- October 07, 2021
The third workshop was opened by two keynote speeches. Semjon Rens, Public Policy Director, Regulatory and Economic Policy for the D-A-CH countries, Facebook, described the Bundestag elections from the perspective of a social media platform and addressed the influence of social media platforms on the election campaign. Lena-Maria Böswald, Program Associate at Democracy Reporting International, presented the results of her project “Social Media Dashboard” in cooperation with the Tagesspiegel.
The moderated breakout sessions were devoted to:
1) Mysogyny – misogyny on the net, moderated by Christina Dinar, Junior Researcher Platform Governance at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research, Hans Bredow Institute, Hamburg.
2) The responsibility of social media using the example of TikTok, moderated by Fabian Walter, tax expert and content creator on the TikTok channel @steuerfabi.#
3) Dealing with conspiracy theories, moderated by Mathieu Coquelin, head of the Fachstelle Extremismusdistanzierung (FEX) at the Demokratiezentrum Baden-Württemberg and Sarah Heinisch, consultant at the Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg (LMZ).
In the final discussion of the results, three central points were ephasized:
1) Structural problems such as misogyny and discrimination must be solved structurally.
2) The responsibility for this lies both with the platforms themselves and with the influencers, content creators, and users.
3) There is a high awareness of the above issues, but solutions must be found structurally and in the interaction with platforms.
4) More has to be invested in media literacy , especially for the younger and youngest users of social networks.
