Publications

Dr. Johannes Bleher assists researchers from TU Dortmund University by conducting machine learning-based analysis of German PIRLS data, specifically using post-selection regressions on principal components derived from multiple imputed and bootstrapped datasets.

The study examines how vital social resources, more precisely social interactions with peers and teachers, are for two central aspects of school success, namely academic achievement and well-being. To this end, the representative German PIRLS 2016 data of 3959 fourth-grade students (MAge = 10.34 years; N = 1,940 girls, 71% white) were analyzed. Social interactions were operationalized using factors indicating whether students experienced bullying from peers, and how much teacher support they perceived. We found that fewer bullying experiences and more perceived teacher support were positively related to academic achievement and enjoyment of school as a prominent aspect of school-related well-being. Applying machine-learning methods to avoid overfitting while including important control variables, only the effects of bullying experiences and perceived teacher support on well-being remained robust. The results underlined that positive relationship experiences were particularly important for students’ well-being but not necessarily incremental to students’ academic achievement.

"Outrage, Solidarity, Counterattack: A Content Analysis of Tweets on two Political Scandals in Germany" in Medijske studije (Media Studies)

Jan Dvorak develops a taxonomy of audience participation during political scandals on Twitter for the special issue "Scandals in a Global Context".

The prevalence of politicians’ scandals on social media has become an integral part of contemporary political life, presenting a challenge to existing scandal research. The formerly passive audience is given new opportunities for participation that have not yet been comprehensively described either theoretically or empirically. This study contributes to filling this gap by developing a taxonomy to describe offensive and defensive forms of audience participation during scandals. The study analyzes a sample of 500 influential tweets, taken from a corpus of more than 55.000 tweets related to two scandalizations of German politicians.

"Out of the Channel, onto the Street!" in Medien & Kommunikationswissenschaft (German)

Tobias Schrimpf, Jan Dvorak, Andreas Reich and Prof. Dr. Jens Vogelgesang explore the communication structure and calls for protest of the "Querdenken" movement in the current special issue of M&K.

Using a quantitative network analysis, the authors examine the structure of shared content of the "Querdenken" movement on Telegram. To this end, they analyze a total of 9,088,629 messages from 943 channels and groups. They identify key players in the network, such as the channel "@haintz". Locations references in calls for protest also show that the movement is mobilizing primarily in urban centers such as Berlin and Stuttgart. Nonetheless, an emerging trend indicates a growing mobilization presence in medium-sized and smaller towns.

"Seasonal variation in the diurnal activity pattern of Eurasian blackbirds" in Journal of Ornithology

Jan dvorak supports researchers at the University of Tübingen in creating activity models for blackbirds throughout the year.

The study analyzed changes in diurnal activity patterns of Eurasian blackbirs over time via camera traps. Using this data, the team created activity models over the full year. A significant difference between an unimodal activity pattern in spring and a bimodal pattern for the rest of the year was found.