Aktuelle Publikationen

Digital media form an integral part of political actors' communication strategies. They leverage personal websites, Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and Instagram accounts to disseminate information, communicate policy positions, and mobilize followers. Through digital media, politicians, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations alike are able to reach potentially massive audiences as nearly half the world's population is now connected to the Internet. Compared to other, more traditional media, digital media enable cost-effective, direct, two-way communication with diverse audiences. For political organizations that claim to represent specific ethnic groups, these information channels open up new opportunities and means to achieve their goals. Investigating their activities in the digital space constitutes the topic of this dissertation.

In the first paper (co-authored with Nils B. Weidmann), I present a new dataset for this purpose. It enables researchers to track the online activities of ethnic organizations. The Ethnic Organizations Online (EO2) database systematically captures Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram profiles as well as websites of political organizations with links to ethnic groups in 90 countries. I demonstrate the value of this dataset in three applications: First, I am able to show that separatist organizations are more likely to use Twitter than organizations without secessionist goals. Moreover, I find that organizations in autocracies invest fewer resources into their social media activity as elections approach. Finally, I compare organizations in power to those with opposition status: the former tend to communicate less about political phenomena and activities.

In the second paper (co-authored with Lea Haiges), I examine the content of political communication online, in particular how elections and party competition influence the use of ethnic identity appeals. The basis for this work is provided by hand-coding more than 9000 Facebook and Twitter posts. Based on this data, I train machine learning models that automatically detect identity appeals in over 2~000~000 million social media posts. Analyzing this data with regression models, I find the following: The closer an election, the higher the likelihood that an ethnic party will appeal to ethnic identities. In addition, I show that when more ethnic parties participate in a particular election, this results in a higher number of ethnic identity appeals. Both results provide evidence on axiomatic assumptions of theories of ethnic politics.

In the third paper, I turn to the effects of ethnic organizations' digital communication. I investigate whether individuals' who are exposed to references to ethnic identities online leads to increased identification with those very identities. To study this, I collect more than 200~000 Facebook comments authored in reply to 8000 Facebook posts of ethnic parties. I show that these parties face incentives to mention ethnic identities as this increases the reach of their posts. Their comment sections are more likely to feature comments with negative emotions, references to ethnic identities, and even toxic content. However, I find no evidence that these results extend to citizens' attitudes on the ground.

In summary, this dissertation offers important insights into the digital, political communication of ethnic organizations. It shows that these actors use social media strategically to achieve their goals -- although adoption of platforms has not been universal. However, when ethnic organizations take to social media the electoral context plays an important role. Moreover, ethnic organizations' digital communications carry wide-ranging implications in the digital space, as it can lead to more toxic language and negative comments. Although their offline impact remains unclear, the data collected in this dissertation provides a valuable starting point for further research.

Digitalization is leading to significant changes in the world of work and transpires as a constant challenge in today’s working life. To a certain extent, all employees are affected by digitalization and must acquire and develop digital competencies. To stay competitive, digital competencies or digital fluency could be a substantial competence. This dissertation conducts three empirical studies to expand our knowledge of employees’ digital fluency, particularly the antecedents and influential factors on the acquisition of digital fluency. The three empirical studies in the dissertation move from the individual-level to the dyadic-level to the team-level perspective to provide as comprehensive an overview as possible of the acquisition of digital fluency.

Study 1, with the focus on the individual-level, provides a better understanding of the individuals’ willingness of training participation, the role of personality, specific training, and the matching between these constructs. Based on 1,007 employees surveyed at a large German technology company, the study reveals that the employees’ personality has an impact on their willingness of training participation. Study 2 operates on the dyadic-level and found that leadership behavior: empowering leadership and the leaders’ personality have an effect on employees’ acquisition of digital fluency. Building on a sample of 486 employees from a medium-sized company, Study 2 contributes to a comprehensive understanding of influential factors on employees’ acquisition of digital fluency. Study 3 offers a better understanding of dyadic relationships within work groups, their influence on collective digital fluency, and the moderating effect of the leader-member exchange climate on the team-level. Results from a collected dataset of 805 employees from a large German company confirmed a moderating effect of leader-member exchange climate on collective digital fluency.

Overall, the dissertation findings highlight the importance of different antecedents and influential factors in the acquisition of digital fluency. The unique insights can help practitioners build a more suitable work environment for employees to become and stay digitally fluent and thrive in the future.

The increasing frequency and intensity of climate change-related extreme weather events in various global regions pose significant challenges to the affected societies. This is particularly true for less resilient and vulnerable populations, for whom extreme weather conditions often result in catastrophe. Numerous recent examples illustrate that the challenging periods following sudden weather disasters, such as storms, floods, and landslides, often lead to disruptive political incidents, including citizen protests against government actions or, conversely, state repression against citizens. However, this is only the case under specific conditions. This dissertation aims to enhance our understanding of the contextual factors that make protests and repression more likely to occur after disastrous weather events and to explain this relationship.

