Project description

Scientific discourse is vital to make informed decisions about pressing societal issues. Especially in times of crisis, risks arise from over-simplification, generalization, and instrumentalization of scientific knowledge. The „NewOrder“ project will examine the changing knowledge order of the digital society, in particular, motivated through the increasingly controversial discourse about science in online news and social media.

The recent COVID19 pandemic has driven an increased public interest in scientific findings, demonstrated by a proliferation of science communication as part of wider societal discourse in social and online news media. Recent research has argued that such trends lead to a disruption of the traditional scientific knowledge order, most notably the phases, context, roles, and hierarchy of knowledge production. Risks emerge from the over-simplification, generalisation, or political instrumentalization of scientific insights which can have adverse effects on public perceptions, decision-making, and polarisation of society. This is even more problematic given that false and controversial information spreads more rapidly than the truth. This project aims to advance the understanding of the changing role of science in the emerging knowledge order of the digital society. Through an interdisciplinary consortium combining expertise from science communication, cognitive and social psychology, and computer science, we will address three specific goals: 1) Understanding the erosion of the traditional knowledge order in dynamically evolving crisis situations, specifically, the dissolution of phases and contexts of production, examination, and dissemination of scientific knowledge, 2) Understanding the perception of roles, sources, and hierarchies in scientific online discourse and their impact on trust-worthiness assessment and knowledge gain of individuals and 3) Providing computational methods in the field of natural language processing (NLP) for detecting and classifying roles and hierarchies in large-scale online discourse. 

The project will focus on discourse about COVID19 in online news and social media, specifically Twitter, and tap into unique data sources of large-scale online discourse with a particular focus on discourse in the DACH countries and anglophone regions.

Cooperations

• GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (Cologne)

• Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf