mis- and disinformation in the 2023 NZ General Election which can also be found below.

Krewel, Mona (2023): Fake news didn’t play a big role in NZ’s 2023 election – but there was a rise in small lies, in: The Conversation, November 14, retrieved from:  https://theconversation.com/fake-news-didnt-play-a-big-role-in-nzs-2023-election-but-there-was-a-rise-in-small-lies-216338

Krewel, Mona (2023): Five weeks, 4,000 Facebook posts: Social Media Campaigning in the 2023 election. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2023/11/five-weeks-4-000-facebook-posts-social-media-campaigning-in-the-2023-election

Krewel, Mona (2023): Big Little lies? Disinformation in the 2023 election campaign. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2023/10/big-little-lies-disinformation-in-the-2023-election-campaign

Krewel, Mona (2023): Who’s going negative? Social Media Campaigning in the 2023 Election. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2023/10/negative-campaiging-in-the-2023-new-zealand-election

Krewel, Mona (2023): Facts and Fiction in the 2023 New Zealand Election. https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2023/09/facts-and-fiction-in-the-2023-new-zealand-election-campaign

Check out my newest publication about the campaigns for the 2021 German General Election in “ Die Bundestagswahl 2021. Analysen der Wahl-, Parteien-, Kommunikations- und Regierungsforschung“ ed. by Karl-Rudolf Korte et al. here.

In this chapter, I look at the parties‘ situation at the onset of the 2021 election, discuss their campaigns, and the role of the media in this election, as well as the development of public opinion over the campaign based on data from the GLES rolling cross-section survey.

If you are in the Ithaca (NY) area on March 23, 2023, join me for a talk about the decline of Social Democracy and the rise of the far-right in Western Europe at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University. For more details see below.

In this brief video for Victoria University’s standpoint series, I talk about social media use in New Zealand and mis- and disinformation on social media. The full video can be watched here .

In this new publication Thorsten Faas (FU Berlin) and I study the quality of the political discourse about the Covid-19 pandemic in German political talk shows and how viewers use them. We answer questions such us: Whose voices in the pandemic have been heard in these talk shows? How informative was the discussion about Covid-19? Which topics and narratives dominated the debate? How did viewers perceive the content? Who watched these talk shows and who didn’t? The paper is published in Media Perspektiven and available for free here.

In the book chapter „Interaktionen von Politik und Wissenschaft in der Mediengesellschaft: Stimmenfang, Vorlesung oder Unterhaltung?“ Thorsten Faas and I discuss the relationship between science, politics, and the media based on the example of the Covid-19 pandemic and the discussion of the Corona virus in political talk shows in Germany.

The book can be ordered here

Alongside Alex Edmans (London Business School) and rugby writer Jamie Wall, I had the pleasure to be a guest on episode 9 *More than a feeling* of Katy Milkman’s (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania) podcast Choiceology which is produced by the Charles Schwab Foundation. I discuss the relationship between the concept of public mood, major sporting events, and elections, especially how Rugby World Cups might have affected general elections in New Zealand.

You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.

This week Thorsten Faas (FU Berlin) and I have released first results from a new study on coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic in political talk shows in Germany which we have done for the Rudolf-Augstein-Stiftung: „Corona Sprechstunde mit Maybrit Illner, Anne Will & Frank Plasberg: Parteilich & oberflächlich oder ausgewogen & informativ? Erste Ergebnisse einer Analyse der Qualität der Diskussion über die Covid-19 Pandemie in ausgewählten Polit-Talkshows“ [Corona Clinic with Maybrit Illner, Anne Will & Frank Plasberg: Partisan & superficial or well-balanced and informativ? First results of an analysis of the quality of the discussion about the Covid-19 pandemic in selected political talkshows].

As part of this study, we have analyzed 112 talk shows of „Anne Will“, „Maybrit Illner“ and „Hart aber Fair“ which dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany as well as 8436 statements of the guests within these talk shows between January 2020 and July 2021. Check out our results.

You can read the report here (in German)