People

Dr. Dennis Frieß is coordinator of the DIID. Since May 2019, he was coordinator of the NRW Research College Online Participation. From 2014 to 2019, he was a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies III at HHU-Düsseldorf and a staff member at DIID. He studied Social Sciences, Law and Communication Science at the University of Erfurt (B.A.) and Political Communication in Düsseldorf (M.A.). His doctoral thesis focused on the analysis of deliberative online publics. His research focuses on political (online) communication, online deliberation, and online participation.

At the DIID, he is particularly interested in online-supported deliberation processes and the democracy-relevant expectations associated with online participation offerings.

Marc Ziegele has been Professor of Communication and Media Studies at HHU-Düsseldorf since February 2024. He previously held the Junior Professorship for Communication and Media Studies with a focus on “Political Online Communication”. At the same time, he is head of the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions on the Social Web” funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Previously, he was a research assistant at the Institute for Journalism at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and studied media economics at the same institute. His research focuses on participation and discussions of citizens on the Internet. In the junior research group based at DIID, he is investigating measures to improve the quality and impact of users’ public discussions about political media topics – so-called online public-political connection communication.

It also researches the causes and consequences of media trust as well as various aspects of citizens’ social web use at the interface of communication science and psychology.

Marc Ziegele was elected speaker of the Institute by the DIID General Assembly in December 2023.

Dr. Fabian Anicker is a research associate in the project “Meinungsmonitor Künstliche Intelligenz” [MeMo:KI] at the HHU-Düsseldorf since 2022 and deputy speaker of the DGS section sociological theory. Prior to that, he served as editor of the German journal “Zeitschrift für Theoretische Soziologie” at the University of Münster from 2015 to 2022. In 2011, he earned a master’s degree in Global and International Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, having previously studied social sciences in Düsseldorf (2007 to 2010). In 2019, he received his PhD from HHU-Düsseldorf with a thesis on communicative rationality and deliberative democracy from a sociological perspective.

His research interests are political sociology, especially public sphere and democratic theory, and sociology of technology, especially artificial intelligence. He also deals with general issues of sociological theory such as theory formation and theory comparison.

Prof. Dr. Michael Baurmann is Senior Professor of Sociology at the HHU-Düsseldorf. Previously, he held a chair in sociology in Düsseldorf since 1997. His research areas are general sociology, theories of social cooperation and trust, and social epistemology.

At DIID, he is interested in developing innovative concepts for interactive, dialogue-based online participation processes.

Maike Behrendt is a research associate at the Chair of Machine Learning in Computer Science at HHU-Düsseldorf since January 2021. In addition, she is a collaborator in the use case policy of the Manchot research group on the topic of supporting political decisions with the help of artificial intelligence. She studied Business Informatics (B. Sc.) at the University of Cologne and Computer Science (M. Sc.) at the HHU-Düsseldorf.

She is currently doing her PhD on the topic “Natural Language Processing for Discussion Platforms”.

Dr. Katarina Boland has been a research assistant at the Chairs of Computer Networks and Data & Knowledge Engineering at the Institute of Computer Science at HHU-Düsseldorf since July 2023. She studied computational linguistics with minors in psychology and computer science at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg and initially worked as a research assistant at the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne. In June 2023 she received her doctorate in computer science at HHU. Her research focuses on natural language processing and the development of AI-based methods for social science use cases.

She is currently involved in the interdisciplinary projects “AI for All” and “NewOrder – Understanding the erosion of the traditional knowledge order in scientific online discourse and its impact in times of crisis”.

Dr. Marike Bormann is a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies I at HHU-Düsseldorf. She studied Social Sciences (Communication Science, Political Science and Sociology) (B.A.) in Düsseldorf and Communication Management (M.A.) at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover.

In the context of her doctorate, she is working on deviant forms of political communication in online contexts. The doctoral thesis is part of a tandem doctoral program within the Research Training Group NRW “Digital Society”.

Jonas Carstens is a research assistant at the Chair of Practical Philosophy at HHU-Düsseldorf since January 2022 and part of the Use Case Law of the Manchot Research Group “Decision Making Using Artificial Intelligence Methods”. He studied English and Philosophy (B.A.) as well as English and Philosophy (M.Ed.) and Practical Philosophy of Economics and Environment (M.A.) in Kiel. His research interests lie in the area of philosophical notions of discrimination and their applicability to discrimination by artificial intelligence.

