Curd Knüpfer

I'm back in the top 1% of global Mountain Goats listeners. 🏔️🐐

In case anyone was wondering.

The @ddc-sdu.bsky.social (where I work), has an ongoing collaboration with TrygFonden, which allows us to fund project-based fellowships.
The upcoming cohort has 15(!) colleagues from academia, journalism, & policy coming in.
Cool stuff.
...And the fellowship will continue in 26/27. 👀

Huge thanks again to @taberez.bsky.social and his fantastic team at the National University Singapore! 👏
Thanks for the hospitality and all your efforts! I know it was a lot of work and I am very grateful you made this happen. ❤️

Now that the 11th annual conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics #IJPP2025 is over, I am back on European ground, & wanted to reiterate that it remains my favorite smaller conference.
So many interesting projects, so broad + international & yet so constructive + focused.
10/10!

Senators Want Extremism Researchers to Surrender Documents Linked to Right-Wing Grudges The Senate homeland security committee's chair has asked researchers to turn over troves of documents related to the January 6 attack, vaccines, and more, according to a letter reviewed by WIRED.

not good
www.wired.com/story/senato...

Next up, I got to chair a panel on AI in election campaigns, centering on persuasion effects. This featured 3 papers with results from 🇳🇱, 🇵🇰, and 🇮🇩.
My main takeaway: all these countries are grappling with the rapid rollout of these technologies -- making an already messy field much more messy..

Our third co-panelist, @alice-hamilton.bsky.social (Wageningen University), with highly interesting experimental work across 🇪🇺 countries, investigating the effects of accusations of disinformation. Super interesting dynamics between the right-wing and far right!

Here's my fellow panelist @ehabrasul.bsky.social (NUS)
presenting cutting edge work on "How Perceptions of Misinformation and Disinformation Influence News Consumption across Traditional Media, Social Media, and AI"
Very cool stuff! Part of a larger project. One to watch!

Day 2 of #IJPP2025:
Started with a panel featuring yours truly, wherein I presented work together with Annett Heft, Juni Schindler, & @buehling.bsky.social on far-right and legacy media's coverage of conspiracy theories.

Far-right challenges to liberal democratic press norms: “indexing by proxy” in a German immigration debate Abstract. This study examines the mechanisms by which illiberal politics make the news by disrupting democratic systems. During the late 20th century, a li

Nachreichen möchten wir außerdem ein Paper von @curdknupfer.bsky.social, Lance W. Bennett & @ulrikeklinger.bsky.social zu Normalisierung durch überproportionale mediale Berichterstattung über disruptive politische Akteur*innen aufgrund eben dieser Disruptivität:
doi.org/10.1093/joc/...

#NeuesausderForschung

Gervais et al. untersuchen den Zusammenhang zwischen autoritärer Persönlichkeit und der Unterstützung politischer Gewalt; u.a. mit einem Fokus auf den Widerspruch zwischen autoritärer Unterwerfung und der Billigung von Gewalt gegen Autoritäten: doi.org/10.1017/S104...

Not being mayor of Gas Town along the fury road.

Fantastic 1st day of conferencing at #IJPP2025. Lots of new faces, projects & ideas.
Topics:
International ✅
Press (in various shapes and mediums)✅
Politics ✅
@taberez.bsky.social @shannimcg.bsky.social @patyrossini.bsky.social @profvaccari.bsky.social
@rasmuskleis.bsky.social
@polcomm.bsky.social

Important work, excellently presented by @gongbaobao.bsky.social (with Barbara Pfetsch) from the @weizenbauminstitut.bsky.social, on legacy media criticism by right-wing media in 🇩🇪.
(Drawing on previous work by Heft et al. 😉👍)
#IJPP2025

Excellent presentation and lively discussion about "Strategic Legalism and Journalistic Agency under Security Governance" by Saira Ali (Adelaide University), focused on journalists in 🇵🇰.
#IJPP2025

Very impressive quantitative work by Yufan Guo & Longhan Wei (Chinese U of Hong Kong) on
"How the State Politicizes Everyday Language: A Computational Analysis of Discursive Shifts on Chinese Social Media"...using word embeddings in over 180.000.000 (!) posts from 🇨🇳Weibo over 10 years.

Next:

Dyotana Banerjee (Krea University) on...
Community Icons, New Media and the Politics of Caste Assertion in Gujarat, 🇮🇳

@cristinamonzer.bsky.social (UPenn) on...
Aligned identities, curated politics: How TikTok creators express partisan sorting 🇺🇸

First panel of the day, focused on Campaigns and Identities.
With Dennis Steffan on
Visual Frame Building in Election Campaigns in 🇩🇪&🇰🇪
Then: Tetsuro Kobayashi, linking conspiratorial beliefs to collective efficacy, via social media engagement and deep search in 🇯🇵.
#IJPP2025 #IJPP25

Kicking off #IJPP25 with welcoming words by our Editor in Chief @taberez.bsky.social, followed by an excellent keynote by @sabinamihelj.bsky.social on how the rise of illiberal public spheres forces us to reconsider normative assumptions in #polcomm. Focusing on publics, media trust, & disinfo.

In Singapore (1st time) for the annual conference of the International Journal of Press/Politics #IJPP.
Only had about 90 minutes of free time to explore & snap some pre-golden hour pics at the tourist hotspots in China Town.📸

Have another half day off on Sat.
LMK if you have any must-sees/eats...

Can't keep my del toros apart. 🤦‍♂️

Thanks for calling me out. I'm extra embarrassed because I MADE THE SAME MISTAKE LAST NIGHT. Incredible.

I'm so tired. 🧟‍♂️

HAHA. On nooooo!!

It's like one of those 90s Batman movies, with CGI from the (terrible) contemporary Tim Burton stuff. Weird casting choices. Terrible accents. Both over the top yet somehow too serious.
Fell asleep at some point. Still hated every minute.
Two thumbs all the way down!

I want my Friday night back. ☹️

European Democracy Shield and EU Strategy for Civil Society pave the way for stronger and more resilient democracies The Commission has presented today the European Democracy Shield, setting out a series of concrete measures to empower, protect, and promote strong and resilient democracies across the EU. An open civ...

The @ec.europa.eu 'Democracy Shield' plans have dropped.

The focus on free, independent media, fact-checking, literacy, election integrity etc make sense.

But: it needs to be acknowledged that many of these challenges are not from outside the EU only. Also from within.
ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

We post so that others might learn from our mistakes...

Haha. My academic mantra: "do good things and publicly complain about it"😅

Now... Onward to the next service to-do. Ugh! 🦸‍♂️😩

(This mid-November tweet is an annual tradition of mine, btw.)

Apparently, back in late Summer, some clown with my email/name volunteered for numerous review and writing tasks due at the end of this *very busy* month. 🤡😭

Nice work by these always excellent colleagues:
Embedding platform affordances within the contexts (and confines) of the media/political regimes in which they are used by various social movements.
Smart stuff!