https://hdl.handle.net/10419/220348 Fri, 09 Oct 2026 08:35:27 GMT 2026-10-09T08:35:27Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/336795 Title: Keep it simple, stupid!: The determinants of language complexity in politicians' parliamentary and online communication Authors: Kittel, Rebecca; Silva, Bruno Castanho Abstract: Politicians can adjust the complexity of their communication to signal different things to different audiences: more complex language can indicate competence, while lower complexity may bring them closer to "common people". These strategic shifts in complexity, however, remain understudied. We ask what individual and contextual factors relate to politicians' use of more or less complex language in their communication, with a dataset matching 116,000 parliamentary speeches from 15 countries with 800,000 contemporaneous Facebook posts from the same MPs between 2018 and 2021, and apply measures of language complexity to each. Results show that women use more complex language in parliament, and that far-right politicians, while similar to others in parliamentary speech, simplify their language the most on social media, and benefit the most from higher engagement with their simpler posts. These results show new dimensions of how politicians strategically adapt their communication styles to the audience. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/336795 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/342560 Title: Resisting the far right. A systematic analysis of civil society strategies Authors: Jänicke, Christin; Gunzelmann, Hans Jonas; Völker, Teresa Sophie; Hutter, Swen Abstract: The rise of the far right in the 21st century poses fundamental challenges for democracy. In this context, understanding how democratic societies respond to the far right is a crucial question. This question concerns not only politicians from democratic parties, but also civil society actors ranging from large trade unions to local sports clubs and grassroots initiatives. However, the existing scholarly work on societal responses to the far right remains scattered across subdisciplines, addresses a narrow range of questions, and focuses on specific segments of civil society only. We address this gap by synthesizing these literatures and providing an analytical framework of civil society strategies against the far right. We conduct a systematic review of 56 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters published between 1972 and 2024, which forms the core of the analysis. We complement this review with a qualitative content analysis of 191 guidance documents from 42 German civil society organizations across nine organizational fields to capture strategies that are less visible in the academic literature. Our analysis identifies five types of civil society strategy: contentious, public-sphere, cultural and educational, networking, and organizational strategies. It shows that the academic literature is heavily skewed toward contentious action, whereas organizational and networking strategies play a central role in practice but remain largely understudied. At the same time, the evidence on effectiveness is limited and unevenly distributed across strategy types, highlighting important gaps in comparative and cross-national research. By integrating scholarly and practitioner knowledge, the study provides a comprehensive overview of civil society strategies against the far right and outlines a research agenda for more systematic analysis of their effects. Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/342560 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/309433 Title: How anti-racist protests influence pro- and anti-migration voting behavior: Evidence from national and European elections Authors: Stephan, Meret; Schürmann, Lennart Abstract: Racist attacks and incidents frequently spark anti-racist protest campaigns. This research examines the effect of such mobilization on voting behavior in subsequent national and European elections. We focus on two periods of anti-racist demonstra-tions in Germany that followed 1) the killing of nine people in the 2020 Hanau racist terrorist attack and 2) the uncovering of a racist mass deportation plan by far-right actors, including some Alternative for Germany (AfD) politicians in 2024. The study hypothesizes that local antiracist protests lead to less anti-migration, i.e., far-right AfD voting, and more promigration, i.e., Green voting. Empirically, we connect protest data with aggregate voting data from German state offices. Using difference-in-differences (DID) and entropy balancing, we show that local anti-racist protests can indeed influence voting behavior toward a more inclusive society. We find the hypothesized effect in the 2021 federal elections for both parties. However, in the European elections, we only find negative effects on AfD vote share. The Green Party only benefited from anti-racist protests in 2021, when they held a clear pro-migration stance and were part of the opposition. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/309433 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/10419/319637 Title: Coping with affective polarization: A research program Authors: Hutter, Swen; Schwander, Hanna; Specht, Jule; von Scheve, Christian Abstract: This discussion paper outlines a research program that addresses the question of how societies can cope with the negative consequences of affective polarization. Polarization is at the center of current debates about the erosion of social cohesion. Particularly prominent is the phenomenon of affective polarization - the tendency of individuals and groups to feel close to like-minded people while harboring negative emotions and derogatory attitudes towards those with opposing views. Affective polarization is especially harmful because it may inhibit cooperation and compromise across political camps, reduce trust in government, increase intolerance, fuel hate speech and even political violence, and thereby threaten democracy itself. The central question is how societies can manage affective polarization to mitigate its detrimental effects. We argue that social cohesion represents a key resource for societies to constructively address affective polarization and prevent its negative consequences, with civil society serving as a critical arena for implementing and examining this capacity. Our proposed research program builds on a theoretically grounded and extensive empirical investigation of affective polarization and coping strategies, combining interdisciplinarity with a rich set of methodological approaches. Specifically, the program pursues three goals: 1) Establishing the Berlin Polarization Monitor: This infrastructure will track developments in affective polarization in Berlin and Germany at large. The monitor, based on a large-scale panel survey study, will enable continuous analysis of the dynamics of affective polarization and inform both academic research and the broader public about its patterns and drivers. 2) Identifying coping strategies: The main empirical ambition is to identify strategies at the levels of (a) individuals, (b) situated social interactions, and (c) civil society organizations to manage and cope with affective polarization. 3) Developing applied interventions: Based on the empirical findings, we will derive two sets of interventions at the micro- and group-level to support coping and constructive engagement with affective polarization. A key feature is the co-design of these interventions in collaboration with civil society partners, ensuring their relevance and applicability to everyday contexts. Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/10419/319637 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z