As a member of DIID, he is particularly interested in ethical aspects of AI-enabled online deliberation, as well as the interplay between AI applications and social power structures in general.

Prof. Dr. Frank Dietrich has held the Chair of Practical Philosophy at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2012. His research and teaching focuses on political philosophy, the philosophy of law, and ethics.

In the context of DIID, he is concerned with the democratic-theoretical legitimacy of online participation procedures as well as the protection of privacy.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Dietze is Professor of Data & Knowledge Engineering at HHU-Düsseldorf and Scientific Director of the Knowledge Technologies for the Social Sciences Department at GESIS (Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) in Cologne. In his research, he works on harnessing large amounts of data from the Web using methods of Natural Language Processing (NLP), information retrieval, and machine learning. As scientific head of the Knowledge Technologies for the Social Sciences department at GESIS, a particular focus is on the use of (social) web data for interdisciplinary research questions in the social sciences.

At DIID, he is interested in the investigation of online discourse using NLP-based methods, e.g., for the recognition and classification of statements or sources or the understanding of information diffusion in social networks.

Björn Ebbinghaus has studied Computer Science at the HHU-Düsseldorf since 2013. He completed his Bachelor of Science degree in 2017. At the same time, he was already working on D-BAS, the dialog-based argumentation system, a project of the first phase of the Research Training Group, as a student assistant. During his master studies at the HHU, he focused on the use of argumentation systems in natural language environments, such as chat systems, by chatbots.

In his master thesis he investigated the possibilities of extending existing argumentation systems with a subsequent decision making process. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted with the student body of computer science to test whether this kind of decision making is perceived as fair and acceptable by the students. Since January 2019 he is employed as a research assistant at the Chair of Computer Networks of Prof. Martin Mauve, where he is researching the practical application and development of systems for decision making.

Prof. Dr. Christiane Eilders has been Professor of Communication and Media Studies at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2011. In October 2023 she became the new director at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum. From 2019 until 2023 she served as the speaker of the DIID. She used to be a member of the DFG research group “Political Communication in the Online World”. In research and teaching, she is concerned with public discourse and public opinion formation and examines the role of established mass media and online communication in this process.

In the context of DIID, she is interested in the deliberative quality and trajectories of online discourses in the context of political participation processes.

Tobias Escher leads a BMBF-funded junior research group investigating the effects of participation processes on the quality and legitimacy of political decisions, especially in the context of the transformation to sustainable mobility in the local context. Previously, he supervised the DIID as well as the NRW Forschungskolleg Online-Partizipation at the HHU-Düsseldorf as scientific coordinator. He is a social scientist and holds a PhD from the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. He can also draw on his basic knowledge of computer science when assessing the possibilities and limits of digitization.

His research focuses on the evaluation of political participation online and offline. In particular, he addresses the question of the extent to which citizen participation contributes to higher quality and legitimacy/acceptance of political decisions. He has developed a teaching module on the theory and practice of online participation, from which, among other things, a project on student participation in teaching has emerged.

Photographer: ©Tilman Schenk

Till Fahnenstich has been working as a research assistant at DIID since October 2023. He is currently studying philosophy and political science at HHU-Düsseldorf. He previously studied business law (LL.B.) at Aachen University of Applied Sciences and then worked as a business lawyer for a public sector company. As an assistant in the core team, he supports the institute in various organizational tasks and conducts workshops on AI ethics at schools.

He is particularly interested in political philosophy, ethics and philosophical logic.

Juliane Feustel holds a master’s degree in communication research and phonetics, psychology, and sociology. Since September 2022, she has been responsible for third-party funding administration, personnel management, and various organizational tasks at the DIID.

Previously, she worked as a project manager for various language service providers.

Katharina Frehmann is a research assistant in communication and media studies at HHU-Düsseldorf. She studied Journalism and Audiovisual Publishing (B.A.) and Communication Science (M.A.) at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. In the context of her doctorate, she is working on the use and effect of voice assistants in everyday life.

Furthermore, her research focuses on journalism research and health communication.