The central argument of this work posits that the magnitude of grievances following sudden weather disasters is not the sole determinant of protests occurring. Profound grievances do not necessarily translate into protests unless the opportunity to effectively mobilize emerges. The degree to which mobilization is viable depends on various factors, such as the political system, characteristics of different societal groups and geographical regions, and major political developments and events.

Research paper 1, conducted in collaboration with Gabriele Spilker, explores why and how autocratic systems often exert increased repression following weather disasters, which limits political mobilization opportunities for protests. Governments feeling threatened by the chaos and societal discontent often following destructive weather events may resort to repression to prevent unrest before it materializes or may clamp down on unrest after it has already emerged. The paper employs a quantitative analysis of monthly data on the use of repression measures in autocracies in Africa and Latin America from 1990 to 2017. The findings indicate an increase in government-initiated repressive actions in sub-national regions in the months following weather disasters, which were primarily aimed at preventing unrest rather than suppressing existing disturbances.

Research paper 2 investigates the sub-national regions of autocracies in which anti-government protests are likely to occur after weather disasters despite government repression. It argues that regions inhabited by marginalized ethnic groups may be more likely to hold protests. These groups often bear the brunt of catastrophic weather events due to government neglect but also have advantages in terms of their mobilization potential. The cohesion and trust within these groups, driven by shared histories and frequent interaction, are often stronger. Furthermore, the existing structures that these groups have relied upon often facilitate collective action. This hypothesis was tested and empirically supported by quantitative analyses of monthly protest data in 48 autocracies from 2003 to 2019: anti-government protests in the months following catastrophic storms, floods, or landslides were significantly more likely to occur in sub-national regions where marginalized ethnic groups lived than they were to occur in regions where no marginalized groups resided.

Research paper 3 shifts the focus from autocracies—contexts where successful protest mobilization is made more difficult by the increased risk of political repression—to urban areas in the world's largest democracy, India. Metropolises in India, a state in the Global South, are both geographically and politically places where protest mobilization would be expected to occur more frequently should dissatisfaction arise. However, cities in the Global South are often highly exposed to the negative consequences of sudden weather catastrophes but do not always experience protests. Research paper 3 argues that temporary variations in mobilization opportunities play a crucial role in determining whether protests occur after destructive weather events.

Research paper 3 examines the hypothesis that sudden weather catastrophes are more likely to lead to anti-government protests in the months preceding elections. Opposition politicians have a strong incentive to highlight inadequate governmental disaster management during this period and organize protests against it to position themselves as the better political alternative, thereby enhancing their chances in an upcoming election. Furthermore, citizens may be more willing to participate in protests shortly before elections to draw attention to the issues triggered by the weather catastrophe. Politicians concerned about election results would pay more attention to the wishes and complaints of their voters and adjust their behavior accordingly. This paper draws on a unique self-compiled dataset of protest events in 19 Indian metropolises that occurred between 2000 and 2019. The quantitative analyses of monthly protest dynamics in these cities support the theoretical argument. The likelihood of protests after sudden weather catastrophes is particularly high before state-level elections. As states in India share the bulk of responsibility for disaster management, this finding is plausible and consistent with the theoretical argument.

In summary, this dissertation demonstrates that weather catastrophes not only play a role in armed conflicts, a major focus of previous research, but also, under specific circumstances, increase the likelihood of repression and protests. The findings indicate that in autocracies, weather disasters can induce governments to initiate repression, significantly impeding protest mobilization. Additionally, this dissertation contributes valuable insights into the importance of considering variation in mobilization structures to understand when and where sudden weather events trigger anti-government protests.

This dissertation delineates two fundamental tensions that public administrations face in the crisis environment: the tension between bureaucratic vs adaptive crisis management practices and the tension between internal effectiveness and external legitimacy. During a crisis response, public administrations must decide whether to adhere to bureaucratic procedures or to move away from routine managerial activity and instead switch to riskier but promising courses of action, such as adaptation and flexibility. The first empirical paper of the dissertation conceptualizes and operationalizes organizational flexibility in crisis management and theorizes on explanatory factors for the variation in flexibility between agencies. However, while bureaucratic routines and procedures may impair the effectiveness of crisis management, they are also associated with critical features of legitimacy. Consequently, changes in administrative routines during the crisis response likely affect how legitimate the public perceives the crisis management process. Paper two and three examine the effects of crisis management practices on external perceptions. Paper two scrutinizes three prominent crisis management dilemmas regarding flexibility, inclusion, and resource redistribution and how citizens evaluate the different management alternatives regarding their legitimacy. In Paper three, the focus is moved to the legitimacy perceptions of volunteers, who interacted with local administrations during the crisis management process and have gained direct insight into the practices.