Projects

Principal Investigators: Dr. Lara Kobilke, Dr. Antonia Markiewitz

Funded by the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, the project "Prevalence and Health Consequences of Viral TikTok Challenges for Children and Adolescents" examines how children and teenagers aged 10 to 16 encounter, perceive, and engage with viral TikTok challenges, with a particular focus on potentially harmful content. It starts from the observation that while many social media challenges are harmless or even socially beneficial, some can involve risky, self-harming, or otherwise dangerous behavior and may be especially appealing to adolescents because of their higher social media exposure and developmental vulnerability.

The project combines three main components: a research monitoring and typology of challenges, a large-scale content analysis of viral TikTok videos, and a survey of adolescents. Together, these work packages aim to identify and classify different forms of challenges, assess how widespread harmful versus harmless challenges are on TikTok, analyze how dangerous content is presented and gains attention, and examine how creators evade platform moderation. The survey component further investigates which challenges young people know, how they come across them, whether they participate in them, and which individual or social factors may shape their responses.

Overall, the study seeks to provide an evidence-based foundation for the regulation and early prevention of harmful TikTok content without dismissing the positive social functions that challenges can also serve. Its findings are intended to support more differentiated age protection measures, improve the detection of risky challenge content, and inform platform governance as well as media policy responses.

Total Project Funding: €59,446.15

Principal Investigators: Dr. Anna-Carolina Haensch, Dr. Lara Kobilke, Rebekka Schade

Funded by the LMU Munich Sustainability Fund, the Soil Health Index project develops and tests an interdisciplinary approach to assessing soil health by combining expert knowledge, index construction, and evidence-based sustainability communication. It brings together statistical and communication-science perspectives to examine how soil-related ecosystem services can be evaluated more systematically, how biases in expert surveys can be reduced, and how findings can be communicated in ways that are understandable, locally grounded, and low in reactance.

At the core of the project is the creation of a regional expert panel including stakeholders from science, policy, administration, and practice. Their assessments will be used to capture context-specific and tacit knowledge about soil conditions, drivers of change, and expected future developments. Based on these data, the project will develop a Soil Health Index that aggregates different soil functions into a broader framework (similar to the ifo Geschäftsklimaindex) and can later be compared with empirical monitoring approaches such as remote sensing or other environmental data sources.

A second key objective is to investigate how expert survey designs can be improved under sensitive and politicized conditions, especially where anonymity, self-censorship, or strategic answering may affect data quality. In addition, the project studies how soil sustainability results can be translated into communication formats that are more accessible and socially effective.

Total Project Funding: €30,727.44

Principal Investigators: Katharina V. Hajek, Dr. Lara Kobilke

Funded by the LMU Munich Sustainability Fund, the project "Shaping Communication on Climate Change: Developing an Evidence-Based Guide for Discourse Competence in Sustainability Communication" addresses a central challenge of sustainability transformation: how to foster constructive dialogue in increasingly polarized and ideologically charged public debates. It examines how psychological reactance, emotional resistance, and normative pressure shape communication about sustainability, especially in digital environments, face-to-face discussions, and multimodal formats such as text-image combinations. The project’s goal is to identify communicative trigger points and develop evidence-based strategies for reducing resistance and enabling more constructive, inclusive, and solution-oriented sustainability discourse.

The research program combines three complementary studies: an analysis of written reactions in social media comments, an investigation of face-to-face conversations about sustainability, and an experimental study of how visual and verbal communication jointly produce resistance or openness. 

Total Project Funding: €49.165,83

Principal Investigators: Prof. Dr. Carsten Reinemann, Dr. Lara Kobilke, Katharina V. Hajek, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Pfeffer, Daniel Matter, Prof. Dr. Alexander Wuttke.

Funded by the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), the project "DemocraGPT: Developing an AI-Based Conversation Training to Foster Democratic Exchange" addresses a growing democratic challenge: many citizens increasingly avoid political conversations because public debate is perceived as polarized, morally charged, and emotionally exhausting. In this climate, fear of criticism, social exclusion, or saying the “wrong” thing can discourage people from engaging across differences, especially online. The project starts from the premise that open and respectful exchange across political disagreement is essential for democratic legitimacy and social cohesion.

DemocraGPT explores whether large language models can be used to support conversation training that helps people navigate difficult political discussions more constructively. The aim is to develop an AI-assisted tool that enables users to practice democratic dialogue, reflect on disagreement, and build confidence in engaging with opposing views without escalation, withdrawal, or hostility. By combining expertise in political communication, computational social science, computer science, and political behavior, the project seeks to create an innovative digital intervention at the intersection of democracy research and AI. 

Total Project Funding: €880.700,00