Marius Gerads has been a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies III of the Institute of Social Sciences at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2020. Previously, he worked as an online journalist for the magazine Wirtschaftswoche and still works for the multimedia editorial department of Deutschlandfunk. He studied Political Communication (M.A.) at the HHU-Düsseldorf and Social Sciences and Economics (B.Sc.) at the University of Cologne. Parallel to his bachelor studies, he completed the training of the Cologne School of Journalism for Politics and Economics. His research interests include public discourse and public opinion formation under conditions of online communication, dissonant public sphere and perception of media bias.

In the context of DIID, his interests include public opinion formation and the roles of established mass media (offline/online) and online-mediated interpersonal communication in this process.

Dr. Katharina Gerl has been a research assistant at DIID at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2016. She studied Political Science (B.A.) at the University of Bremen and Political Communication (M.A.) at HHU-Düsseldorf. For her dissertation at the Chair of Political Science II at Heinrich Heine University, she studied the impact of digital media on political parties as organizations.

Her research interests lie in the areas of effects and acceptance of digital democratic innovations in politics and administration as well as of artificial intelligence for political opinion-forming and decision-making.

Prof. Dr. Susanne Hahn has been an adjunct professor at the Institute of Philosophy at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2016. She has held a professorship there since 2017, focusing on theoretical philosophy. She is the recipient of the German Prize for Philosophy and Social Ethics of the Max-Uwe-Redler Foundation. Her main research interests are rationality, normativity, and business ethics.

In the context of DIID, she is concerned with the normative challenges posed by digitalization. These include, for example, the need to rethink the justification of forms of representative and direct democracy in light of technological possibilities.

Katharina Holec is a PhD student in the project CIMT (Citizen Involvement in Mobility Transitions) at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf since 2019. After completing her bachelor’s degree in social sciences at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, she studied Sociology and Social Research at the University of Cologne. In her dissertation project she works on questions of descriptive and substantive representation and legitimacy through consultative participation processes concerning mobility transitions and the redistribution of urban space.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Andrea Icks has held the Chair of Health Services Research and Health Economics at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2015 and has been head of the institute of the same name at the German Diabetes Center, Leibniz Institute for Diabetes Research in Düsseldorf since 2016. She is deputy spokesperson of the Center for Health and Society at the Faculty of Medicine.
Her research focuses on patient:internally relevant outcomes of care and the cost-benefit ratio of complex interventions. One focus of her research is on patient needs and preferences in terms of patient-centered research. Citizens and patients are actively involved as co-researchers in the sense of participatory research.

Within the framework of DIID, the information needs of patients expressed in Internet forums in particular are investigated using text-mining methods.

Prof. Dr. Olaf Jandura is co-director of the research focus on communication research at the Department of Economics at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences (HSD) and associate professor at the Institute for Social Sciences at HHU-Düsseldorf. In research and teaching, he deals with questions of political communication, analysis of media offerings and communication practice in political-communicative milieus.

As part of the DIID, he researches the fragmentation of online offerings and audiences as well as the quality of online surveys.

Birte Keller has been a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies I at HHU-Düsseldorf since January 2020. She first studied Social Sciences in the Bachelor’s program and later Political Communication at HHU-Düsseldorf. In 2019, she worked as a research assistant at the chair of Prof. Dr. Marcinkowski, where she supported the project “Fair Artificial Intelligence Reasoning in Higher Education” as part of the project series “Artificial Intelligence – Its Impact on Tomorrow’s Society” of the Volkswagen Foundation. Building on this, her master’s thesis focused on perceptions of artificial intelligence in higher education.

She is currently working on the Opinion Monitor Artificial Intelligence [MeMo:AI], which is being realized in research partnership with the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS).

Dr. Ole Kelm has been a research assistant at the Institute of Social Sciences at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2015. In 2020, he completed his doctorate in communication science. Previously, he studied Political Communication at HHU-Düsseldorf (M.A.) and Political Science and Communication Studies at the University of Greifswald (B.A.).

His research interests include political (online) communication, consequences of media perceptions, political consumption, and the consequences of algorithmic curation of online content.

