Projects with third-party funding

Social Sentiment in the Energy crisis

Project description: The energy crisis in the second half of 2022 provoked by the Ukraine war lead to a phase of insecurities and potential impact on political changes. There was an anticipation of social unrest due to the upcoming challenges. It was pondered whether people who are unhappy with the way how these challenges are handled could show tendencies of aversion to the political system. The threat of polarising effects and a rising number of mis- and disinformation are topic of this project. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is conducts a survey that collects data of various aspects of opinions in the society. The University Trier collects Twitter data to research how observed tendencies are represented in Social Media. Further information can be found here.
Funding: Alfred Landecker Foundation
Duration: October 2022 - September 2023
Project management: Prof. Dr. Achim Rettinger | rettingeruni-trierde

 

xPrEs

Project description: The project proposes a content representation paradigm that represents multimedia documents using a sequence of shifts of attention across different modalities. It aims to provide insights into similarities and differences between human perception and patterns learned by representation learning techniques. This project deals with Crossmodal Perception Trace Embedding which attempts to capture meaning encoded in a multimedia document beyond the sum of its single-modal parts. Further information can be found  here.
Funding: DFG
Duration: Since January 2021
Project management: Prof. Dr. Achim Rettinger | rettingeruni-trierde

 

TWON

Project description: It is a widely shared concern by experts that Online Social Networks (OSNs) have transformed public debate in harmful ways. Personalization algorithms can create filter bubbles and echo chambers which reinforces and polarizes the users' opinions. Thus, OSNs have been blamed for spreading false information. To this point, tech-companies argue that there is no unequivocal empirical evidence and that they should not interfere with user behavior. The TWON project aims to provide scientific evidence on both counterarguments, whether social networks have undesirable effects on democratic debates and how they inferfere with user behavior. This will be done by creating digital twins of online social networks to estimate the effects of a change in the system.
Funding: Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Actions
Duration: April 2023 - March 2026
Project management: Prof. Dr. Achim Rettinger | rettingeruni-trierde