Multilingual publics in the Corona vaccination debate on Twitter

The widespread use of social media has changed the public forever. In a hybrid media system, public debates have many different kinds of participants and heterogeneous contents. In this project, we are studying the Twitter debate about the development of vaccines and the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 in Germany. Special consideration is being given not only to the German-speaking community but also to Germany's English-, Turkish-, Russian- and Polish-speaking communities. So far, empirical research has scarcely taken into account the de facto multilingualism of public debates in immigration societies even though topics with implications that are felt across all sectors of society or even across nations have a practical relevance and a bearing on the theoretical framework of democracy. In this project, we are trialling various automated procedures to codify information about the participants and the content they post on Twitter.

Participants: Moritz Bürger, Sudharsana Kannan, Ramona Kühn, Stephan Schlögl, Mara Schwind

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