Christian Koß is a research associate at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies I at HHU-Düsseldorf. He is currently coordinating the third-party funded project ‘Discourse Data for Policy’ together with colleagues from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Before joining the HHU-Düsseldorf, he worked at the University of Stuttgart in the third-party funded project ‘ABD – Aufbruch, Abbruch oder Durchbruch? Factors influencing scientific career paths in the natural and social sciences’ and did research on scientific career paths. He studied sociology (B.A.) and social research (M.A.) at the University of Bremen. For his PhD Christian Koß works in the field of Computational Social Science and explores artificial intelligence methods for the analysis of political discourses and dynamics.

His research focuses on network analysis and machine learning.

Peter Kotzian has been an academic councilor at the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Accounting, since 2014. Previously, he studied social sciences at the University of Mannheim, where he received his doctorate in political science. After a research stay at the London School of Economics, he habilitated in political science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His research interests in business administration lie in experimental behavioral research, but also include topics of institutional comparison and the democratization of international governance through the involvement of civil society actors.

Within the DIID, research projects on the impact of digitalization on individual and collective decision-making processes in companies are in preparation, in particular on the use of business analytics and its impact on decision bias.

Dr. Johannes Krause has been a member of staff at the Chair of Sociology II at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2011. He studied social sciences at the University of Cologne and completed a part-time Master of Business Administration in 2019.

His research interests are physical attractiveness research and the (un)fair determinants of educational trajectories.

Gabriella Lapesa is a Junior Professor for Responsible Data Science and Machine Learning at the HHU-Düsseldorf and the leader of the Data Science Methods team in the Department for Computational Social Science at GESIS Cologne. She also leads the BMBF-funded group E-DELIB (Powering up E-DELIBeration: towards NLP-supported moderation) at the University of Stuttgart.

She is a computational linguist who applies NLP in interdisciplinary settings, with a strong focus on Social and Political Science (i.e., supporting decision making in forums with NLP; capturing the dynamics of political debates in newspaper reports). Further domains of interest are the application of NLP methods for cognitive modeling and linguistics.

Anna-Maria Linstaedt has been working as a research assistant at DIID since April 2022. At HHU-Düsseldorf, she is studying for a Master’s degree in Political Communication. As an assistant in the core team, she supports the institute in various organizational tasks.

She is particularly interested in online deliberation research and its impact on political processes in democracies.

Dr. Marco Lünich has been a research assistant at the Department of Communication and Media Studies (KMW I) at HHU-Düsseldorf since October 2017. From 2014-2017, he was a research assistant at the research area “Communication – Media – Society” at the Institute of Communication Studies at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster. Previously, he studied communication science at the University of Erfurt and the Universiteit van Amsterdam (NL). In the context of his dissertation, he focuses on public perception and epistemic conceptions of digitization, especially in relation to Big Data.

His research interests lie in the areas of political (online) communication, media sports, and the social consequences of digitization.

Frank Marcinkowski has been Professor of Communication and Media Studies (KMW I) at the Institute of Social Sciences at HHU-Düsseldorf since October 2017. His research and teaching areas include communication and public sphere theories, political communication, and the social consequences of media developments.

At DIID, he is interested in the social perception, evaluation and opinion formation of digitalization.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Marschall has held the Chair of Political Science II with a focus on “Germany’s Political System” at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2010. His research interests include the consequences of the establishment of the Internet on political communication and decision-making. He is spokesman of the working group “Politics and Communication” of the German Political Science Association.

At the DIID, he is primarily interested in the theoretical foundation, further development and standardization of evaluation criteria and instruments for online participation procedures in different areas of practice.

Prof. Dr. Martin Mauve has headed the Chair of Computer Networks and Communication Systems since 2003. Since 2015, he has been Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at HHU-Düsseldorf. His research interests include secure and robust distributed systems, computer-aided group work, and the realization of participation using Internet technology. A particular focus is on highly scalable support for discussion and decision making.

Within DIID, his interests include innovative concepts for dialog-based online participation processes and their technical implementation in functional systems.

Henri Mütschele is a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies III at the HHU-Düsseldorf. He studied Sociology, Politics & Economics (B.A.) at Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen and General Rhetoric (M.A.) at the University of Tübingen. He also holds a degree in Legal & Political Theory (M.A.) from University College London. His dissertation deals with deliberative argumentation structures in online communication and their influence on the political decision-making of Internet users.

Thematically, his focus is on climate policy in Germany.

Natascha S. Neudorfer is a Professor of Political Economy at HHU–Düsseldorf. Previously, she was an Associate Professor and Birmingham Fellow in International Security at the University of Birmingham. She holds a PhD in Political Economy from the University of Essex.

Prof. Neudorfer is an expert in comparative civil war and corruption research. She has an extensive background in research design, inferential statistics and machine learning, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches.

At the DIID, her interest lies in using quantitative text analysis and supervised machine learning (in combination with practitioner engagement) to prevent corruption and civil war.

Sarah-Michelle Nienhaus has been a research assistant at the Chair of Communication and Media Studies III at HHU-Düsseldorf since April 2021, where she previously worked as a research assistant. She also completed her studies at HHU (B.A. Social Sciences – Media, Politics, Society, M.A. Political Communication). The topic of her master’s thesis was the framing of the Covid 19 pandemic in Bundestag debates and news reports. The topic of her dissertation project are debate styles within political parties.

Prof. Dr. Rupprecht Podszun holds the Chair of Civil Law, German and European Competition Law at the Faculty of Law of the HHU-Düsseldorf. He is Director of the Institute for Antitrust Law and substitute member of the Commission for the Assessment of Concentration in the Media Sector. He is vice chairman of the non-partisan Theodor Heuss Foundation, which promotes democracy and civil rights.

His research focuses primarily on issues of economic governance in light of the transformation of the economy through digitalization and sustainability goals. One focus is on addressing the role of digital platforms.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Poguntke has held the Chair of Comparative Politics at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2010 and is co-director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute PRuF. His research interests include the comparative analysis of political parties. In this context, he is coordinating with Susan Scarrow (Houston) and Paul Webb (Sussex) a longitudinal study of political parties in more than 50 countries (https://www.politicalpartydb.org).

Within DIID, he will work primarily on issues of digitized intra-party democracy and digital campaigning.

Prof. Dr. Jörg Rothe has headed the Complexity Theory and Cryptology Group at the Institute of Computer Science at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2000. His research interests lie in computational social choice, algorithmic game theory, and fair division, focusing in each case on the algorithmic and complexity-theoretic treatment of the relevant problems.

In the context of DIID, he is interested in formal models of theoretical computer science for the description and evaluation of user interactions in online participation processes.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Conrad has held the Chair of Databases and Information Systems at the Institute of Computer Science since 2002. He has been a member of the Senate of HHU-Düsseldorf since 2015. In his research, he works on issues related to the analysis of large data sets, especially in image retrieval, time series analysis, clustering, and text mining.
He has been cooperating with practice partners for many years, especially in several BMWi-funded ZIM projects on opinion mining, extraction of product features important for users, and automated text summarization.

At DIID, he is interested in researching techniques for automated topic detection and content analysis of text contributions as well as the identification of argument structures, subjective evaluations, and emotions.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Conrad was re-elected as Deputy Spokesperson of the DIID by the DIID General Assembly in December 2023.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Rosar has held the chair of Sociology II at the Institute of Social Sciences since 2010. From 2015 until 2019 he has been Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at HHU-Düsseldorf.

In research and teaching, he is primarily concerned with questions of political sociology, sociological inequality analysis and the methods of empirical social research.

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Rosar was re-elected as Deputy Spokesperson of the DIID by the DIID General Assembly in December 2023.

Regina Stodden joined the Department of Computational Linguistics at HHU-Düsseldorf in January 2019 as a research assistant and is a fellow of the second funding phase of the NRW Research College Online Participation. She studied Educational Science, Text Technology and Computational Linguistics at the University of Bielefeld (B.A.) and Information Science and Language Technology at the HHU-Düsseldorf (M.A.). During her bachelor studies she did research on a thinking smart home (CITEC Bielefeld). Furthermore, during her master studies she investigated the accessibility of Open Data portals and developed possible applications of Open Data.

