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On Wednesday, our colleague Philipp Lorenz-Spreen took the stage at re:publica 2025 to address one of the most pressing questions of our digital era:

“Gesellschaftliche Kipppunkte: Die Spirale aus Aufmerksamkeit und Plattformmacht und wie wir da noch rauskommen”
(“Societal Tipping Points: The Spiral of Attention and Platform Power – and How We Might Escape It”)

Community notes are supposed to curb disinformation on X - but they themselves follow political patterns. A new data analysis shows that Green Party posts are particularly criticised, but their notes are hardly considered helpful. At the same time, there is no clear political trend in the notes that are actually published. Why is this the case? The article analyses patterns in the distribution and rating of the notes and sheds light on the dynamics that can be derived from the data.

Has Elon Musk manipulated X to give the AfD more reach? He has made it clear in posts, articles and election events that he is a fan - and at the same time, Alice Weidel’s reach on X has increased significantly. Could these developments be linked? This blog post describes a data analysis in which we take a closer look at which accounts have received how much reach and whether Musk’s influence can be determined. Where does the sudden increase in Weidel’s reach on X come from?

Sami Nenno, Postdoc in the Junior Research Group Computational Social Science at SynoSys, Center Synergy of Systems, has co-authored an insightful new paper, All the (Fake) News That’s Fit to Share? News Values in Perceived Misinformation Across Twenty-Four Countries. Co-written with Cornelius Puschmann, the study has been published in The International Journal of Press/Politics and investigates the relationship between journalistic news values and perceived misinformation in diverse national contexts.

Our junior research group leader Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, whose work focuses on the digital information environment and among other things on misinformation, has co-authored a comprehensive meta-analysis of over 256,000 decisions from thousands of participants that sheds light on who is most susceptible to misinformation and the factors behind it. Their research reveals that susceptibility depends less on formal education and more on individual and contextual factors, such as age, analytical thinking, and political alignment.