Prof. Dr. Barbara Pfetsch

Principal Investigator (PI) since 15 September 2022

Research Focus: Digital Markets and Public Spheres on Platforms

Research Group: Dynamics of Digital Mobilization

Principal Investigator (PI) until 14 September 2022

Research Group: Digitalisation and the Transnational Public Sphere

• Professor at Freie Universität Berlin, Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Visiting Professor at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities
• Principal Investigator at the SFB 1265 Re-figuration of Spaces at TU Berlin
• Principal Investigator at the Berlin University Alliance Research Center on Social Cohesion
• Faculty member of the Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies
• Advisory Board member of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS)
• Advisory Board member at the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
• Member of the working group “Digitalization and Democracy” of the Leopoldina – National Academy of Sciences
• Ombudsperson at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society
• Co-editor of the book series “Politische Kommunikation und Demokratische Öffentlichkeit” (Political Communication and Democratic Publics), Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden
• Member of editorial boards of international journals: Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media; Communication Theory; International Journal of Press / Politics; Central European Journal of Communication; Journal of Global Mass Communication
• Member of associations: International Communication Association (ICA); European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA); European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR); International Political Science Association (IPSA); German Communication Association (DGPuK); German Association for Political Science (DVPW)

• Media and online public spheres
• Political communication in international comparison
• Digital issue networks
• Agenda-setting and political mobilisation
• Transnational and European public sphere
• Methods of quantitative media research

Selection

2014–2017
Political agenda-building under the conditions of a hybrid media system – a comparison across countries and issues (DFG)

2011-2013
The impact of online communication on the political public sphere – comparing agenda-building processes across countries and issue fields, Projekt im Rahmen der Forschungsgruppe Politische Kommunikation in der Online-Welt (DFG)

Selection

Knüpfer, C. B., Pfetsch, B., & Heft, A. (2020). Demokratischer Wandel, dissonante Öffentlichkeit und die Herausforderungen vernetzter Kommunikationsumgebungen. In M. Oswald & I. Borucki (Eds.), Demokratietheorie und Demokratie im Lichte des digitalen Wandels. Wiesbaden: Springer.

Pfetsch, B., Heft, A., & Knüpfer, C. B. (2019). Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten in der Digitalen Gesellschaft: Konzepte und Forschungsperspektiven. In J. Hofmann, N. Kersting, C. Ritzi, & W. J. Schünemann (Eds.), Politik in der Digitalen Gesellschaft. Zentrale Problemfelder und Forschungsperspektiven (pp. 83–101). Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Maier, D., Waldherr, A., Miltner, P., Wiedemann, G., Niekler, A., Keinert, A., Pfetsch, B., Heyer, G., Reber, U., Häussler, T., Schimd-Petri, H. & Adam, S. (2018). Applying LDA topic modeling in communication research: Toward a valid and reliable methodology. Communication Methods and Measures, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2018.1430754

Mayerhöffer, E., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Media Elites. In H. Best & J. Higley (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites (pp. 417–437). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pfetsch, B. (2018). Dissonant and Disconnected Public Spheres as Challenge for Political Communication Research. Javnost - The Public, 25(1–2), 59–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2018.1423942 also published in S. Splichal (Eds.), The Lique-faction of Publicness Communication, Democracy and the Public Sphere in the Internet Age.

Pfetsch, B., Löblich, M., & Eilders, C. (2018). Dissonante Öffentlichkeiten als Perspektive kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung. Publizistik, 63, 477–495. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11616-018-0441-1

Schmid-Petri, H., Adam, S., Reber, U., Häussler, T., Maier, D., Miltner, S., Pfetsch, B., & Waldherr, A. (2018). Homophily and prestige: An assessment of their relative strength to explain link formation in the online climate change debate. Social Networks, 55, 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2018.05.001

Bennett, W. L., & Pfetsch, B. (2017). Rethinking Political Communication in a Time of Disrupted Public Spheres. Journal of Communication.

Maier, D., Waldherr, A., Miltner, P., Jähnichen, P., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Exploring Issues in a Networked Public Sphere. Social Science Computer Review, 36(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439317690337

Pfetsch, B., Maier, D., Miltner, P., & Waldherr, A. (2016). Challenger Networks of Food Policy on the Internet. A Comparative Study of Structures and Coalitions in Germany, the UK, the US, and Switzerland. International Journal of E-Politics, 7(1), 16–36. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEP.2016010102

Pfetsch, B., Miltner, P., & Maier, D. (2016). Old and New Dynamics of Agenda Building in a Hybrid Media System. In G. Vowe & P. Henn (Eds.), Political Communication in the Online World: Theoretical Approaches and Research Designs (pp. 45–58). New York, NY / Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Pfetsch, B., & Heft, A. (2015). Theorizing Communication Flows within a European Public Sphere. In T. Risse (Ed.), European Public Spheres. Politics is Back (pp. 29–52). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pfetsch, B., Adam, S., & Bennett, W. L. (2013). The Critical Linkage between Online and Offline Media: An Approach to Researching the Conditions of Issue Spill-Over. Javnost - The Public, 20(3), 9–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2013.11009118

• Blog of the research group
• Researchgate
• Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID): https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4655-663X
• Curriculum Vitae