In the course of the research college Online Participation she focuses on automatic text processing, especially text simplification, of contributions from online discussions in order to enable more people (e.g. people with low German language skills) to participate on the one hand and to reduce the manual workload of text analysis on the other hand.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Süß has held the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Organization and Human Resources, since 2010. Since January 2015, he has been Vice Rector for Academic Quality and Human Resource Management at HHU-Düsseldorf. Furthermore, he is speaker of the Manchot Graduate School “Competitiveness of Young Enterprises”. His research interests are in the field of organizational theory, human resource management, new employment relationships, empirical human resource and organizational research, and higher education management.

In the context of DIID, he is interested in changes in democratic voting processes through online participation in companies and other organizations.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Ulf Tranow has been Junior Professor of Sociology at HHU-Düsseldorf since January 2013. His research interests include sociological theories of action, social mechanisms of normative integration, and collective good problems and their solutions.

In the context of DIID, he is interested in the social, societal, and institutional conditions for the formation of political trust in conflictual online deliberation processes.

Bettina Ülpenich has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Sociology I at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2017. In addition, she has been a research associate at the Chair of Sociology II since 2021. She studied economics & politics, design technology (teaching degree) and sociology (M.A.) at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. Her dissertation focused on the construction of categorical belonging using the example of the in-custody care of unaccompanied minor refugees.

Her research interests include the construction of categorical order, the sociology of gender, and new developments in higher education.

Viviana N. E. Warnken is a research associate at the department for Communication and Media Science at HHU Düsseldorf. Previously, she obtained her Master’s degree in Political Communication at HHU-Düsseldorf. Before that she studied Communication Science and Social Sciences at the University of Erfurt. In the project “Innovative Interventions for Discursive Integration”(IndI), she is working on the potentials and risks of public online discourses for social cohesion.

Her research interests also lie in political (online) communication and public opinion formation, especially through political social media influencers.

Dr. Carina Weinmann is a postdoc at the Institute of Social Sciences at the HHU-Düsseldorf. She studied Media and Communication Studies with minors in German Studies and Psychology at the University of Mannheim from 2007 to 2013 and received her PhD in 2018.

Her research is located at the intersection between communication science and media psychology. Against this background, she is primarily concerned with entertainment research, mediated deliberation, and the psychological processes surrounding political (online) communication.

Prof. Dr. Barbara E. Weißenberger has held the Chair of Business Administration, in particular Accounting, at HHU-Düsseldorf since 2014 and is also Affiliate Professor of Accounting at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg. Her research focuses, among other things, on decision-making processes in accounting, including in the context of corporate management and controlling, but also against the background of embedding in compliance and sustainability.

In the context of DIID, she is particularly interested in the question of what impact the digital transformation has on decision-making and enforcement as well as intra-company cooperation processes.

Nadja Wilker is a research assistant at the Chair of Political Science II at HHU-Düsseldorf. She studied Communication and Political Science (B.A.) in Münster and Political Communication (M.A.) in Düsseldorf. In her master thesis she analyzed participation- and representation-theoretical dimensions of the online-based participation concept of a ‘Liquid Democracy’. In the context of her doctoral thesis she deals with questions of acceptance and legitimacy of online-based participation processes from the perspective of political actors.

Her research and teaching interests lie in the field of political (online) communication and participation in the context of concepts of political representation.

Lena Wilms is a research associate in the junior research group “Deliberative Discussions on the Social Web” at HHU-Düsseldorf. She studied political science, sociology and communication science in Düsseldorf and Budapest. As part of her work in the “KOSMO” project, she develops and evaluates measures to improve online participation processes using AI-assisted moderation. She is particularly interested in the design of inclusive democratic online environments in the context of deliberation and participation on the Internet.

Her research interests also include media sociology as well as quantitative methods in the social sciences and applied statistics.

Thomas Winzen is Professor of European Politics and International Relations at HHU-Düsseldorf.

His research topics include differentiated European integration, the impact of democratic backsliding on European Union institutions and decision-making, the role of parliaments in European and international politics, and the organization and practice of global Internet governance.

Thomas is Professor of Political Communication and holds the Chair of Communication and Media Studies IV at the Institute of Social Sciences at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf with a focus on “Democratic Will Formation in the Digital Society”.

In the research field of political communication, his focus is on the processing and impact of media-mediated diversity, persuasive political communication, and the perception of political opinion.